LABOUR

	Millions Exploited Poor
15000 US miners have died till date. More die in Asia every year

This fictitious ad could have been written anytime in the last few hundred years and for almost any mine in any country in the world, for the story of the common miner has been the story of exploitation. In Industrial Age England, the poor worked in coal mines for a pittance. In America, black convicts worked as forced labourers in mines the 19th century. In India, the very adivasis who are uprooted from their ancestral land are working as miners for a clutchful of rupees today.

Life is cheap, so is labour...
...18000 children are mica miners in Giridih and Koderama districts of Jharkhand. They go below the ground to dig and search for mica, battling cave-ins, snake bites, silicosis, asthma and bronchitis. In neighbouring Giridh, Santhal tribes have lost their natural forest habitat due to mines and are forced to work 10 hours a day collecting mica scraps, for which they get between six and ten rupees.

...After the Civil War in America in 1863, the southern states were near-bankrupt. So they passed a legislation allowing convicts to be used as forced labour in coal mines. Many of these "convict miners" were worked to death. If a mule died while working in the mines, a new one had to be purchased by the company. But if a convict miner died, the state would furnish a new convict as a replacement at no cost to the mine owner!

myth 1: Diamonds are expensive to mine. It costs De Beers an average $6.40 to mine a high-quality 0.8 carat diamond, which is sold in the market for $1000. Myth 2: Diamonds are expensive to cut. Workers are paid an average of 20-25 cents for every diamond they cut and polish. Myth 3: Diamonds are rare. "Common sense tells us that the only way to increase the value of diamonds is to make them scarce, that is reduce production" declared Ernest Oppenheimer of De Beers in 1910. That has been the mantra of the diamond industry since then.

Diamonds’ precious gift: Apartheid In 1884, De Beers adopted a slave system in their mines. All black workers were confined to barracks and segregated from the white workers. That's how the apartheid system began. In 1917, these black workers had to crawl over the desert at night and pick up diamonds sparkling in the moonlight. Their mouths were gagged to stop them from swallowing diamonds. Shining Gems, Fading Bushmen The Bushmen of Botswana are a people who have the oldest surviving culture in the world. But today their very survival is at stake, thanks to diamond mining. In 1961, England handed over the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) to the Bushmen, since they were experts there and masters at using its scarce resources. But after De Beers acquired land for a mine there, Bushmen have been on the run. Thanks to diamond mining in Botswana, De Beers traded $1.8 billion of gems in 2002. The Gope mine in CKGR will add to their wealth and also that of the government. Which is why from 1997, Botswana has made it its official policy to evict the Bushmen from CKGR. Since then, thousands have been evicted and tortured. So much so that survival activists coined the slogan "Bushmen aren’t forever" to highlight their plight and counter De Beers famous ad line "Diamonds are forever".