This photograph was taken on August 4, of a hearing impaired child worker, looking at her finger that she accidentally hurt, using a hammer, to dig up the minerals…
From the Front Page Sections, translated…
In an abandoned mine of Jharkhand of eastern India, the eight year-old child, Lalita Kumari HACKED open the rocks, and extracted the mica, a rare mineral that’s used to add luster to the nail polishes and the lipsticks. Her small face was covered with dust and dirt, and sweat rolled down her hair, and her case showed the crisis of the link between India’s child laborers, poverty, and the raw materials of the industrial world.
The report stated that Lalita stood in the dimly lit sandy hill to be interviewed, she’d told the reporters, that she’d been working at this abandoned mine since she was just four, and she’d sweated too hard, to make a living, and didn’t know of any other better ways to make a living.
In a ponytail, she’d put down the pick ax, scared, she’d hid her blistered hands behind her, “I want to go to school, but there’s never enough food at home, so that, is why I’m working here.”
There are over hundreds of children like Lalita who are mining, to help make the ends of their households meet. They’d spent their whole days mining up the mineral, and, even if the sun is too hot, or they are too hungry, they’d still had to, continue, digging.
Twenty years ago, the local governments, due to safety concerns, decided to shut down the mines, but the poor villagers still continued to come here, to find the reminisce of minerals. Mica can be used to make eye shadows, the colors in the lipsticks, as well as mascaras, all the name brands across the world uses this ingredient, but those who are against child labors stated, that because there’s a complicated chain of demands, they couldn’t track to the sources.
After the kids found the micas, they’d handed their findings to their families, to be sold to the smaller wholesales, then, the smaller wholesales sell to the larger providers.
Although it’s illegal to hire children under eighteen in India, and the employers may face fines, or even, jail times, but because there’s no strict enforcements of the laws, nothing is done.
The young miners like Lalita, as they picked up the pick axes, they’d often hurt themselves, and the dust from the mineral may get into their eyes as well, inhaled into their lungs, causing debilitating conditions that may come later in life. Every year around the rainy seasons, these young miners may also be bitten by the snakes or be buried alive in the collapsed mines.
A supervisor of these young miners said, “in this poverty stricken place, it is, really hard, to convince the parents, that sending their kids to school is the wisest decision.”
And so, this, is what it looks like, on the opposite side of this white picket fence we are all living in, and, these children, for the sakes of helping out with the household finances are sacrificing their own lives, their rights to receive an education, and, it’s happening in the world right now…