The much maligned sweatshops have helped lay the groundwork for an economic realignment that is putting India and China back on their feet. The per capita output in China has been doubling every 10 years whereas it took Britain 58 years to double its per capita output after launching the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.
Sweatshops as the price of development
While India resisted opening up its economy for 50 years since independence, countries like Taiwan and South Korea accepted sweatshops as the price for development. The result is there for everyone to see. While in India every year over three million children die before the age of 5, mostly from poverty-related diseases, Taiwan and South Korea are modern countries with low rates of infant mortality and high levels of education.
Sweatshops came into being with the commencement of the process of outsourcing which started with shirts and shoes, calculators and cuddly toys, and then went on to include everything from microwaves, software design, computer programming, accountancy and insurance underwriting to clinical pathology services. India and China became the main outsourcing centres for manufacturing and service work of all kinds, from many different countries.
Blamed mainly for low wages and exploitation
Sweatshops in these countries are blamed mainly for low wages and exploitation of cheap labour. Those in favour of sweatshops argue that this exploitation offers developing economies the chance to move on to the first rung of the development ladder.
It is argued that the main reason why countries like India and China have been able to compete with the developed nations is because of their ability to offer cheap labour. Curtailing this growth is not only against the interest of the country but against the interest of the workers too.
It is not that sweatshops offer a route to comfortable lives for the workers. But with wages less than $1 a day in most poor countries, it is an alternative to a life of disease and starvation.
Every nation which is today called “developed” has been guilty of exploiting children, poor pay and substandard working conditions for factory workers. Once India and China catch up with the rest of the developed world, it can be expected that working conditions in these countries will improve and higher wages will follow.
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