Your Child is in Danger: It's Time To Do Something

- By Anisa Virji 

When I was in the US last year I discovered a wonderful new thing... makeup that makes my skin glow. I was fascinated and ended up buying some. 

You must be wondering why I'm telling you about make-up. You probably don't use it, but here's why you need to know about it...

The mineral that makes this make-up sparkle - used in car paints and other shiny products all over the world - is obtained by enslaving Indian children. 

Mica, the miracle mineral, is mined by Indian children as little as 3 years old!

It is their blood, sweat and tears that glisten on beautiful faces across the world. If you think of the face of that small child buried in a mine somewhere, you will see the ugliness in that beauty.

We at Common Sense Living often write to you with ideas and strategies on how to start your own business. But we want to give you more than strategies. We want to give you, along with the freedom of a business, a link refuse to hate. 

When you start a business you have the freedom to decide what values your business will espouse. And what value it will provide to your consumer. 

You get to decide if your product was created by a factory that had a cramped, unsafe work environment for their workers. Or if it was sourced by unfair trade practices, by cheating farmers or artisans, promoting prejudice or racism, bringing to your consumer, goods that were unhealthy or unsafe to consume.

And we want you to choose the responsibility of adopting fair trade practices. 

I wrote once about unethical business practices of the now-giant startup, Uber. Short-changing their drivers, scamming competitors, exploiting the lack of governance in the online startup sector. I said that it was wrong of Uber to choose profits over ethics.

People wrote to me saying I was being naïve. They said a new business must do what it can to survive, competition is cut-throat, and you get by how you can. Once you are established, like the Tatas for instance, you can think about ethics and community and whatnot.

But to me, this is an inadequate excuse for greed.

This is what is called, 'the end justifies the means' philosophy - that of Machiavelli. That is how smart people justify unethical decisions... 'At the end of the day, I did what I did so the business could survive, so we could progress and develop. I employ lots of people I have to pay, their families depend on my profits, so what I'm doing is worth it.'

But how about looking at it in another way? In the way that one of the most influential Western philosophers saw things. Immanuel Kant believed that we should, 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.'

Any act that you undertake, any belief that you espouse, imagine that it becomes universally applicable. 

If it is okay for you to bribe a policeman who caught you speeding, because you were in a hurry and needed to get somewhere important, imagine if it were universally okay for everyone everywhere to bribe. Would that be a world you want to live in? 

If it is okay for children in Jharkhand not to go to school and work in dangerous mines instead, then it should be okay universally for all children to work in mines. Including yours. 

If you're thinking, 'I'm not the one that sent children into the mines and put them in danger, what am I supposed to do about it?', think about what Desmond Tutu, an un-ignorable defender of human rights, who quashed apartheid, said: 

'If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.'

So if you know that a business is using unethical practices, if you know that they are using sub-par materials, if you know that they are putting lead in their product (I wish I didn't have to pick on Maggi at a time like this), if you know that they are making our children unsafe, what can you do about it?

You can do two things: Sell responsibly, and consume responsibly. 

Sell responsibly 

If you run a business, pay attention to where your product is coming from, at each link in the supply chain. Assess whether the sourcing is fair to the people who create the product, from farmer to artisan.

Assess whether raw materials are being misappropriated, or it is fair to the environment. We are chopping down trees in protected areas, destroying wildlife and destroying the balance of nature. We are all responsible for the earth and in our business, we can adopt practices that care for our environment. 

Consume responsibly

People around the world are also now starting to notice where the products they consume come from. It is not cool anymore to use products that are representative of global inequality, that represent slavery, that use unfair trade practices. Global corporations do not want to give up these practices because they have a lot of profit riding on them, but if consumers stand up against them they will have to pay attention. 

If you think slavery is a tangential or marginal problem, think again. The Global Slavery Index 2014 has announced India as 'the world's slave capital'. Children, women, whole families are subject to forced labour in brick kilns, carpet weaving, embroidery and other textile manufacturing, forced prostitution, agriculture, domestic servitude, mining, and organised begging rings, according to the Times of India. 

We must stand up for our people. We must take responsibility for our children. It is easy to reach out and take a #selfiewithbeti. But how about this beti... the one stuck in a mine, sorting minerals instead of going to school or hugging her father, is anyone taking a selfie with her? 

If you are still asking what you can do then this is what Justin Dillon, the founder of MadeInAFreeWorld.com, says, 'Those who make profits off slavery are innovative and we must be too.'

He is innovative in his fight against unethical business practices. MadeInAFreeWorld.com is an anti-slavery organization that works to solve this problem through building awareness, field programs and business solutions. Organisations such as Bachpan Bachao Andolan are working to bring childhoods back to these children.

They are working to rescue children from mines and create safe villages to 'free and protect thousands of children from these mines and put them in schools, where they can truly shine!'

My friend Sapan Parekh has joined MadeInAFreeWorld.com's movement by starting a fundraiser where people all over the world can support this cause. I just made a donation to Made In a Free World India and a commitment to become a responsible consumer. I hope you can do the same for our children. 

The above is from Equitymaster Newsletter, which I receive.