Shipbreaking In The Outlaw Sea

Joseph Chin
ENG 1A
Matthew Duckworth
28 February 2017
The Human Cost of Shipbreaking In The Outlaw Sea, author William Langewiesche states, “Even the lowliest laborers are proud of what they do at Alang. There is no ship too big to be torn apart this way. More important, the economic effects are substantial. Alang and the industries that have sprung from it provide a livelihood, however meager, for perhaps as many as a million Indians” (205). In Chapter 6, Langewiesche examines the lives of the shipbreaking and milling factory workers at Alang and Bhavnagar, and unveils many of the harsh realities behind the shipbreaking business, such as its environmental impacts and the role Western societies play in the exploitation of its laborers throughout
India. However, in spite of the many flaws, Langewiesche and many others within the industry believe shipbreaking could be Alang’s best shot at developing into a more modern society.
Along the coast of India, hundreds of workers at Alang’s shipbreaking yard dismantle old ships that are often times sent from overseas.
The process of shipbreaking is dangerous for the workers, requiring them to cut and lug heavy pieces of metal and dispose toxic waste. On his trip, Langewiesche visits Plot 138, where he watches workers dismantle of a 466-foot Japanese-built cargo ship called the Sun Ray. According to Langewiesche, about 400 men split into three groups, one of which would trim the steel into pieces, lift the pieces onto the beach, and reconstruct them into segmented plates. The second group would operate the winch machine to trim the lines on ships. As the aging cables of ships could easily snap and many of the men were untrained, winch operators more likely to get hurt or die. Lastly, the third group of workers would operate the carriers that load the metal pieces into trucks up the beach. Their job was as Langewiesche explains, “... the risks are worse: falls, fires, explosions, and exposure to a variety of poisons from fuel oil, lubricants, paints, wiring, insulation, and cargo slop. Many workers are killed every year”
(204).
Similar to the shipbreaking workers at Alang, milling workers at Bhavnagar also face dangerous working conditions. At the rerolling mills, hull metal plates from the ships are heated and reshaped into reinforcing bars. The workers then cut the heavy plates into strips and hoist them through a furnace. The work is extremely labor intensive as Langewiesche describes, “Some, I think, were slowly starving, trapped in that cycle of nutritional deficit all too common in South Asia, by which a man may gradually expend more calories on his job than his wages will allow him to replace” (222). The laborers work harder than what their wages can feed them, and as Langewiesche continues his visit in Bhavnagar and its rerolling mills, he observes working and living conditions unimaginable to the First world.
Another controversial issue revolving around the shipbreaking business is its environmental impact. Opposers of the business argue Western societies, including the US Navy and Shell, that export their ships to India have an environmental responsibility to properly dispose their own ships rather than send them to a third world country to deal with. Leading the environmental movement against shipbreaking, the Greenpeace campaign has helped enforce more strict regulations on ship trade to the Asian scrap market. In contrast to the arguments made by the environmental community, Pravin S. Nagarsheth defended the shipbreaking industry in his speech at the Amsterdam conference:
One, however, wonders whether such reports are deliberately written for public consumption in affluent Western societies only… The environmentalists and Greenpeace talk of future generations, but are least bothered about the plight of the present generation.
Have they contributed anything constructive to mitigate the plight of the people living below the poverty line in developing countries? … Living conditions of labor in Alang should not be looked at in isolation. It is the crisis of urbanization due to job scarcity. (220)
Nagarsheth points out that the Western world fails to recognize that the reason countries like India are so willing to do shipbreaking work is because the majority of the population lives below the poverty line. As Jaysukh Bai, brother of the owner of Paras Ship Breakers Ltd. states later in the chapter, “The question I want to ask the environmentalists is if you should want to die first of starvation or pollution” (229). For Alang, a Third World industrial zone, jobs are scarce, and the dangers workers face are almost
inevitable.
Nonetheless, managers of shipwrecking yards share a connection to the workers they profit from. As 45 percent of the population in India live below the poverty line, places like Alang and Bhavnagar are a geographic inconvenience to the upper levels of society in New Delhi and Mumbai. In these more rural areas, diseases thrive as the air is filled with fecal odors, smoke, and dust. The people, most of which were men who had become sick or been injured on the job as a shipbreaking worker, live in shacks built of wood and paneling from the ships without proper latrines. As a growing number of young, upper class Indians attend American universities, they also adopt more Western ideas and values. As a result, places like Alang become an embarrassment to these Westernized classes.
Langewiesche wants us to understand the harsh reality for developing countries such as India, and consider what those from within the business had to say about what is and isn’t necessary for the people and future of India. Langewiesche explains, “No one denies that what happens afterward is a dangerous and polluting process, or that the workers involved are frequently injured and sometimes killed. It is said, however, and not without reason, that this is a necessary function of modern times” (203). This leads to the idea that India’s growing industry of shipbreaking is the start of India’s own development into a modern society, and has been referred to as their own Industrial Revolution. Nagarsheth also argues that the working conditions of poorer provinces such as Orissa, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh are far worse than that of Alang. In order for these areas to develop, job scarcity is something that must be endured for a more advanced society to emerge.
Ultimately, Langewiesche wants the reader to understand the reality of both work and life for workers in the shipbreaking business. Shipbreaking is a job that demands its workers to work under extreme conditions, including handling heavy metal and other material, operating machinery without sufficient training, and disposing toxic waste. As a result of poverty and job scarcity in India, workers endure these poor conditions because it is often the only work they can find. In spite of these inhumane realities, behind the industry, the abuse that spread throughout India as a sort of human cost necessary for Alang to become a modern society.