The new slaves

We did usual things like we have done before, condemnations, talk shows, strikes, demonstrations and outcry for justice. Then we returned to normal, embracing our vacations, holidays, politics, trade and commerce. We forgot that it was obscene not to keep promises, not to do anything to prevent recurrence of these accidents, and not to care if anyone got punished for downright negligence. Life goes on, we move on until it happens again. People get roasted alive or squashed like insects and rodents. Then we start all over again.

In the building that collapsed, some people died because they couldn't be readily rescued. Not to speak of us as a nation, I bet even the owner of the building didn't lose any sleep over the horror that people were still trapped in the debris, struggling to breathe under crushing slabs of concrete, perhaps pierced by stray pieces of steel or metal, choking on dust and fumes, slowly bleeding to death in the dark jumble of wreckage. I bet in his unaccustomed anxiety the owner took some relaxants or double shot nightcap, while servants and family guarded the silence he needed to catch a good night's sleep.

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Many of us may be willing to look the other way. The owners of those factories are entrepreneurs, who have set up business and created jobs, the mighty hands that turn the wheel of our economy. May be that is why the police hasn't been looking that hard for them, may be that is why the owner of the Spectrum Garments in Savar was arrested and released. Keeping those imbecile men in custody would have brought the economy to a grinding halt!

Guess what! The same mindset worked to justify slavery in the American South. It was said that the slave owners took on the burden of caring for the interests of inferior beings, seeing that they would be fed, clothed and given religious instruction. It was also said that slavery was the key to national prosperity, since nearly 60 per cent of U.S. export was cotton.

From the cotton fields of America to the killing fields of modern business, nothing has changed in terms of how ruthlessly men keep exploiting men. Kevin Bales, a former professor at the University of Surrey Roehampton in England, argues in his book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy that slavery is alive and well in the world today. In the old days, ethnic differences were important: whites enslaved blacks, for example. Now ethnic differences are secondary to economic considerations.

Otherwise, it's almost exactly the same as the slavery of two or three hundred years ago. People are still controlled by violence, allowed no free will, paid nothing for their labour, and economically exploited. And the coercive power of the slaveholder is, as always, intimately tied to the coercive power of the state. Kevin chooses to use the word slaveholder instead of slave owner, because in the past, one person could legally own another. That is not possible today, which goes in favour of the slaveholders anyway. They can enjoy all the benefits of ownership without the obligations and legal responsibilities.

Kevin estimates that the number of slaves in the world today is around 27 million. In fact, there are more slaves alive today than were brought over from Africa on the middle passage. The population explosion, combined with the economic and social vulnerability of large numbers of people in the Third World, means that there is a glut of slaves on the market. The result is that slaves have become cheap -- far cheaper than at any other time in history. In the United States before the Civil War, the average slave cost the equivalent of about fifty thousand dollars. The average price of a slave is much lower now, perhaps no more than fifty or sixty dollars.

Then he connects the dots. Low prices influence how the slaves are treated. Slave owners used to maintain long relationships with their slaves, but slaveholders no longer have any reason to do so. If you pay just a hundred dollars for someone, that person is disposable, as far as the slaveholder is concerned, Kevin argues. Slaves are so cheap that they're not even seen as a capital investment anymore. Slaveholders don't have to take care of them. They can just use up these slaves and throw them away. Human beings have become disposable tools for doing business, the same as a box of ballpoint pens.

And while the price of slaves has gone down, the return on the slaveholder's investment has skyrocketed. In the antebellum South, slaves brought an average return of about 5 percent. Now bonded agricultural labourers in India generate more than a 50 percent profit per year for their slaveholders, and a return of 800 percent is not at all uncommon for holders of sex slaves.

I know I have digressed from where I started. Then so has the whole nation. In the past weeks we have moved away from the tragedies. Nobody is interested to know how many people died under that heap of concrete which came crashing down on unsuspecting people. Nobody is bothered to keep count, because they were nameless, faceless people. In Alex Haley's Roots a rebellious Kunta Kinti told his friend Fiddler that he was a Mandinga Warrior. Fiddler, who had accepted his fate as a slave, turned to stable horse and said it didn't matter what Kunta Kinti thought of himself so long as Fiddler said he looked like a horse to him.

Where we saw humans, perhaps the slaveholders saw disposable people. I don't know if anybody noticed whether human remains were mixed with rubbles as ruins of the building were carted away. There must have been stains of blood, crushed bones, scraped skin and torn flesh. There must have been wet spots on the ground where life being squeezed out, bodies discharged fluids. Did the owner try to visualize the scene? Did he ever try to comprehend how so many lives perished under the crushing weight of his monumental greed?

The tragedies of last month are already forgotten, and our minds have turned to other things. Sooner than we think, the factory owners will be back in action, the memories of their atrocities vaporised like the cologne on them after a long dog day. Once again, they will drink and be merry, and their wives and children will look prim in their fancy clothes and costly jewelry. Once again there will be cackle of voices in their parlours exploding with roars of laughter and sound of music. Lust for life will take over the dread of death.

Again there will be fire in another factory, again the main gate will be locked and people in their rush to get out will trample some to death before others get fried in flames. Again a building will collapse and people will get crushed. In so much as life has changed, death has remained the same. It hunts with the masters and runs with the slaves.

Some disposable people died last month, and many more will die again. We all live in the shadow of death, but slaves die in the shadow of disgrace. I don't know how it works for others. Every death diminishes me, but death of slaves makes me brave. One day those lowlife masters are going to get it back.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.