Monir Chaudan takes off his gumboots and wiggles two stumps at the end of his feet where his big toes should be. ”I went to work even when I lost these. If you don’t, you lose your job,” he says.
”Here” is Alang, a 10km stretch of shoreline in Gujarat largely obscured from view by dozens of rusting tankers and cruise liners in various stages of dismemberment. On the grimy coast lie steel carcasses of vessels brought from as far as Brazil and as close as Iraq. The biggest hulk belongs to Britain’s 400 000-tonne supertanker Hellespont Grand.
Off the Arabian Sea coast on India’s western flank, Alang is where the world’s ships come to die.
Ship-breaking is one of India’s economic success stories, a billion-rand business that provides steel for India’s booming industry and much-needed jobs.
Critics say Alang is a modern Indian version of Victorian Britain’s ”dark satanic mills”: an engine of industrial growth that provides poorly paid jobs to destitute people in inhumane conditions.
Around the ships swarm 40 000 migrant workers, prepared to toil in the 190 ”plots” lining the coast. The work is dangerous, back-breaking and by Western standards cheap — a 10-hour shift pays as little as R12.
Chauhan (38) says he earns a little more as a ”gas cutter” who slices ships up with an oxyacetylene torch.
Eight years of inhaling hot paint fumes have left him with persistent coughing and bouts of breathlessness. ”The doctors tell me I have gases and poisons inside me,” he says.
But he says competition for jobs is so intense workers can be sacked for being ill. ”If you fall sick and take leave, there’ll be no job when you come back.”
At plot V4, the beach is littered with steel plates from the Hellespont Grand’s hull and engine parts cut by blowtorch and saw. The work began last November and will take a year to finish. Hard hats and goggles are worn by most labourers, but masks, gloves and boots are not. This is an improvement on the past, when workers went barefoot and bare-headed.
Last year, workers say, 25 people were blown up when a torch cut through a tanker containing gas.
Naveen Singh, supervisor for the Hellespont, admits workers may be killed or injured, but adds: ”You have risks in every Indian industry. Alang is no different.”
Most workers are migrants who live in slums opposite the ship-breaking yards, without toilets or electricity. Yet they say it is better to work and die than to starve and die. Almost all come from northern India’s poorest states, Orissa, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
”I came here five months ago because I have a family to feed,” says Shivram Pradhan. ”I was a farmer, but couldn’t make enough from my two acres. Here I can make 80 rupees [R12] a day.” But he cannot work at present because he has burnt his shoulder carrying hot steel plates.
Alang has a hospital, but most workers travel an hour to the nearest big town, Bhavnagar, for serious complaints. Malaria is rife and a study estimated last year that one in 20 workers is HIV-positive.
Twenty years ago, Alang was a poverty-stricken village. Three factors have helped it to become the world’s biggest ship-breaking yard.
First, the heavy tides and sloping beaches meant there was no need to build expensive dry docks and piers. Second, environmental and safety regulations that made ship-breaking unviable in the West were ignored and unenforced. Third was the limitless cheap labour supply.
Greenpeace has waged a six-year campaign against abuses, with some success. In 1998 the United States, which once dominated ship-breaking, banned the export of its navy ships to developing countries. It was that order that eight months ago saw the warships towed to Teesside ship-breaking yards in Britain.
In November last year Greenpeace reported how ship owners were flouting international regulations in India. None of the 145 vessels Greenpeace surveyed, including the Hellespont Grand, had an inventory of hazardous materials when they arrived at Alang for breaking.
The environmentalists argue that the rusting hulks landed on Alang contain health hazards such as asbestos, for pipe insulation, and tributyltin, a weather-guard in ship paint.
Ramapatty Kumar, a Greenpeace spokesperson, says: ”Our aim is to make someone responsible for such hazards.”
Less than 20km along the coast, the ecological price is all too visible. In the village of Gopanath, three generations of fisherman are convinced that the black slick that coats the rocks explains their declining catches.
The industry claims it has been miscast by environmentalists and human rights activists. Ship-breaking is a green industry, say its supporters, as almost all the re-usable materials are recovered.
Alang produces 2,5-million tonnes of steel a year for India’s rolling mills.
Everything that can be removed from a ship is sold at Alang: shops and market stands offer diesel generators, life jackets and kitchen sinks. The most prized items are the ships’ bells, used in Hindu temples.
”We don’t just break ships up, we recycle them,” says Pravin Nagarsheth, president of the Iron Steel Scrap and Shipbreakers Association.
The industry claims India’s environmental and safety laws are increasingly prompting ship owners to find alternative markets in ship-breaking yards in Pakistan, Bangladesh and China, where regulations are even less policed.
”We lost the number-one slot last year to China,” says Nagarsheth.
”We are increasing the regulatory burden in India, but not in other countries.”
Nagarsheth and Greenpeace agree that the problem is rooted in the global nature of the shipping business. About 40 000 ships ply the oceans, most crewed by the world’s poor, owned by shadowy offshore companies and flying flags of convenience.
”The only way of ensuring a level playing field is for every ship owner to clean the ships [of toxic materials] before they bring them here,” says Nagarsheth. — Â