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
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”
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