Life Around the World
[…] I thought about my new friend Mariya, her life and daily routine. She was married before I had my driver’s license. She pounded millet all day, sweating yet smiling. She hauled water from the well. She cooked. She birthed child after child. There was no end to the manual labor her life required. I liked to watch her. It was fascinating. But if hers was my life, I’d probably jump into that well. I’ve always thought what life each soul is assigned to is a game of chance. I couldn’t help but to wonder what would have become of me had the powers that be had shaken those dice one more time on March 16, 1982, before moving the game piece that sent me to DePaul Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. If I had been born into Mariya’s life, would I have been able to hack it? If she had been born into my life, would she have been happier? […] [1]
In Niger, where Mariya lives, about 1 in 9 children die before their first birthday. Life expectancy at birth is 53 years, and less than 30 percent of the population can read and write. About one-fifth of the population is nomadic. An Oxfam study in 2005 found that nomads had recently lost about 70 percent of their animals, and that “almost one in ten families is surviving on a diet of mainly wild plants, leaves, and grass.” [2]Real gross domestic product (real GDP) per person in Niger is the equivalent of about $700 per year.
Call centers are a phenomenon that has taken over the young crowd of metros in India by a storm. Its implications are social, cultural and economic. It is a new society of the young, rich and free, selling the new dream of an independent life to the regular desi. […] [C]heap labor in India owes its origin to the high rate of unemployment here. Hundreds of thousands of graduates are jobless and desperate for work in India. […] Most call center jobs require a basic understanding of computers and a good grasp over English. And the urban youth of India are computer literate graduates with a command over English language. This is the ideal unskilled labor that the call center industry is looking for. […]
