The Other 99%

While those involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement have clear grievousness concerning the rebirth of what American's once called the Gilded  Age or, perhaps more succinctly the oligarchy have  once again obtained  control of the financial and political power base.  Yes, people in the major industrialized nations are suffering thanks to the maleficence of the 1% but there is another group of people who have suffered for generations thanks to that very one percent the 99% so despise.  

India held its first Formula One race today. Who benefited from that race was it India's majority or its one percent?       

Labourers who have built the circuit for Formula One's inaugural Indian Grand Prix this weekend are living in destitution at their workplace, without shelter, sanitation or, they claim, the pay they were promised.
Within sight of the undulating roof of the grandstand at the £130m Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, 13-year-old Raj Kumari, who has carried stones to make approach roads, is living with her parents in a tent made of salvaged plastic sheets.
"Working here and living here is difficult," she said.
The Guardian found nearly 50 labourers and their young children on Friday at the makeshift camp where they have been living for the last two months. The dozen or so shelters are only a few hundred metres from the main gates. Almost all are illiterate migrant workers from poor rural communities in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

In Pakistan Bonded Slavery continues passed down generation to generation even though laws exist banning this type of indentured servitude the problem lives on because Pakistan's political establishment so beholden to the financial elite are incapable of stopping it.

The most widely recognized export product from Pakistan using child labor is carpets. In a meeting with an official of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Pakistan Secretary of Labor maintained that carpet weaving is the only major export industry employing children. The U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1993 concurs.⁷In 1993, the Provincial Labor Departments compiled statistics on child labor in nine industries.⁸ The study found that in carpet industries, 2,463 children under 14 years of age were found, and another 4,246 were between 14 and 17 years old. A 1992 UNICEF-Punjab report asserted that according to conservative estimates, one million out of 1.5 million workers in the carpet industry in Pakistan were children.⁹ A separate 1992 UNICEF/Government of Pakistan study reported that 90 percent of the one million workers in the carpet industry are children, many of whom began working in the industry before 10 years of age.¹⁰The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan found that weaving thrives in self-contained homesteads, where labor is cheap and readily available. The Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PCMEA) describes the Pakistani carpet industry as follows:
The Pakistan carpet industry is primarily a cottage-based industry employing around 1.5 million people, with heavy concentration in Punjab and Sind provinces. Of this an estimated 8 percent are children of which the major portion is comprised of family unit labor. Only 10 percent of the looms are in factories of 10-30 looms each, while 90% of the weaving is based in village homes where the amount of work done is by choice of the family unit and beyond the manufacturers and contractors control.¹¹

 The question is who speaks for them?  Perhaps no one as the world and the media focus only on the demands of those involved in the Occupy Wall street movement. Remember the other 99% they are suffering like everyone else.