Status: 02.01.2022 3:07 p.m.
The mineral mica is essential for many industries. It ensures glossy car paints and shimmering eye shadows and serves as a conductive material in electronics. But all too often child labor is behind the mica mining.
The 10-year-old Neeraj puts his life in danger every day. The boy, who lives in the northeast Indian state of Jharkhand, searches for Mica for up to eight hours. The earth above the brittle sandstone caves could collapse over him at any time. Only recently it happened to a woman who worked in a cave next to him. There was no way of salvation.
Multiple industrial use
More than half of the world’s mica exports come from India. The raw material, which is often extracted under problematic conditions, is found in car paints, toothpaste and electrical products, among other things. Mica is also popular in the cosmetics industry. The mineral creates a glitter effect on the skin. And even if there are now artificial alternatives, the vast majority of companies still rely on the natural variant of the mica.
Neeraj is ten years old and risks his life working in a mica mine. He digs the sparkling mineral for eight hours a day.
Image: Oliver Mayer / ARD Studio New Delhi
Creation of a black market
Until the 1990s, the city of Koderma in Jharkhand was still considered the capital of the Mica. At that time the mineral was mostly mined in legal mines. Gradually these mines were closed by the government; partly because they had dried up, partly because there were significant safety deficiencies. “Our livelihoods disappeared within a few months,” says Surya Barnawal, who previously worked in the export business for decades.
The result was the emergence of a black market that still exists today. The victims are families who live in extreme poverty. She and her children look for mica with their bare hands every day – in mines that were closed long ago. Devastating accidents happen again and again. The wages for the hard work: five to eight cents for a kilo of mica. At the end of the day, the families get around one to two euros.
Exporters benefit
Those who benefit are some powerful people. First so-called middlemen who drive to the mines and buy the mica from the people there. They then sell it on to the big exporters for five to six times the purchase price, for 30 to 35 cents per kilo. “We don’t know anything about child labor in the mines,” says a middleman who wants to remain anonymous. A dubious statement, especially since we saw the man at the mines ourselves that morning.
During our research, we try to get in touch with those who export the mica to the world and earn the most from it. Depending on the quality, they sell the Kilo Mica for up to 50 euros: around a thousand times what the families and children get in the mines. But even after multiple inquiries, nobody is willing to comment publicly. There is too much concern about lucrative business and bad press.
The narrow shafts of the mica mines are in great danger of collapsing. Fatal accidents happen again and again.
Image: Oliver Mayer / ARD Studio New Delhi
Politics looks the other way
Above all, politics could act. Sayeed Naseen from the local government knows about the problematic conditions. Work is currently underway to simplify the licensing procedures for operating legal mines. “This way we hope that better working conditions will be created there and fair wages will be paid,” said Naseen. The problem: For the Mica dealers, the business works great as it is. The costs are low, the profits are high. They have little incentive to change anything.
It is above all organizations like “Satyarthi” that try to help the people in the region. They have made it their business to build schools in remote places, to recruit teachers for them and to convince the parents that it is essential for the children to go to school. “We always come up against our limits,” says Govind Khannal, who works as a project manager for “Satyarthi”, “but we have already managed to convince many parents.” More and more children are now going to school regularly.
Hardly any prospect of change
Large international corporations have also set up the “Responsible Mica Initiative”, a project with which they want to promote the more sustainable cultivation of mica. But it is still as good as impossible to trace the supply chain of the glitter raw material. Numerous children still work many hours a day in the illegal mines looking for mica. Because their families would starve to death without your help, there is no real chance for them to break the eternal cycle of child labor and poverty.