Up in Smoke: Bidis and the Bomb

We’re not hip enough to have seen the trend here in Saipan yet, but it’s been reported that the “in” crowd in America has taken to smoking small, hand rolled cigarettes known as bidis (pronounced “bee-dees”).

The humble smokes come from humble origins. The things are hand rolled (like joints, presumably) in India. The ones doing the rolling, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal (Behind a Hot Smoke, Hard Labor: Women Toil to Supply Bidi Cigarette, August 17, scribed by Mirian Jordan), are women who make about $18 per month for their toil. That’s considered lousy even by Indian standards, where average income is reported to be a measly $40 per month.

The bidi industry is no mere aberrational hiccup in labor markets, it’s a massive industry. There are–ready for this?–a reported five million women rolling the smokes.

It wouldn’t be my first choice in a career, but it’s the best option these women have. If it wasn’t the best option, they’d be doing something else. The real story here isn’t whether or not $18 a month brings a great lifestyle. It obviously doesn’t. In the words of a wise economist, “poverty sucks.”

The plight of the bidi ladies brings several points to mind. One point is the dramatic affluence of Americans: The average American earns far more in a year than the average citizen of India will earn in an entire lifetime.

And–more to the point–the lowest paid garment worker in Saipan makes 2,937 percent more than a bidi lady makes, and that’s not even including any overtime pay or the value of housing and such that garment workers get. If a crusade is going to be waged to look into the poor segments of the Asian labor pool, the five million person bidi industry would be a place to start. Saipan is nowhere near that end of the spectrum. So, all those wild-eyed Marx-quoting self-appointed guardians of the world’s proles, why don’t they go to India for a while to straighten things out over there? I’ve heard that Calcutta is beautiful this time of year and that the cholera is in full bloom. You want to see real plight? Go there.

On a more philosophical note, noting that India is the world’s largest democracy, we see the fallacy of mixing the idea of democracy (a political concept) with that of free markets (an economic concept). I don’t need to study India’s economy in depth to realize that such poverty can only be the result of un-free markets; meaning, heavy handed government policies, endemic corruption, and stupid economic “plans” cooked up by bureaucrats who would better serve the world by rolling bidis for a living instead. That’s the system the people voted into existence, plain and simple.

The bidi story ran, by the way, on the same day that India’s nuclear weapon building program–aiming to have air, land, and sea platforms from which to launch the things–was publically announced. The bidi ladies have their collective finger on The Button now. Maybe they’ll get the last laugh after all.