Sunday July 17, 2005

Dubai Dreams

I was watching a National Geographic Megastructures episode on the Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, when in between various interruptions, came upon this article, linked from one of my usual hangouts, peakoil.com :

At the top of the social pyramid, of course, are the al-Maktoums and their cousins who own every lucrative grain of sand in the sheikhdom. Next, the native 15% percent of the population ... constitutes a leisure class whose obedience to the dynasty is subsidized by income transfers, free education, and government jobs. A step below, are the pampered mercenaries: 150,000-or-so British ex-pats, along with other European, Lebanese, and Indian managers and professionals, who take full advantage of their air-conditioned affluence and two-months of overseas leave every summer.

However, South Asian contract laborers, legally bound to a single employer and subject to totalitarian social controls, make up the great mass of the population. Dubai lifestyles are attended by vast numbers of Filipina, Sri Lankan, and Indian maids, while the building boom is carried on the shoulders of an army of poorly paid Pakistanis and Indians working twelve-hour shifts, six and half days a week, in the blast-furnace desert heat.

... in addition to being super-exploited, Dubai's helots are also expected to be generally invisible. The bleak work camps on the city's outskirts, where laborers are crowded six, eight, even twelve to a room, are not part of the official tourist image of a city of luxury without slums or poverty ...

- Well, what did you think, it sure wasn't robots out there doing all that construction, was it. Some readers found the article shocking. But it's a part of the local history here as well. Anyway, it's all more or less indentured slavery nowadays in this consumeristic society, and you could say, a matter of degree and location ("degree" also as in, whether working in a 22-degC office or 45-degC heat). Don't agree? Unless you paid cash (or someone did on your behalf) for your house and maybe car too, perhaps.

(2005-07-17 18:59:41 SGT) [Musings] Permalink

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