A Killer Bargain

The nastier side of the new global economy is the focus of Danish filmmaker Tom Heinemann's disturbing and powerful documentary A Killer Bargain, which looks at the textile industry in northern India, where cotton sheets and towels are produced to be sold in American and European stores. To protect the cotton crops from insects, the Danish company Cheminova sells pesticides throughout Punjab's “Cotton Belt” that are banned in the West due to evidence of a causal link with cancer (the effects have been shattering: 10 years ago one cancer clinic operated in Punjab; today, there are six). The film then visits the textile-producing center in Panipat, where children labor in unsafe factories and anyone attempting to organize a union is fired. One factory has open tanks of fuming chlorine gas (the same substance used in poison gas attacks during World War I), while another manufacturing facility routinely dumps wastewater into local ponds, polluting the irrigation channels for farmland. None of this is a secret, yet the filmmaker's attempts to obtain explanations are repeatedly met with evasions and hostility. In fact, this brave exposé was made despite threats of violence from Indian security officers and chilly refusals by Western retailers to speak on camera. A powerful and illuminating examination of the human price of today's import market for cheaply made goods, A Killer Bargain is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (P. Hall)