Cobalt Red By Siddharth Kara – This one was a mistake

This one is a big mistake, I tell myself, as I pick up Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara.

Cobalt powers our lives, giving life to every rechargeable device that’s become indispensable to us, ranging from smartphones to tablets, EVs joining the list too of late.

So, an investigative journalist’s book about cobalt that actually tells us we have no way of figuring out whether child bondage, not simply child labour was involved in the specific cobalt that went into making our device, is a risky proposition. For our mental health.

But, a few decades down the line, when my child asks me, “Mamma, did you at least know about the atrocities that the people of Congo went through so you could doomscroll on social media”, I don’t want to say “what atrocities, honey” and lose her altogether. So, I read the book. Where every chapter was only worse than the previous one.

Do I shake over how every young and middle aged person in Congo is involved in cobalt mining, under precarious conditions, for a meagre fee of half a dollar to one dollar per day? Do I cry over how kids as young as five and six go into stone breaking on the roadside to supplement their families’ income so everyone can eat? Do I agonise over how every inch of cultivatable land in this country has been taken over by mining and tunnelling, thereby sounding the death knell for any other means of income? Do I lose sleepless nights over how tunnel collapses are common here, wondering if it is worse for a fourteen year old to lose his life vs losing his limbs and being a paraplegic and a burden on his family the rest of his life? Do I think about the continuous pollution of this area, with sulphuric acid and worse, leading to debilitating illness amongst everyone near and far? Do I scream in anger over how, here too, women have it worse, being paid lower for THIS work, being sexually assaulted, having children while they themselves are children, knowing they can never give a good future to their progeny? Do I laugh cynically over the term these miners are called – artisanal miners – because this is completely hand-done with no machines?

For days after finishing Cobalt Red, foam looked toxic to me, rivers dirty and muddy swirling with known and unknown horrors. For days afterwards, the phone felt a dead weight on my hands.

As GS, who recommended this book to me, says, “Even if this book reaches one person in a position of authority who can bring about positive change for the Congolese people, it is worth it”. I agree with her. Also, for my own part, this is the least and easiest penalty I can pay for sitting atop the lives and livelihoods of an entire population, as I charge my phone, so I can dash out this review.

I end this article with a quote from an interviewee in the book. “A child in the Congo dies every day so they can plug in their phones”.

I don’t generally call anything a must-read. But if ever there was a must-read, it is Cobalt Red. There is no good time to read this book, because it is a bad book that will make us all look bad. Bad because of the topic. But fantastically researched and written by Siddharth Kara. Read it because you owe that much to the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo.