Somewhere between a glass-walled office in Darlington and a tin-roofed factory in Pune, you can smell the scent of engineered progress – grease, diesel, ambition. It’s not innovation. It’s economics – weaponised and dressed in high-vis.
This isn’t your grandfather’s colonialism. It’s global supply chain chic. The twist? Now it’s branded as equity.
DEI – The New Marketing Engine
Cummins Inc. – the darling of industrial virtue – doesn’t just build engines. It builds narratives. DEI is the house wine – poured out at conferences, town halls, and LinkedIn keynotes. It’s colourful, inclusive, progressive. All the right adjectives – with none of the grime that makes them real.
Here’s how the trick works.
– Set up in “emerging markets” – read: countries with low wages and even lower regulation.
– Hire cheap labour – women, people of colour, the statistically underrepresented.
– Pay them just enough to not riot.
– Put them in brochures.
– Call it diversity.
It’s not technically wrong. But it’s not right either. It’s exploitation with an HR badge and ESG targets.
Numbers with No Soul
Cummins’ reports talk a good game – 50% global gender parity, more Black and Latino leadership, a rainbow of ERGs from Mumbai to Milton Keynes. But numbers – especially corporate ones – can lie by omission.
That 50% gender stat? Bulked up by thousands of women on production lines in India and China – working long hours, low wages, minimal protections. Not leaders – labour. Not empowered – just inexpensive.
Racial diversity? In the West, it’s still a slow grind. But abroad – it’s automatic. Everyone’s brown, so the chart ticks itself. No need for real equity when the demographics do the marketing.
Legal? Yes. Ethical? Not Quite.
Cummins doesn’t break laws. That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t have to.
You can run an “inclusive” factory in a country where maternity leave is a suggestion and unions are a rumour. You can write code in Nairobi or design engines in Pune and pay a quarter of what you’d pay in the UK – then call it “global empowerment.”
It’s not a sweatshop. It’s a “centre of excellence.”
It’s not extraction. It’s “community engagement.”
It’s not about race or class – just business.
Emerging Markets – Emerging Hypocrisy
The factory workers in Jamnagar or Juárez don’t post on LinkedIn. They’re not speaking on DEI panels. They don’t have personal brands or corporate mentors. What they do have are targets to hit, quotas to fill, mouths to feed – and the quiet understanding that none of this was ever about them.
Their faces appear in the diversity slide deck. But their voices? Still missing.
Meanwhile, in Davos or Detroit, Cummins executives sip fair trade coffee and talk about equity. They name buildings after civil rights icons. They sponsor inclusion summits. And yet – their supply chain is propped up by a world that’s anything but fair.
Inclusion as Theatre
It’s not just Cummins – but they’re a masterclass in the act. DEI is the new PR – a convenient cloak to shield the ugly underside of global capitalism.
A woman in rural India earning £2 an hour isn’t empowered because her employer prints equality reports. She’s cheap – that’s the point. Her inclusion is a spreadsheet bonus, not a human victory.
Final Course
So the next time Cummins (or any other giant) flashes its inclusion credentials, ask: how much of that is real? How much ends up in the lives of the people they showcase? How much is theatre – and how much is truth?
Because yes – emerging markets are great.
Just not for everyone.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project