The Song of the Shirt

Résumé : Labour in Bangladesh flows like its rivers in excess of what is required. Often, both take a huge toll. Labour that costs $1.66 an hour in China and 52 cents in India can be had for a song in Bangladesh 18 cents. It is mostly women and children working in fragile, flammable buildings who bring in 70 per cent of the country's foreign exchange. Bangladesh today does not clothe the nakedness of the world, but provides it with limitless cheap garments through Primark, Walmart, Benetton, Gap. In elegiac prose, Jeremy Seabrook dwells upon the disproportionate sacrifices demanded by the manufacture of such throwaway items as baseball caps. He shows us how Bengal and Lancashire offer mirror images of impoverishment and affluence.