Bangladesh

A land of people who love beauty

Bangladesh today

When I decided to go to Bangladesh my mind was teeming with images from stories read
in my childhood about mythical Bengal, the land of the man-eating tiger hunted by
bejewelled maharajas travelling on huge elephants’ backs. Later on, American TV series
filled my mind with the courageous Bengal lancers who, allied to the proud and loyal
Sikhs, repelled the coward attacks from Indian rebels who insisted in their bloodthirsty
sacrifices to the goddess Kali.

But the truth of the matter is that Bangladesh is a land of swamps and wetlands,
meandered by whimsical rivers. Its fertile and rich soil and its weather between 28 and 40
degrees centigrade foster varied fruits and vegetables eaten by its mostly vegetarian
population.

In the story written by Syed Maqsud Jamil, The Homecoming1, we have a glimpse at the
tragedy of this land, rich in nature and mankind. This nation is populated by almost 134
million people who love beauty and nature and are, nevertheless, forced to live in abject
poverty and have been left with little but their labour to survive.

Bangladesh has 51 million workers, of whom 21 million are women (see Facts and
Figures). They are beautiful people with elegant and handsome features, big beautiful
smiles that shade light on life, who love arts and are very proud of their musical Bengali
language.

In his lively story Syed Maqsud Jamil shares with us some episodes of his childhood in a
rural village where people built their homes, organised their lives and shared their
livelihoods around the Asian social model that binds peasants to clans and tribes in a
complex system of loyalties, solidarity, reciprocity and redistribution that is so difficult to
understand from a Western perspective. The author of The Homecoming lived in the
bucolic peace of this fertile land until, all of a sudden, storms and relentless rainfalls
shifted the course of the river and the houses, the well cared plots and the rural roads
were sucked into the muddy bed of those brown waters that daringly break the luscious
and green landscape you can see from the aeroplane. Thus, the author’s well-to-do
family was forced to leave behind its history and its roots to join the millions who dwell in
Dhaka.

When I read his article and saw Dhaka I could imagine his agony. Dhaka provokes in you
a strange feeling: you don’t know if you are in a half-built or in a half-destroyed city; its

1
Published in The Daily Star on 19 October 2002 in Dhaka

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dirty buildings attacked by tropical storms and humidity are probably remnants of an era
of better commercial prosperity.

When we manage to get rid of those cultural blinkers that hinder our capacity to
appreciate beauty when it is dark, we realise that the people of Bangladesh are very
handsome, slender, of noble and fine features; men wear colourful skirts and women
lovely saris. Their love for beauty is clearly seen in the way women dress and make up, in
their combination of colours, their ornaments and their graceful way of walking.
Rickshaws and trucks are painted with butterflies, flowers and famous theatre and
cinema stars.

Bengalis stare at foreigners with curiosity and surprise but as soon as you smile they not
only make your day with a friendly and warm smile but they even wave at you or speak a
very simple phrase in English in an attempt to build a bridge between two worlds.

A bit of History

Because Bengal has always been in touch with other cultures. Throughout its history it
had two main economic roles: a) agriculture that not even the Mongols with their huge
armies fed by Bengal could deplete and b) the production of textiles, especially the fine
muslin that turned Dhaka into an important commercial textile hub before the arrival of the
East India Company that, far from satisfied with the commercial monopoly it got from the
Indian rulers and the exemption of all sorts of custom taxes, went to war against the
Nabab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah, defeating him in the battle of Plassey in 1757 and thus
became the first –but not last- private company to openly rule a country.

The British unmercifully implemented abroad their industrial protectionism flooding the
subcontinent with industrial –and especially textile- products. Bengal’s flourishing textile
industry was destroyed and the famous Muslin weavers who insisted in manufacturing
their goods had their thumbs cut off. Muslin from Bengal was reputed to be so fine that 50
meters could be kept in a match box. This wondrous technology was destroyed and lost
for ever.

Textiles today

We visited modern textile factories and textile family workshops, we visited semi-rural
hamlets where slim women dressed in saris waited for us many hours to show us their
hand-made table cloths and other lovely embroidered textiles, done with great skill and
sense of harmony. If we add to these skills the poor working conditions, often only
illuminated by kerosene lamps, sitting on the floor and after extenuating hours of family
care and household chores we think that no price can pay the real value of such master
pieces. In a rather confusing conversation we were not able to ascertain the actual
payment they got for this work; we learnt that they worked at least 30 hours in a small
square tablecloth but we could not understand if they were paid 4 Euro, 4 cents of an
Euro or 40 cents of an Euro per piece.

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These families half-live with a monthly income of 17 Euro, half of what any European
readily pays in a shopping spree for one garment made in Bangladesh.

We visited two modern factories on each of whose 8 stories we could see a Code of
Conduct in English proudly framed and very well laid-out, to appease the social concerns
of probable foreign inspectors. It matters very little that 80% of the factory workers speak
no English and that almost all of them are illiterate also in their beautiful Bengali
language.

Our guides told us about the excellent social conditions and facilities given to the workers
by the Factory, services such as the Day Care centre where we saw no more than 10
children. Ten children for a factory with 2000 workers at least 70% of whom are young
women!

We came out of the modern building and followed a muddy and foul smelling corridor
flanked by mud shanties, with palm tree, tin or straw roofs. A thin young man smiled to us
and with a friendly nod invited us to take a look inside his home. Clean and almost
empty, its only piece of furniture being a bed, or a cot rather, and a small hole in the
ground covered with firewood on top of which was a small pan. Nothing on the walls, on
top of the cot an old bedspread. How many people live there? We don’t know, we could
not speak with them because in this social group people speak no English.

Despite the friendliness of these people there were certain areas of the city where we
could feel, could almost touch a hostile atmosphere when big dark eyes stared greedily
and even furiously at our western clothes, our handbags and our shoes and I felt badly
for living the way I do and for having what I own.

In the evening, on the way back to our hotel, we walked through the marketplace. In front
of every small market stand there was a big round basket used during the day to exhibit
their products and where, late at night, coiled as long skinny cats, men of undefined age
slept. Those less fortunate lay on the floor, one next to the other, with their dark meagre
bodies laying on the floor, without a blanket, laying on the floor without a straw mat to
protect them from the market garbage, laying on the floor, half naked and poor, laying on
the floor like dogs.

And it was still dark when shouts and noises indicated that a new working day had begun
and these men resumed their quest for survival: carrying heavy bags, renting rickshaws
that they pulled on bikes on whose seats they never sat. Thin men rode, their jugular vein
beating strong and rapidly because of the effort, carrying in their beautifully decorated
rickshaws, amidst drawings of butterflies and flowers, two or three heavily built men who
carried other heavy loads with them. These bikers dressed in white shirts and colourful
skirts rode silently in the unbearably noisy traffic of Dhaka, stuck in the chaos with
thousands of other vehicles, boldly riding through wide avenues and abiding by codes
that we could not understand, supervised by slim policemen armed with a symbolic stick
by way of weapon.

Even after 10 p.m. these men kept at it, riding their rickshaws in this noise polluted city
that deafens its inhabitants.

In a city with more than 12 million inhabitants in 5 days we only saw 5 beggars.

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In a week we only saw 3 old men because in this country old age is not only relative but a
privilege.

Work in Formal Textile Factories

Even in the model modern textile factories we visited you could see the clever devices
proposed by wise Reengineering experts: benches without backs so that workers are not
too comfortable that they may stop working. Highly repetitive jobs that an adult mind
cannot carry out without distraction or exhaustion; jobs that demand a lot of sight effort in
rooms with insufficient light. Supervisors that often hover over workers’ shoulders causing
them stress.

Despite strong statements about not using child labour we saw many youthful faces,
people in their teens whose looks I could not but compare with my own daughter at 12.
Their small hands are suitable for making garments, their young brains can still follow the
discipline of repetitive work, their bodies –not fully grown- do not demand the comforts of
a seat back in working days of more than 10 hours, 6 days a week. When this young
people start working –supposing they really are 14 years of age as established by law-
they will be very productive for 6 or maybe 7 years before they need glasses and for a
couple of years more before they start showing the symptoms of arthritis and develop
nervous tics that will turn them into elderly people at 25, easily disposable and even more
easily replaceable.

And these are the lucky ones. The ones that have a job in a factory, get a salary at the
end of the month, wear a uniform to protect their clothes. But of course, in order to join
the ranks of these privileged workers they first have to accept 6 months of training without
salary (because they do not know how to work) and another 6 months with almost no
salary (because they still make mistakes). But if the new worker is a girl she better not get
married and certainly not pregnant! And of course the young worker should never be
interested in joining a union.

Informal Textile Producers

We also visited other textile manufacturing centres, on a long boat we crossed the river
and walked in a neighbourhood where informal tailoring and textile workshops abound.
These are supposed to produce for the domestic market. In tiny stands of 2 x 2 meters
you could see a young man bent upon a very old sewing machine; in almost total
darkness since these buildings are so close to each other that hardly any sun reaches
them inside. In another tiny stand a very young couple shared some food; in yet another
a woman stared vacantly while her baby slept close to her empty breast and two silent
men cut patterns on long pieces of material. Behind them there were rows and rows of
shirts, western trousers and other garments. It made me think that Bangladesh is hardly
anything but a huge textile factory.

We went upstairs to visit a day care centre built with European unions’ support, here the
children of the informal garment manufacturers are under the care of two young women.

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We also visited a medical centre that operates with the support of European unions and
Bangladesh workers unions; here the doctor told us that all the diseases treated –at no
charge- are directly caused by poverty and hunger.

On our way back to Dhaka it started to rain and I could see couples of boys walking very
closely to each other under the umbrella and groups of girls hand in hand. Thus is their
culture: they touch each other, they show their affection in public, they love human
contact, they are tender and merry, they are not afraid of showing their feelings, they
know how to enjoy the small joys of life.

When they look at us they do it with a very penetrating stare, they do not see white
people very often (although I do not consider myself white, am Peruvian) but when they
stare their sense of hospitality is stronger than their surprise, they ask us to take pictures
of them, if they dare to ask something else they ask for a pen for school, they ask where
do we come from.

Dhaka

From the river we saw Dhaka as it is, an extended city, poor and in bad shape, with
buildings that have seen better times, with odd old facades, roughly treated by monsoons
on top of which new brick stories are built but remain unfinished.

We rode through very poor and smelly shanties among whose mud walls gaunt and
ashen faced women came out to see us, carrying balloon-bellied babies with lifeless
eyes; big blackbirds collected the garbage and there were no cats nor dogs. And yet,
ironically on ground of this foetid area there lay huge tubes for sewage, so covered with
hard crusts of earth and moss that they had been probably been there for ages.

There has been help from NGOs and international co-operation but it is also true what Dr.
A. H. Moinuddin Ahmed of Dhaka University once said: that with the money plundered
from foreign aid in 3 years, you could turn the country around. When we were in Dhaka
the Government deployed military troops to try to control the “criminal unrest” that the
police could no longer fight. There was a military intervention in the University of Dhaka
and actions against students in the two most important universities of the country.

As we drove through the city we were shown some modern and beautiful parks,
monuments and buildings, that seemed to me like a cream topping on a cake full of
worms. The House of Congress is an impressive building surrounded by a moat that
evokes a medieval fortress and is probably very luxurious inside. It is always the same in
the countries of the South: all our congressmen are present in the Congress sessions
only when they have to approve this type of investments and their own kingly salaries.

Having seen the honest faces of the people, the very few beggars, the dramatic poverty
without blaming others for their misery, someone in our group said: “this is dignified
poverty” but I resented that phrase; there is no dignified poverty; to live the way these
persons live is unbearable and humiliating because it has to do with our own indifference,
our easy judgements and light labelling of the culprits without doing anything to change
this.

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We met two girls of typical Bengal beauty, both union promoters who are actively involved
in their work with women workers in the textile sector. Rani (which means Queen in
Bengali) is an orphan girl, young, uninhibited and merry, extraordinarily mature at 20. She
trains other young girls and feels happy with her job and her achievements. Thanks to her
we met her boss: the President of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union
Federation – BIGUF, Nazma Akter who is only 28 years old. She started to work at 9 and
is now the mother of an 18 day-old baby. This young woman of serene beauty is
intensely devoted to her work and in reply to my questions she told me that she works
from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. 6 days per week and very often also on holidays since
workers cannot come to see her other days. Her husband supports her in her work and
understands her commitment. She knows her work is important and very necessary, “we
are happy to do this because we do our work with love, we get from workers love and
recognition”.

I thought about the great differences between the cultures of the South and those of the
North. I thought that we, in the South, not only feel but also think with our hearts and
therefore we cannot achieve the cold and planned efficacy that allows European to think
always on a long term basis. But of course, in the South that is harder to achieve: we are
morally, physically, psychologically hit every day, every hour by the media and tomorrow
can often be considered long term ………….

“We have many problems” Nazma said with her big severe eyes wide open “but at least
we are doing something about it”.

And when later I saw her at a round table advocating with courage for women workers
rights among governmental officers and representatives of the entrepreneurs I thought
how great the courage of women is, how generous their passion that prevents mankind
from losing its north. And I felt great admiration because I know how difficult and
ungrateful this kind of work can be. You must love a lot to continue fighting and this young
woman sees further than we do and hears far better than we do.

I could also speak with Kamrul Alam, textile union leader born in Dhaka in 1948. He
started working in 1966 and has been a union secretary for the last 14 years. When he
started to work a day-work lasted only 8 hours and 99% of workers were men.

Between 1971 and 1975, he told us, textile workers enjoyed the best possible working
conditions, with decent wages, food, special assignments for housing, medical services,
etc. Between 1975 and 1990 everything went wrong, there was a military Government
and workers lost their labour rights. In 1991 there were elections but workers never
recovered their rights. When I asked him what did he think about globalisation he
categorically said : “it is a disaster, our factories went bankrupt or were bought only to
close them thereafter; 77 factories became state-owned between 1971 and 1975 but
today only 12 are in the hands of the state and their workers have worked unpaid for 9
months! We cannot compete against Hi Tech and Hi Quality standards”. When asked
how he foresaw the future his reply was: “it can only go from dark to black” he believes
that “if domestic textile industries had governmental support they could have some hope
because Bengal workers are very skilled.’

The Future?

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Kamrul Alam thinks that European consumers can help Bangladesh workers by
demanding that the Core ILO Standards be met in all factories and being willing to pay
fair prices for the products of this country.

Yet so much poverty, such misery can only generate violence. Every day the newspapers
reported murders, rapes of women in isolated hamlets by groups of “terrorists”. Invariably
the murder of leaders from opposing political parties were attributed to “internal struggles
of their political organisations”. And urban violence is also there: two members of the
municipality board had been killed. The ruling party blames the former government party
of corruption and vice versa. Human Rights organisations speak of possible ethnic
cleansing behind the many rapes of poor women who live in villages where ancestral
religions are still practised (see Annex).

In a week it is impossible to understand a country with such a wealth of human and

natural resources but something does provoke great respect: fertility and illiteracy
indexes have substantially decreased, proving that this is a people committed with the
struggle for a better world.

Every year thousands of these short, graceful and hard working men go abroad to work
intensively in the Persian Gulf and bring money with them, and they always come back.

They try hard to learn English but they are very proud of their beautiful language; they are
the descent of poets like Tagore; their love for their language was their flag in their
struggle for independence and Unesco acknowledged their millenary struggle by
declaring the Day of the Native Language in honour of Bangladesh.

When I left Bangladesh I felt that in very few days I had grown terribly old but knowing
that there are people like Nazma and like Rani I can foresee that things will change and I
wish them lots of strength and lots of luck.

Yolanda Sala October 2002