Professor Chowdhury reminds us of a key aspect of the garment industry: outside forces.

The garment industry is the only area where Bangladesh could claim considerable success. Today garment export is the main source of foreign exchange earnings for the country after remittances. Its success was not necessarily influenced by government policy but essentially by outside forces. This industry had its origin in the 1970s when the investors of other South East Asian nations ventured to set up garment factories in Bangladesh to work around the export quotas imposed on their native countries by the United States. Later, Bangladeshi entrepreneurs rushed to establish their own companies, some with little or no experience. After a period of adjustments, the industry began to stabilize and started to grow, and has eventually earned the world’s respect.

Thus, the stabilization and growth of the garment industry in Bangladesh was achieved largely with the help and intervention of foreign investors who supplied expert technical support for its quality control and had an effective marketing plan. Additionally, the country enjoyed a favorable quota system from the United States for quite a while. But this situation is now changing as other least developing countries gain trade advantage for their manufactured garments from the United States.

Migrant workers have countless tales to tell and no doubt there are a countless tales worthy of the big screen treatment. Bandhobi is a Korean Film and it deals with migrant worker issues . Don’t ask me what I think of it. I have not seen it.  Here is the synopsis below. If anyone has a copy…

Summary below is from the film web site.

Min-suh, a 17-year old rebellious high school Korean girl, lives in a small apartment with her mother and her mother’s penniless lover. She hates mother’s lover and doesn’t understand both of them. Karim, a 29-year old Muslim migrant worker from Bangladesh has to leave Korea in a month. Before departing, he is desperately searching for his ex-boss to get his unpaid salary. One day, as Min-suh’s summer vacation begins, he encounters Min-suh in a bus, and together they set out on an emotional journey. Bandhobi is Bengali, meaning  ‘Friend’ in English.

More from Rezwan HERE.

When the shutters go down, the street artists get to work. Below is a snap I took this morning in Brick Lane with my Sony-Ericsson c905. Click the image to see some more.

A 42-year old male traveler, who had returned from Indonesia, was diagnosed positive for swine flu at Zia International Airport in Dhaka on Saturday morning.

And this is the tragic case of the Bangladeshi woman in England who died of swine flu.

Awesome images from all over Asia.

This one from Bangladesh.

Some striking and disconcerting images by G M B Akash.

“It hasn’t done anything good and I don’t think there’s any point in keeping this industry going”

Nijera Kori’s chief, Kushi Kabir, made that statement. And here is the desperate background to it. By Julie Clothier of AFP.

How to dress up an explicitly Islamist agenda with research jargon and talk about “empowerment” and “modernising influences.

Nuts.

..Remittances to South and East Asia are still inching up. The pace of growth, however, has slowed down. World Bank cited Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Nepal as some of those that have recently been registering lower growth rates. The Philippines have been posting less than 5% monthly growth rates in the past months, a far cry from the double-digit increases in the previous years…

Will they behave though?

Newscom: 14 July 2009 - Dhaka, Bangladesh - Director General of Bangladesh’s paramilitary border force Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) Mainul Islam (L) and Director General of the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) Mahendra Lal Kumawat attend a joint press conference in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, on July 14, 2009. Chiefs of the Bangladesh’s and Indian border forces on Tuesday concluded their three-day talks here with a broad-based agreement to maintain calm along the common borders combating trans-border crimes. Photo Credit: Palash Khan / Sipa Press/0907141624 Photo via Newscom

Zumapress: Activists of United Society of Women shout slogans at a rally protesting India’s planned Tipaimukh dam over the cross-border Barak river, in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, on July 9, 2009. India’s planned Tipaimukh Hydroelectric Project and proposed dam has sparked fierce debates in both countries, with particular fears being raised in Bangladesh about the adverse environmental impact it may bring about.

The working title of a new documentary I am working on.

More information here

http://bangal.ee

ID Card is a big thing here in the UK. It looks like the Labour Party is setting up contractual obligations which will ensure that the ID project will survive Labour’s defeat in the next elections. However the Tories are on to this and have written to the 5 companies bidding for the contract telling them that no such obligation will be adhered to.

And in this very week when the Labour government made a big song and dance about using the “naughty boys” of the hacker world to combat “cyber-terrorism” it is worth remembering what one hacker did with ID technology. (scroll down for the article)

It is all fluff of course. Nothing is beyond hacking…not even the industrial golden goose called the iPhone. The whole cyber-terrorism thing that Estonia flagged up was a pretext for further ingratiating itself with big, protective Uncle Sam. And now we find this self-same poodling nonsense come to the UK as the plan is rolled out with the connivance of technology companies.

It comes as no surprise to me that those who least understand politics and who take a wholly technological approach - technologists whether hackers or mainstream - will benefit the most from these expensive and needless schemes. They think the solution to the world’s social and political problems are tecchie related. No don’t laugh, its true. Hence its entirely consistent to find that India’s ID card scheme is being headed by Infosys head honcho Nilekani. His appointment is equivalent to a cabinet minister. And get this ….his own company will be bidding for the project. You can’t make it up.

Cultural activists are trying to determine what has happened to Shahidul Alam.

Only a couple of years ago, a mate of mine - Sarwar Tamizuddin - was locked up by Indian border guards. He spent something like three months in prison before he got bail.

Please get the message out and please get Alam released.