Bangladesh in the grip of globalized trade

EXPORTS FOR THE NORTH MEAN EXPLOITATION FOR THE SOUTH
Bangladesh in the grip of globalised trade

Globalisation in Bangladesh means manufacturing clothes and raising shrimps for western markets. This has caused poverty and human rights violations. Representative democracy has broken down; Bangladeshis are turning to voluntary associations to practise direct democracy.
By Cedric Gouverneur
THE hamlet of Baro Ari in the Khulna region of southwest Bangladesh is lost in the reaches of the Ganges. It is difficult to find, and yet globalisation has already arrived there, along with its unique market opportunity, shrimps and prawns. Local bigwigs opened the dykes of polders in 2000, flooding with salt water land that belonged to poor farmers. With the connivance of a corrupt police force, they then transformed the drowned land into lucrative crustacean farms.
“We’ve got nothing left,” says Suranjan ­Kumar, his face hollow with undernourishment. The 20 or so men around him nod in agreement. “We sometimes get work as daily farm labourers for 78 cents.” The conditions border on servitude. Farmers have to hand over as much as two-thirds of their harvest to the landowner. “The salt has destroyed ­everything,” says Abu Sahid Gazhi, who spent 11 months in jail for objecting to the theft of his land.

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