I grew up in Old Dhaka, in a lower middle-class family. Eid-ul-Fitr is the biggest festival for Muslims, and that was the only time my brothers and I got new clothes. Most of the time, it was only a shirt. If we were lucky and our father had some cash in hand, then we got new pants too. One year, sometime in the mid-90s, I remember everything I wore on Eid day was brand-new, including a pair of socks and shoes. The shirt and slacks were freshly made by the local tailor.
Not long after, readymade shirts plagued the market, and Bangladesh began to emerge as one of the leading garment exporters in the world. Now, with about a $39 billion industry, the country is the third-largest textile and apparel exporter on the planet. And as the nation turned 50 last December, it is now characterized as a “rising star” in the Asia-Pacific.
Bangladesh’s economy has changed dramatically over the years. The buying power of people has changed. Shopping malls have mushroomed, and small clothing shops have sprung up like weeds on every street. People no longer wait for Eid festivals to buy new clothes; they shop all year-round. In the major cities across the country, it’s commonplace to spot mobile vans in the street selling clothes at dirt cheap prices. These are basically rejected items or factory defect clothing, mainly T-shirts, shirts, trousers, etc. Some hawkers even sell them sitting on the sidewalks.
While in the 1990s, when I had only two sets of clothes to attend any occasion, today it is five times more. And the bulk quantity of clothes that I have in my closet would be good enough to go on for the next 10 years. Most of them came to me as gifts.
The British East India Company took control of Bengal in 1757. Soon afterward, in the 1760s, industrialization began in Britain. In a debate at the Oxford Union Society on May 28, 2015, Shashi Tharoor said that Britain's industrial revolution was built on the deindustrialization of India.
If England was the first country to industrialize, then Manchester was the world’s first industrial city. Even during the 1960s, Manchester was a mucky, filthy city. Today, it is Germany that is known as Europe’s most industrialized nation. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Germany underwent a rapid industrialization and urbanization process. The economic development, as it happens, made the German cities overcrowded. The working-class had to live in tenement housing. And of course, the poor unsanitary working conditions led them to poor health.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a health movement took shape in Germany -- the practice of going “back to nature” or being naked in nature, which was called naturism aka nudism. People began to believe in the power of natural healing. They felt that for their wellbeing, they needed to stay away from the unclean, polluted cities, and spend more time in nature, to get plenty of sunshine, fresh air, and clean water.
Writing about the history of naturism, Brian Hoffman states that “nudism was not sexual but was all about promoting a natural, healthy way of living.” Bareness, in fact, is nothing new in India. From ancient times, Hindu ascetics have taken the custom of wearing clothes as a means of worldly attachment. Naked Naga sadhus still bear this tradition. Shedding clothes is shedding materialistic life. Now, in the age of fast fashion, naturists are saying out loud: “Go naked, save the planet.” Going bare is deemed as an eco-friendly way of living.
I lived eighteen years in old Dhaka’s Narinda area. In the 1980s, my grandfather used to take me to Doyagonj bridge for afternoon walks. Standing on the bridge by the concrete railing, I enjoyed the views around, though the water below of the canal was thick and pitch-dark.
Along the canal were housed the small factories and shops of old machineries. They happily dumped and discharged factory waste into the canal. During the monsoon, the water looked a little better -- less murky, less pitchy -- it didn’t stink much.
This canal, however, was connected to the Dholaikhal canal that once flowed through the arteries of old Dhaka. There was a time -- only five decades ago -- when cargo vessels sailed through the canal connecting the Buriganga and Balu rivers. From the beginning of the 2010s, the canal under the Doyagonj bridge started to disappear fast.
New roads were being built. By the end of the 2010s, after visiting my childhood neighbourhood, I couldn’t recognize the area. Doyagonj and Jatrabari bridges were gone. New bus routes race through the roads. It is understandable that when a water route becomes nothing but a foul stinking ditch, it is prudent to turn it into a modern sewer line and construct fine roads over it.
Let’s take a look at some facts the World Economic Forum published in a 2020 report:
- The fashion industry is to blame for 20% of all industrial water pollution globally
- The fashion industry, the second-largest consumer of the world’s water supply and the second-largest polluter of water, produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions
- It can take up to 2,000 gallons of water to produce a pair of jeans, which is enough for one person to drink eight cups per day for 10 years. To produce one cotton shirt, it can take about 700 gallons of water, which is enough for one person to drink eight cups per day for three-and-a-half years
Our rivers are getting polluted every day. It’s not only in Dhaka, rivers on the outskirts of Dhaka, and even in the remote places of the country too. The growing garment manufacturing and textile dyeing industries are pouring toxic waste straight into the water. The country is getting wealthier exporting garment products, of course, but at the cost of what?
Our environment. And, apparently, we are leaving behind not a bright but a grim, catastrophic future for our coming generations. The “climate catastrophe” is real. It’s coming.
Rahad Abir is a writer based in Georgia, USA.
