Bangladesh must move from ‘fast fashion’ to ‘defashion’ to improve human & ecological wellbeing (commentary)

In pre-colonial Bengal, Dhaka was the fashion capital, a city known globally for its rich heritage of luxury muslin fabric and its handloom industry. During the colonial period, the British Administration enacted an onslaught of measures like banning the export of muslin to England, pushing weavers into debt by flooding the market with cheap industrially-produced textiles, and, in extreme cases, severing the fingers of artisans to stop the weaving factories of Dhaka.

That British cultural hegemony delivered the final nail in the fashion capital’s coffin by systematically devaluing the local craft as ‘backward’ and ‘uncivilized’ and imposing a dress code on the natives.

Even today, the colonized British education system of Dhaka shaped my – and my peers’ – early fashion sense. During the early 1990s, a very tiny class of rich hobnobs went to Dhaka’s newly emerging shopping malls. However, my uncles would not wear trousers, even today, as they still value the comfortable and cultural wear of lungi (a local unstitched piece of cloth) produced in local villages. My distant aunts would stitch their clothes with textiles from domestic weavers.

But advertisement hoardings, news outlets, and electronic media idolized Western fashion and were heavily sponsored to create social hierarchical standards based on Western fashion. Western fashion was manufactured in the ready-made garment (RMG) factories popping up in the nearby cities of Savar and Gazipur, and it also produced misery and poverty at its peripheries, as it completely transformed the natural ecosystem of the place.

During my early childhood, our school used to take us for picnics to a forested place in Gazipur, and sometimes to Savar, both on the outskirts of Dhaka. Both areas were surrounded by picturesque rivers, Shitalakhya and the Dholeshori. The forests in Gazipur were inhabited by the Indigenous Shantal, Garo, and Mandi peoples. The surrounding villages were inhabited by millions of fisherfolks and farmers dependent on the rich forest ecosystem and the river for their livelihoods. However, from the late 90s, newly emerging garment factory owners pumped-up with cash from foreign direct investments had accumulated power and wealth to dispossess the Indigenous communities of of their ancient land rights, with support from the Forest Department of Bangladesh, which. leased the forests for private use.

The Shitalakhya River used to be described as the jewel of the fisherfolks, due to the abundant fish populations in its clear stream. Shitalakhya was not only rich in biodiversity, but it connected cultures across the globe, as colourful sailboats from across the globe use to come to the shores of Dhaka upon this beautiful river. After the influx of RMG factories in Savar and Gazipur, though, it was transformed into real estate developments and dumping ground for industrial waste, sewage, and municipality waste. The traditional fisherfolks and farmers had lost their livelihoods, were dispossessed of their lands and became a commodity themselves, that of cheap labor.

In my recent visit to the fisherfolk community far away from Dhaka, at the most significant confluence of Meghna Basin (one of the largest river basins in the world), the fisherfolks were disappointed by low fish availability in the river, mainly due to the increased hazardous waste in the river coming from the cities. These harsh realities are narrated in the popular media as a ‘development miracle,’ as the farmers and fisherfolks (who were called by a local pejorative, ‘Chasha Bhusha,’ which means menial farmer) were ‘civilized’ by working in the factories. A visit to the slums of the RMG workers tells an entirely different story, one that is a far cry from the previous description of households in the riverine communities in the past with silos full of paddy rice, ponds full of fish, and cattle sheds full of cows. The slums where the RMG workers live are usually located near dumping sites, or places where pitch-dark, smelly, foul water flows downward from the city.

The RMG factories are powering the fast fashion industry in the Global North: Bangladesh’s  export of RMG in 2023 was $47.38 billion and 84.58% of total export receipts. The fast fashion industries cause one misery after another at the ground level, though, from depleting groundwater tables by 2-3 meters per year to polluting the lifeline (the four rivers Burigonga, Shitalakhya, Dholeshori and Turag) of Dhaka with heavily toxic industrial waste. Neither the global fashion brands nor the local RMG factories are held accountable for this devastation of the local ecosystem.

See related: Investigation shows Bangladesh government claims about sand dredging don’t add up

Previous generations of riverine communities in Dhaka were subsistence peasants, female fisherfolks, and artisans. With the advent of industrialization and the relentless proliferation of ecological devastation of the rivers, the riverine communities, particularly women, had to shift their occupations to working in the local industries, particularly in the RMG industries or as domestic workers. The survival of these previously self-sufficient riverine communities now wholly depends on the industrial operation of the factories in Dhaka, which in turn depends on the consumption paranoia of the Global North that intensifies the capital accumulation of the industrial class. Moreover, the entire economy depends on foreign reserves generated by the fashion industry. The Global North is draining poor countries like Bangladesh via net appropriation through low wages and ecosystem destruction. It is generating extraordinary levels of debt from climatic impacts to ecological breakdown. That, in turn, forces the Bangladeshi Government to subsidize and support the RMG industries.

Even in the Global North, a paradigmatic shift in the fashion industry has been proposed to profoundly reduce material and energy throughput in clothing production and organize production around the well-being of people, the environment, and lifeways. This pivot toward previously cherished and traditional dress systems that have been erased by global fashion is termed ‘defashion’ by Sandra Niessen, a cultural anthropologist from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Defashion in Bangladesh must begin with the reclamation of the RMG workers’ lands, properties, and skills. These RMG workers were the victims of the gluttony of the Global North consumers, and these people have immensely benefited from the sweat and blood of the RMG workers. Ethical consumers from Global North should crowdfund the agency and development of the RMG workers. A transition of the RMG workers towards more localized work in arts, crafts, agriculture, and fishing will enable them to formulate their own fashion based on the local choices and the available ecological resources.

Desi cotton, also called tree cotton (Gossypium arboreum) has been cultivated under Jhum cultivation (slash and burn cultivation) in the Chittagong Hill district since time immemorial for the handloom weavers, and shimul cotton (Bombax ceiba) is from a tree that was grown across Bangladesh whose fluffy fibers were used for producing pillows, quilts and toys. These local cottons are native to the region but compose of only 2% of local cotton production in Bangladesh.

There are still a few weavers left in some cities, and these locally owned weaving industries need to be invested to start scaling up and training new breeds of weavers, particularly those who have left RMG jobs. The complete delinking of the RMG industry and the economy from foreign capital is a tall order, but we need to start somewhere.

The nation’s newly sworn Chief Adviser of Interim Government, Nobel Laureate & Professor Muhammad Yunus, recently advocated for a more just economy and steering away from hyper-consumption and the drive for profit maximization at the COP29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Professor Yunus’s reform-oriented interim government must also take concrete steps to materialize actions that can set this transformative journey into motion.

The strengthening of cotton development to also redevelop Phuti karpas (Gossypium arboreum var. neglecta) – the fabric used for muslin and more large-scale production of local/desi cotton and shimul cotton for local weavers – is also needed. The steady upscaling of local artisanal skills, the reincarnation of the weaving cottages, and the introduction of patch fashion and circular fashion to absorb the existing the over production of domestic consumers can steadily start the transformation process from a fast fashion to a defashion world.

Syed Muntasir Ridwan is a degrowth and environmental justice activist and CEO of Catalyzing Sustainable Transformation (CaST) Network Limited, a ‘think and do tank.’

See related content from Mongabay:

Forests in the furnace: Cambodia’s garment sector is fueled by illegal logging

River dredging in Bangladesh: Investigation shows government claims don’t add up

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