The Rise and Rise of Bangladesh – but Is Life Getting Any Better?
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
By Fiona Weber-Steinhaus
Tasnia Akter has come home. It’s a public holiday in Bangladesh, the one time of year the 25-year-old can leave the mayhem of the city behind and see her family: her mother, her aunt.
And her daughter.
“There she is!” Her little girl is standing in front of the two-bedroom tin hut in a remote village 200km (125 miles) north of Chittagong, south-east Bangladesh. Mother and daughter embrace.
If she could, the young seamstress would still live here. The air is fresher, there is more space, and some of her friends still live in the village. There’s just one problem: “There isn’t any work.” Agriculture has ceased to be a feasible source of income. Money doesn’t grow on trees – it is spun in the textile looms of the city.
And so this family copes as best it can, the older women raising the child while Tasnia works six-day weeks, sewing T-shirts and jeans for global consumers, for about 8,400 taka (£80) a month.
Photo courtesy of BRAC World.
