Forgotten world (52): Bangladesh
Originally part of India until 1947 and then the eastern part of Pakistan until 1971, Bangladesh became an independent nation after a bloody civil war. Bangladesh has the seventh largest population in the world (147 million) and it is one of the globe’s most densely populated countries with its people crammed into a delta of rivers that empties into the Bay of Bengal. The country has annual monsoon floods and cyclones are frequent.
Bangladesh has made impressive progress in human development by focusing on increasing literacy, achieving gender parity in schooling, and reducing population growth. Nevertheless poverty remains deep and widespread; almost half of the population live on less than one dollar a day.
Six Bangladeshi factories supply Primark, Tesco, and Asda in the UK which insist that they meet minimum legal pay standards. However, a minimum wage in Bangladesh is officially £12 a month, athough the living wage is calculated by economists there at £22 a month. The least skilled garment workers can make only £7 or £8 a month; the most skilled can hope to earn £16, or an average of 5p an hour for an 80-hour week.
India is close to completing a little-known but massive project to construct an iron fence two and a half metres high running most of the length of its 4,100 km (2,500 mile) border with Bangladesh.