FOR A FEW CENTS MORE

Dinyar Godrej: Big transnational corporations roam the world looking for the cheapest labour. How does this race tothe bottom play out in Asia, home to the largest number of garment workers?

Anannya Bhattacharjee: The garment industry settled in Asia some time ago – and we think it will stay for some time to come – because Asia has a lot of advantages: the large pool of cheap labour, raw materials and infrastructure, and simply the scope and scale of production that is possible.

Clothes are made mainly in countries in South and South East Asia, where wages are lowest. Global brands think regionally – that’s how the global supply chain plays out. They look on Asia as a region because they can find an average wage labour cost there. The individual countries – India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar among others – also compete between themselves to keep wages low, to attract more orders. The brands subcontract their