As our minibus emerges from Dhaka’s gridlock towards one of its fringe industrial areas, the scene outside turns briefly to rice paddies and a river winding through the fields. The fields are soon overwhelmed by expanses of stacked orange and gray bricks. Above them tower smokestacks belching black clouds. The side of the road is a jumble of concrete, cement, and bricks, with long pipes climbing up from the river to deliver dredged sand. The sky is a cement-colored haze, smudged with black smoke. The water has a black oily sheen, its banks strewn with plastic.

It used to be nice here, our Bangladeshi friends say, but now the river is dead. The scene is alive with people and activity, but it looks to us, too, as if all life other than that concerned with the relentless extraction of profit has been crushed beneath the bricks, cement, and detritus.

The traffic builds again and we see a jumble of buildings, shops, workshops, and, hulking half a dozen stories above them all, garment factories.