As part of the Global Politics course, we are meant to conduct an active political engagement over the summer as part of the ‘Engagement Activity’ (EA). In normal circumstances, we would be expected to travel abroad and conduct hands-on, physical engagements. However, due to COVID-19 having made travel over the summer virtually impossible and having greatly limited the types of engagements we would have otherwise had available to us, the expectations for the EA have changed. Now, our engagements are expected to be in the form of online interviews with stakeholders of our chosen political issue.

My chosen topic is the Bangladeshi textile industry, and my political issue is “Is there a shift to sustainable thinking in the Bangladeshi textile industry?” The genesis of me getting interested in this topic came from my dad’s friend. A few months before the EA was introduced, my dad’s best friend from university and his family came to Singapore and stayed with us for a week or so. Though my dad’s friend is Indian, he is the founder and owner of a Bangladesh-based sourcing company that operates within the textile industry, and he himself has done a lot of work in the industry’s push towards sustainability. One day I sat in on a conversation between him and my dad about the work he’d been doing, and though my interest typically fades quickly when listening to my dad and his friends talk about work, this time I found that it didn’t. I could actually follow along with what he was saying and soon found myself making inquiries. I think the key difference is that the problems and solutions he was talking about seemed to be intuitive and human in nature; it wasn’t technical to the point I couldn’t understand. That’s why when the EA came up, sustainability within the Bangladeshi textile industry was an issue that immediately came to my mind as one I could do. Additionally, even though I’m Indian and this engagement is rooted in Bangladesh, sustainability is something that I expect is pretty similar across the Indian subcontinent, and as such an insight into Bangladesh would actually provide me with an insight into a much bigger region, which includes my home country. A final benefit with this political issue is that establishing contacts and setting up interviews shouldn’t be much of a challenge, as I have my dad’s friend who can help me get in touch with industry figures. This should ultimately make my EA much more streamlined and efficient.