BRAC Institute of Governance and

Development
BRAC University

ASSIGNMENT

ON

Summary on the documentary “The True Cost”

Course Name: Production Management and Merchandizing

Course Code: KIM 203

Submitted To: Mr. Nazmus Saaqib

Submitted By: Rezwanul Haque

ID: 19281110

Sec: A

Batch: 11th

Date of Submission: 20th December 2020

In the past few years Bangladesh became one of the largest exporters of readymade garments in
the world. But how? Is it our quality works or our dedication? To answer this question we have
to know the history of the recent years. Back in 1960’s country like the USA produce 95% of its
cloth by their own but now only 3% of the garments made by them and rest of the portion are
outsourced by various countries which are developing or under developed.

A study shows that clothes are cheaper than before and variation is more available now. This is
because of Fast Fashion- a reinvention of fashion industry today. Most of the international
brands are competing with each other for comparatively cheap price of production to cope with
this fast fashion. Fast fashion is the ultimate results of capitalism or materialistic capitalism. By
getting false motivation consumers always think they need to buy expensive products or services
to be happy and drop off of price on products influenced consumers to buy products frequently
either it is cloth, car of other materials, thus fast fashion concept is created.

In case of clothing items, price has been dropped off than they did 20 years before, but cost of
this manufacturing has increased. Most of the USA or UK based retail buyers compete their
selves for cheap rate and look for production places where they have to pay the cheapest price
for production. They often tell factories to squeeze their price and factories do according to
because they have no other options. In this way a group of people who are in the top of the value
chain, they can choose where the products are made and can change the factory if they are not
cheap enough according to them.

When price dropped off something has to give up, either the factory has to shut off or cut off any
of the corners to facilitate it disregarding the safety measures. Buyers always hammer the factory
to cut price and factory hammers its workers

So why Bangladesh is getting so popular in this industry? It is mainly for cheap labor cost, poor
and weak trade unions and no priority on safety measures, no rules and regulations are
conducted.

So, garments workers of Bangladesh has paid price for this. In one morning of April, an eight
storied building has collapsed near the capital city Dhaka buried approximately 1700 workers in
its ruin.

In recent years, textile industry has become disastrous. Fire accidents often occur for lack of
safety measures taken by factories. Ali Enterprise, Tazreen Fashions and many more has
witnessed its devastating consequences.

Business giant like MONSANTO created a system where they sell chemicals, pesticides, seeds ,
polluting the environment, hampering the health’s of people, at the same time they sell medicine
to cure from the diseases created by them. They sell seeds by higher price and make poor farmers
poorer and interesting thing is that, farmers commit suicide on their failures by drinking same
company’s pesticide.
 Materialistic capitalism is everywhere, from clothing to shoes industry. Every profitable
industry climbs up on top of value chain by polluting environment and exploiting human rights
of labors of some particular places.

But it is high time that consumers must aware of this situation, they must question their selves
and decide themselves that how much they need to consume and everyone must take
accountabilities of their deeds and these production of materials must spread evenly all over the
globe.

Beside this, ruler countries like UK, USA must stop treating people like things and change their
way of thinking.

Once Martin Luthar King Jr. said on his speech that what Americans need is to bring revolution
on their values.

So, a bold attempt to change in clothing industry can be the maiden attempt to change the world.