Bangladesh: global economic crisis hammers south Asia’s export powerhouse

Mohammad Sharif Sarker’s factory is in many ways a model. Spread over three spacious floors in Ashulia, a suburb of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, hundreds of young women and men sit in orderly assembly lines, sewing machines before them, ready to stitch trendy flat-brim caps for export.

There’s only one problem: Sarker and his workers are sitting in the dark, their machines idle. Ashulia is currently in the middle of one of the daily…