Life in Dhaka: A Glimpse of 1980s Child Labour

This photograph of a street stall in a back street in Dhaka records an ordinary moment of working life. The stall itself is extremely small, crowded and improvised, with goods packed into every available space. Behind the boy are shelves filled with bottles and other products, while the foreground contains boxes and packets. The density of objects communicates the cramped conditions of the informal marketplace.

Contemporary evidence shows that child labour was widespread in Bangladesh during the 1980s. A 1986 US Department of State report, citing Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics estimates, put the number of child labourers at around 3 million, compared with 2.5 million in 1981. It also reported that 70% of manual labourers surveyed in Dhaka’s markets were aged between 7 and 15, with children working in transport, carrying loads, construction and other occupations.

The photograph captures more than an individual shop: it records an economic system in which small family businesses and informal work were essential to urban survival; it depicts precisely the kind of informal urban marketplace where children’s labour could occur.

I made this photograph as I was driving slowly past in the passenger seat of a Rickshaw.