2008: Global and Local Significance

The year 2008: A benchmark globally and, as it turned out, for distinctly local reasons, for Sri Lanka too. Months after I received news of success with my grant application to enable me to explore how Sri Lankan apparels are at the vanguard of ethical code governance, the world went into a global economic meltdown. This put pressure on apparel producers worldwide, including those in Sri Lanka. Local issues also had an impact on Sri Lanka's apparel sector. The Rajapaksa government had started its steady onslaught to end a protracted ethnic conflict and, by May 2009, through a bloody and gory military war, three decades of violence in the country ostensibly ended. What might these shifts mean for the Sri Lankan apparel sector's trademark Garments without Guilt (GWG)? Anu's poem, which I collected during my fieldwork in 2009, is also a reminder to ask: What about labour?

Around 2006, Sri Lanka's Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF) members envisioned GWG as a labelling strategy by which garments produced in the country were to carry a brand label and tag. Although the labelling objective was eventually recognized as unrealistic, GWG offered an effective platform to promote the Sri Lankan apparel sector as a safe place for retailers wanting to conduct their business ethically. Under the aegis of the JAAF, the Sri Lankan apparel sector was branded, packaged and promoted as a niche and ethical producer, which also created added value (Gunawardana 2007; Kelegama 2009; Athukorala and Ekanayake 2018).