Developing a national data bank

At last a recipe has been found to plug the porous social safety net programmes meant only for the country's poor population. It is none other than a database on poor and by extension non-poor households. The approach smacks of tentativeness not only because house-holds will be categorised as poor and non-poor but also because of the varying statements made by people involved with the project. Someone envisages coverage of rich households as well while another claims the programme will be accomplished in phases. If non-poor households are also covered, why not call it a full-fledged national data bank? But they won't commit as much. The reason behind this tentativeness may be the amount of fund. Presently, though, the cost of the exercise has been estimated at Tk 3.28 billion. Primarily the project will kick off from Rangpur Division. Now, an allocation of this amount of fund cannot be only for this division.

Notwithstanding the scanty details, let there be no doubt that developing a national data bank will not require an enormous extra amount in addition to the expenditure on the proposed database. The merit of such a national data bank cannot be overemphasised. In fact, sources at the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) which will be assigned the job are of the opinion that all households of the country will be covered and ultimately the database will turn into a national population register. If all involved with the project do not have a clear view of the target to be achieved, the emphasis will be misplaced. Any rumour or information that data collected will be used for detection of the poor households will send a wrong signal to the people. Some dishonest people will not mind manipulating their family information in order to present them as poor and deserving help under the Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNPs). This is good enough reason why the project should not be tagged with the poverty status of a household. Better it would be to gather information on the statistical approach in which resources or lack of those and sources of income etcetera truly reflect the family status.

This brings the entire exercise to the point of a national data bank which will act as a pool of information on all the families or households in Bangladesh. If national voter identity cards could be prepared, this data pool can as well be developed. In fact, the two programmes could be merged initially to accomplish the task at a much less cost. Such a suggestion was indeed put forward at that time. The country missed an opportunity then. It should not miss another opportunity now. A coordinated approach will definitely go a long way towards putting in place a national data bank which will preserve all kinds of necessary information centrally. This makes planning with the nation easier. Education, health and employment programmes can be devised on the basis of the population size, age groups and other criteria. Fighting crimes become simpler and easier too if records are updated regularly. Finally, it will make population census redundant at some point. Considering the various advantages, it would be wise to go for a comprehensive national data bank.