Developing human capital

The challenge of proper development of knowledge and skills suited to fill the needs for sustaining our global presence in an effective manner can not be ignored. Unfortunately, our political parties have totally failed to highlight this vital issue. The challenge of properly developing our 'human capital' for tomorrow's inter-global interaction through appropriate educational and language skills, has unfortunately been ignored.
Our education sector, with an all-Bangla bias, has deteriorated qualitatively in the global perspective. This will make us more isolated as times roll by.
Our education system, from primary levels and upwards, is geared with increasing student population all over the country and is completely based in Bangla. Certainly we must promote our mother tongue but it is still a language in which higher levels of education in all fields cannot be pursued for obvious reasons. This is applicable to an array of professions covering all subjects in arts, science, technology and law all of which are very relevant at higher levels and very necessary for global access and meaningful interactions.
Unfortunately, education in Bangladesh is based on the precept of 'commit and vomit'. This only uselessly taxes the brain and limits objective and wider scope of inputs that are needed to gather each particular skill or profession. We will be only producing graduates by millions with no scope for them ever being useful or worthwhile beyond our borders given their capabilities being limited only to our national language. This situation has more or less been thrust upon the students by the short-sighted policy of divorcing ourselves from the English language, possibly the only asset that was left to us by the British colonial power. This has directly led to our depressing level of competence in all professional subjects and gradually this will hinder our useful participation in the vast global developed economies where we could have been gainfully employed. We are going to end up by becoming 'a land of plenty' of graduates but absolutely unemployable in all works needing professional skills.
This is the sad fact of life for Bangladesh today and in the next decades, it will be compounding in multiple progression while our education sector will be 'full steam ahead' with millions of potentially unemployable youths. By and large in all businesses and industries of Bangladesh, international interaction is the real fact of life today and in the days to come. We may probably end up having the sad scenario of thousands of graduates ending up only as cheap unskilled employees in the developed world. That may be our only possible source of overseas earnings. Have our political leaders ever thought about this possibility? The politicians as well as the bureaucrats are not bothered as they can carry on with their skills locally in Bangla. We as a nation will have to end up by importing 'language experts' at a high cost to handle our trade and international relations with the outside world. This is not out of the realm of possibility. In all possibility, this is now the 'topmost' problem facing Bangladesh and we should be seriously prepared for it.
(The writer, an engineer, has 50 years of hands-on experience in both public and private sector industries with on-the-job professional interactions in Europe, the UK, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines in his professional capacity)
sam@dhakacom.com