Non-resident Bangladeshis and a new horizon for development

Bangladesh is a country full of prospects. Its locational position in the international map is the principal cause of it. One hundred sixty million lively people and their professional and socio-economic interaction have a great influence on its development. As we know, one main source of foreign currency earnings of Bangladesh is the remittance sent by the non-resident Bangladeshii (NRBs). There are unbound prospects for Bangladesh's development in which NRBs in Europe, America and the Middle-East can have a great influence. But to make it happen, some immediate specific steps and measures will have to be taken by the government of Bangladesh (GoB). The GoB now wants to develop Bangladesh into a middle income country as per its "Vision 2021 programme". To translate this vision into a reality, a number of steps will have to be taken. This is more so in the context of the NRBs, for promoting their welfare and facilitating the widening of the sphere of benefits. Legal banking services should thus be made available to their doorstep so that they can send foreign currency to Bangladesh through proper channel by avoiding the illegal ones. At the same time, the government will have to take necessary legal and administrative steps to ban all illegal and 'hindi' channels. The NRBs do need to be declared as specially privileged persons like VIPs, CIPs etc., so that they can doubly be interested in remitting more foreign currency to Bangladesh. Though the situation at Shahjalal International Airport has improved a bit, still most NRBs have to face many a difficulties when they are in Bangladesh for their different activities. As they are relatively more solvent - and also affluent in terms of monetary assets -- the government personnel and the Police officials try to take undue privileges from them. The government should open a cell under NRB welfare ministry to provide "One-Stop Service" to the NRBs for solving their problems with police stations, courts of law and many administrative wings of the government. Those who remit foreign currency legally and are specially privileged persons should be entitled to such facilities. By showing 'Specially Privileged Persons' card, they must be facilitated to avail themselves of the privileges like VIPs or CIPs at airports, ports and in other government institutions of Bangladesh. A separate directorate should be established in NRB welfare ministry for implementation of special commercial or industrial zones through active involvement of NRBs as investors there. To help diversify domestic tourism and make it commercially viable, the government also needs to take some necessary steps immediately. Like other more developed and tourism-prone countries, Bangladesh will have to construct 1500 kilometer super-highway in the country. It should be carefully noted that the standard of the super-highway should be of top international grade. At the same time, the traffic control and the security will have to be of international standard. If we can do this at speed, most benefits can be reaped out of it. This will certainly encourage also our domestic tourists, beside the NRBs as well as foreign ones to come to our country in great numbers. Tourist spots of Bangladesh like Rangamati, Bandarban, Cox's Bazar, Kuakata, Sylhet and the Sundarban should be properly connected with the would-be constructed super-highway. This will facilitate the tourists visit such sites. The tourist spots also will also then be developed rapidly. And that will have a special positive influence on the course and pace of development of Bangladesh. There are now two-day week-ends in Bangladesh. One day's state-holiday at times coinciding with such week-ends makes it then a three-day vacation. There are also long vacation on the occasion of Eid. During this long vacation, most people have nothing to do other than getting bored in the same house or in the same locality. One does not need to be very rich these days for travelling abroad. So during the long vacation a good number of our people are found to be going to the neighbouring countries and spend a lot of foreign currencies. If the communication system in Bangladesh would have been of international standard and its tourist spots would have been properly developed, then many such outbound tourists would have availed themselves of the facilities in domestic tourism sector; they would have enjoyed a lot more and saved a good amount of valuable foreign currency. or the expansion of tourism, the first and the foremost condition is the development of communication. The government needs to give more attention to this fact. Alongside many points of road roundabouts in Dhaka and other important cities of Bangladesh, there are few beautiful sculptures and artifacts. But most of them lie now in a very lousy and dirty state; posters and leaflets are most often pasted thereupon invariably. If it is necessary, government will have to enact a new law so that nobody can dirt or disrupt the beauty of a mausoleum, sculpture, mural or any artifact. The government has taken a number of moves like constructing costly flyovers for the development of traffic control. According to the little understanding of this scribe, such moves, even after their excution, will not bring sufficient success. If the government really wants to upgrade Dhaka's traffic control and make it smoother, it is of utmost importance that it will require to shift less important ministerial offices to Gazipur, Savar or other adjacent areas. Although this sort of shifting is less costly for the country, certainly such a measure will bring about some good results. To expand the tourism sector, the GoB will furthermore require to take necessary measures to formulate a new policy for making private entrepreneurs more interested in developing private tourist spots. It is as always been the case with the people of our country that they consider it to be sole responsibility of the government for making all the good to us. This responsibility, according to their perception, devolves on those who are in power only i.e., the government. Those who are in opposition do hold an immutable view that the ruling party has ruined the country and led it to go astray. So the opposition do always make such a negative propaganda constantly. By the way, NRBs are influenced by this propaganda; many of them have also become disinterested to remit more foreign currency to Bangladesh. But whenever this opposition comes to power, they do constantly urge the NRBs to send more remittance to Bangladesh. It should be clearly appreciated by all concerned that Bangladesh is for all, whether they are in position or opposition. Both the ruling party and the opposition leadership will have to work together for upholding the dignity of the country and make efforts in their own ways for promoting its development. There is another point that merits the attention of all concerned. It relates to an almost agreed-upon universal policy, providing that nobody other than researchers and members of forest conservation team, cannot enter into the areas mangrove forests. As the Sundarban is our biggest mangrove forest, our specific proposal is that the government should enforce it effectively that so that no hunter, wood plucker, baoali and maoali and anybody else having vested interests can enter the mangrove forests for long ten years so that the diversified enchanting beauty of this mangrove forest can be safe and secure. That would save many species of animal beings and would help to foster their clan.