Now to triumph over poverty
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Enayet Rasul Bhuiyan
It all started in 1952 with the historic Language Movement. The legitimate interests of the Bangali-speaking population who constituted the majority of the then Pakistan were sought to be grievously hurt by the suggestion of the then ruling clique that they should unlearn Bengali and learn Urdu instead. They had sensed even before that they were looked upon as underlings in every sense by their Pakistani overlords staying nearly 1,500 miles away. From the then Radio Pakistan in Dhaka banning the airing of Tagore songs to many other acts of assaults on our culture and identity that followed, the yearning for independence or freedom among Bengalis from alien bondage became stronger in the social and cultural sense .
But by the sixties, this feeling of dissociating from Pakistan acquired a deeper motivation. This time it was economic. When the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared his six-point historic programme for the emancipation of erstwhile East Pakistan, the economic ambitions of the people of East Bengal or today's Bangladesh were too transparent in it. The call to movement at that time, understandably, was for the autonomy of the eastern province of federated Pakistan. But the main driver for autonomy as spelled out in the six-point programme was essentially economic aspirations.
The six points spelled out with a vision that people of Bangladesh wanted to get full control over their economic resources to better their lot. They felt dominated and ruthlessly exploited in the economic sense by their Pakistani masters. Therefore, they longed for their freedom to be able to accelerate their economic development, to achieve higher and better standards of living. Thus, what started as mainly a cultural and emotional expression of the people against alien tyranny, turned gradually into a very well articulated movement aimed at promoting economic progress of Bangladesh and its people in all respects amid conditions of a fully unfettered existence.
Thus, there can be no way of underestimating this supreme objective for the independence struggle of Bangladesh : an independent country governing itself and making the best uses of its resources and capacities to bring a richer and fuller life to all its people in the material sense. But how far this goal has been achieved after nearly 40 years of the existence of independent Bangladesh? The question posed is very significant for without a positive answer to it, the attainment of independence for the sake of independence only would seem rather unfruitful.
Surely, Bangladesh has not become independent just to satisfy an ego trip keeping a big section of its people wallowing in poverty and its consequent hopelessness. But unfortunately this is the position in which we find Bangladesh today with 40 per cent of its people, officially, living on less than a dollar per day or below the internationally recognized poverty line. Some private estimates of poverty in Bangladesh are higher and these put the estimate of the poor in the population at 50 per cent. And income inequality is increasing still alarmingly.
In this backdrop, mass poverty remains a big factor in independent Bangladesh to rebuke its otherwise welcome development in different spheres. Until the pangs of poverty are overcome fully or comprehensibly, it cannot be said that Bangladesh has quite attained the supreme objective for its creation or the achieving of independence has become quite meaningful. These thoughts come powerfully into the mind as the country celebrates its 39th birthday today.
But notwithstanding the unconquered mass poverty, recent international rankings have highlighted also the great potentials of Bangladesh. The assessments were made by the multilateral capital donors, renowned international investment bankers and credit rating organizations. Such assessments made from looking at Bangladesh's market size from having over 150 million people, natural endowments, abundance of cheap labour, etc., are hopeful about the future of Bangladesh as an emerging big economic power in the world scene. But the projections are not undiluted either. These have been made hypothetically and depending on Bangladesh fulfilling the main criterion for such a positive transformation to occur from its getting blessed with 'good governance.'
For this is the main problem of Bangladesh. Its people have made significant progress in different fields relying mainly on their own strengths little aided by governmental supports. The flourishing world class export-oriented garments industry is a prime example. The emerging shipbuilding industries, the budding information technology (IT) sector, pharmaceutical industries, etc., are being manned by Bangladeshi operators next to none in terms of capabilities. An entire class of entrepreneurs, professionals, bankers and ones to be considered as valuable human resource, have cropped up in Bangladesh to drive the engine of economic growth to a much higher level at the fastest.
But these very able people are finding frustration at every turn from the shockingly poor performance by successive governments. Indeed, the greatest tragedy of Bangladesh in its nearly four decades of existence, has been in the area of governance. Government after government has malperformed. Investors need a tranquil environment not marred by politically-induced violence to come forward in a big way to invest in the economy. But political stability in the context of Bangladesh continues to be elusive. Energy is the central or main requirement for industrialization or the running of service industries. But for some years Bangladesh has remained in energy-starved conditions. In this situation, even long running industries have closed down in many cases. So how can it be suggested that potential new investors in industries need to come forward? The economy is stagnating or delivering far below its potentials also from a lack of adequate number of infrastructure, dearth of new infrastructures and even from mal functioning of vital established infrastructures. Government appears engaged only half-heartedly in solving such problems on a lasting basis.
The conquest of poverty in the Bangladesh context will depend on governments in Bangladesh acting far better than what they have done, so far, in many fronts. For instance, education must be imparted in a manner that productive and able people are created as a result and not generalists. Science, technology and vocational education must get the highest priorities over all other forms of education. Only from adequately building true human resources through appropriate education, Bangladesh can expect to create conditions for a sustainable take-off of its economy.
Major and continuous production increases in agriculture, industry and services would be required to meet the needs of the existing population and of the ones to be added to the population even in the near future. Some 180 million Bangladeshis are expected to make demands for food, shelter, education and basic amenities as early as 2020. It does not seem that the government is seriously engaged with planning and provisioning tasks to meet the far greater demands from the bigger population to be felt sooner than later. Not only creating conditions for production increases, the government must get back the initiative it seems to have lost in trying to limit and stabilize population growth.
The political system that creates intermittent all round instability in the country is also one of its greatest weaknesses. This weakness will have to be overcome at the soonest with the cooperation to this end given wholeheartedly by all stakeholders but mainly by the major political parties. The political parties that form the government and ultimately become responsible for the country's governance, will need to be led by visionary and truly able and selfless leaders like Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia. The people of Bangladesh should pile up their pressure on the political parties to enable such leaders to take up the baton of supreme leadership in the parties.
It all started in 1952 with the historic Language Movement. The legitimate interests of the Bangali-speaking population who constituted the majority of the then Pakistan were sought to be grievously hurt by the suggestion of the then ruling clique that they should unlearn Bengali and learn Urdu instead. They had sensed even before that they were looked upon as underlings in every sense by their Pakistani overlords staying nearly 1,500 miles away. From the then Radio Pakistan in Dhaka banning the airing of Tagore songs to many other acts of assaults on our culture and identity that followed, the yearning for independence or freedom among Bengalis from alien bondage became stronger in the social and cultural sense .
But by the sixties, this feeling of dissociating from Pakistan acquired a deeper motivation. This time it was economic. When the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared his six-point historic programme for the emancipation of erstwhile East Pakistan, the economic ambitions of the people of East Bengal or today's Bangladesh were too transparent in it. The call to movement at that time, understandably, was for the autonomy of the eastern province of federated Pakistan. But the main driver for autonomy as spelled out in the six-point programme was essentially economic aspirations.
The six points spelled out with a vision that people of Bangladesh wanted to get full control over their economic resources to better their lot. They felt dominated and ruthlessly exploited in the economic sense by their Pakistani masters. Therefore, they longed for their freedom to be able to accelerate their economic development, to achieve higher and better standards of living. Thus, what started as mainly a cultural and emotional expression of the people against alien tyranny, turned gradually into a very well articulated movement aimed at promoting economic progress of Bangladesh and its people in all respects amid conditions of a fully unfettered existence.
Thus, there can be no way of underestimating this supreme objective for the independence struggle of Bangladesh : an independent country governing itself and making the best uses of its resources and capacities to bring a richer and fuller life to all its people in the material sense. But how far this goal has been achieved after nearly 40 years of the existence of independent Bangladesh? The question posed is very significant for without a positive answer to it, the attainment of independence for the sake of independence only would seem rather unfruitful.
Surely, Bangladesh has not become independent just to satisfy an ego trip keeping a big section of its people wallowing in poverty and its consequent hopelessness. But unfortunately this is the position in which we find Bangladesh today with 40 per cent of its people, officially, living on less than a dollar per day or below the internationally recognized poverty line. Some private estimates of poverty in Bangladesh are higher and these put the estimate of the poor in the population at 50 per cent. And income inequality is increasing still alarmingly.
In this backdrop, mass poverty remains a big factor in independent Bangladesh to rebuke its otherwise welcome development in different spheres. Until the pangs of poverty are overcome fully or comprehensibly, it cannot be said that Bangladesh has quite attained the supreme objective for its creation or the achieving of independence has become quite meaningful. These thoughts come powerfully into the mind as the country celebrates its 39th birthday today.
But notwithstanding the unconquered mass poverty, recent international rankings have highlighted also the great potentials of Bangladesh. The assessments were made by the multilateral capital donors, renowned international investment bankers and credit rating organizations. Such assessments made from looking at Bangladesh's market size from having over 150 million people, natural endowments, abundance of cheap labour, etc., are hopeful about the future of Bangladesh as an emerging big economic power in the world scene. But the projections are not undiluted either. These have been made hypothetically and depending on Bangladesh fulfilling the main criterion for such a positive transformation to occur from its getting blessed with 'good governance.'
For this is the main problem of Bangladesh. Its people have made significant progress in different fields relying mainly on their own strengths little aided by governmental supports. The flourishing world class export-oriented garments industry is a prime example. The emerging shipbuilding industries, the budding information technology (IT) sector, pharmaceutical industries, etc., are being manned by Bangladeshi operators next to none in terms of capabilities. An entire class of entrepreneurs, professionals, bankers and ones to be considered as valuable human resource, have cropped up in Bangladesh to drive the engine of economic growth to a much higher level at the fastest.
But these very able people are finding frustration at every turn from the shockingly poor performance by successive governments. Indeed, the greatest tragedy of Bangladesh in its nearly four decades of existence, has been in the area of governance. Government after government has malperformed. Investors need a tranquil environment not marred by politically-induced violence to come forward in a big way to invest in the economy. But political stability in the context of Bangladesh continues to be elusive. Energy is the central or main requirement for industrialization or the running of service industries. But for some years Bangladesh has remained in energy-starved conditions. In this situation, even long running industries have closed down in many cases. So how can it be suggested that potential new investors in industries need to come forward? The economy is stagnating or delivering far below its potentials also from a lack of adequate number of infrastructure, dearth of new infrastructures and even from mal functioning of vital established infrastructures. Government appears engaged only half-heartedly in solving such problems on a lasting basis.
The conquest of poverty in the Bangladesh context will depend on governments in Bangladesh acting far better than what they have done, so far, in many fronts. For instance, education must be imparted in a manner that productive and able people are created as a result and not generalists. Science, technology and vocational education must get the highest priorities over all other forms of education. Only from adequately building true human resources through appropriate education, Bangladesh can expect to create conditions for a sustainable take-off of its economy.
Major and continuous production increases in agriculture, industry and services would be required to meet the needs of the existing population and of the ones to be added to the population even in the near future. Some 180 million Bangladeshis are expected to make demands for food, shelter, education and basic amenities as early as 2020. It does not seem that the government is seriously engaged with planning and provisioning tasks to meet the far greater demands from the bigger population to be felt sooner than later. Not only creating conditions for production increases, the government must get back the initiative it seems to have lost in trying to limit and stabilize population growth.
The political system that creates intermittent all round instability in the country is also one of its greatest weaknesses. This weakness will have to be overcome at the soonest with the cooperation to this end given wholeheartedly by all stakeholders but mainly by the major political parties. The political parties that form the government and ultimately become responsible for the country's governance, will need to be led by visionary and truly able and selfless leaders like Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia. The people of Bangladesh should pile up their pressure on the political parties to enable such leaders to take up the baton of supreme leadership in the parties.