The story of Bangladesh -bright and dark sides

Throughout history, people have turned to astrologers, pundits and gurus in a quest to unlock the mysteries of the future. Businesses show a big appetite in getting a peep into the future as the existing climate becomes highly uncertain. Nevertheless, predicting the future has always been a difficult business, especially, if the prediction becomes wrong. Almost immediately after the independence of Bangladesh, Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, dismissed the country as a "perpetual economic basket case". But Bangladesh has proved Kissinger wrong.
In the last forty four years, Bangladesh has undergone a great deal of transformation. There has been some good progress in almost all spheres of life. Credit goes to our poor farmers, labourers at home and abroad, the entrepreneurs and all the hard working people, who show the country signs of hope, prosperity and stability, despite all odds. Therefore, instead of making any predictions it is appropriate to analyse all the available statistics, facts and figures and speculate how the current developments will affect our life in next 35 years - till 2050.
Being 31st in economic ranking, Bangladesh is projected to move to 29th position by 2030 and become the 23rd biggest economy in the world in 2050. Gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, is expected to stand at $1,291 billion by 2030 and $3,367 billion by 2050 from the current $536 billion. In FY 2013-14, the country exported garment and knitwear products worth around $22 billion, which made it the 2nd largest RMG-exporting country in the world. The inflow of remittance was $9.7 billion in 2008-09 and it rose to $14.5 billion in 2012-13. Foreign exchange reserve now stands close to $ 22 billion.
Apparently, these look nice, although there are paradoxes difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, Bangladesh has achieved these impressive statistics that show an outstanding national income, rising exports and impressive flow of foreign earnings. On the other hand, these statistics do not reflect the pitiable state of the country - hazardous urbanisation, overpopulation, inadequate nutrition, lack of public health, low standard of living, land scarcity, vulnerability to natural disaster, rising anti-social activities, rising unemployment, growing disparity of rural and urban income and inadequate infrastructure.
Currently, 28 per cent of the country's population (42 million) live in urban areas. In the 1960-70s, the entire population was 70 million and 6 per cent of them lived in urban areas. It is undeniable that urbanisation is the inevitable destiny of the human civilisation. But the cities are growing in an unsustainable mode. Parks, open spaces, rivers, canals and water bodies are gradually disappearing.
The rivers and waterways are gradually shrinking and drying up due to the huge depositions of silt and waste. As a consequence, most of the rivers have lost half of their navigability. The length of navigable waterways now shrinks to 6,000 kilometres during the rainy season and to 3,800 kilometres in winter.  If the government fails to protect the rivers from pollution and land-grabbing within 2050, these will turn into canals and Bangladesh would turn into a desert.
Meanwhile, the density of population is hovering around 1,000 per square mile and nearly 160 million people are living in this small country. According to a report by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the population of Bangladesh would reach between 230 -250 million in 2050.
Presently, the country is adding 1.8 to 2.0 million people annually to the national population. By adding 2.0 million people, it is losing 1 per cent of agricultural land every year. There are roughly 8.774 million hectares of cultivable land available, out of which 88 per cent is cultivated. So, there is a limited scope to expand the cultivated area.
Rapid growth of population in conjunction to unplanned urbanisation has generated numerous transport problems in different cities. It has resulted in the deterioration of accessibility, level of service, safety, comfort, operational efficiency and urban environment. Citizens constantly complain about the unbearable traffic jams where vehicles remain standstill for several hours.
Besides, the urban infrastructure does not match the scale of the urban population. The minimum road requirement for any city is 25 per cent, whereas the large cities of Bangladesh have only 6 to 7 per cent of roads. A country of roughly 147,000 sq. kilometres, having a population over 160 million, would have to cater for transport needs of 230-250 million people by 2050.
Last year, Bangladesh earned $14.6 billion as remittance from the expatriates who are working as unskilled and low-skilled labourers. On the other hand, few people know that $4.0 billion is being remitted out by high-skilled foreign nationals working in Bangladesh. This goes to show our inability to provide required educational and skill enhancing resources to youngsters to develop themselves for highly skilled jobs within the country. Our education system is still expensive for a large segment of the population and the quality and curriculum do not effectively serve the goals of human development.
Moreover, our employment structure is characterised by the predominance of the deficient productivity and low wage. Around 80 per cent of the total labourers in the country are employed in the informal sector which, in turn, cannot contribute much to poverty reduction. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Bangladesh is expected to have 78 million workers by 2025, up from 56.7 million in 2010 of whom two thirds have only minimal education and 4 per cent have received any kind of training. Different studies also suggest that around 2.2 million people enter the job market annually, while nearly 1.0 million get jobs and the rest remain unemployed. 47 per cent of the country's graduates are unemployed.
In 2014, the World Economic Forum evaluated and rated Bangladesh's infrastructure at 127th amongst 144 countries. Because of weak infrastructure, the entrepreneurs have to wait for many years for connectivity of gas and electricity after setting up their industries. Eventually, invested capital is lying idle on one hand and the industrial equipments are in a state of decay on the other. As factories cannot go into production, they cannot repay loans. They become defaulters in the process.
Currently, investment is facing a pitiable situation in Bangladesh. Private investment has dropped for the second year as result of political uncertainty. According to a provisional estimate of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, private investment as a proportion of GDP stood at 21.39 per cent, down to 0.36 per cent in FY 2013-2014. As a result, economic growth is not getting desired momentum and job opportunities are not being created.
Meanwhile, the economy is growing at a rate of 6.0 to 7.0 per cent and it is very unlikely that this country will progress at lightning speed in the next 35 years. A recent trend has arisen among many unemployed youths to resort to desperate means to leave the country. Finding no jobs and seeing no options in the country, they are taking risky journeys in pursuit of fortunes. Unemployment is a complex issue that triggers a vicious circle, breeding criminalities of all hues. Evidently, the country is experiencing a sudden rise of criminal and anti-social activities where the youth is getting increasingly involved.
Policymakers often claim that Bangladesh will achieve the status of a middle-income country by 2021, but they neglect the story of more than a quarter of the population (26 per cent) living below the poverty line earning less than $2.0 a day. It is the growth factor that matters most. In a country like Bangladesh, wealth of the nation is accumulated in the hands of a small group of rich people. It is simply not acceptable that few persons own the lion share of the country's wealth, while the majority remains at the bottom. A nation will not survive a situation when so few have so much, while so many have so little.
Although the rate of poverty has gone down, the number of people living below the poverty line has gone up due to growth of population. In the year 2050, the country's population will be around 230-250 million. It is possible that we are not, actually, looking at the future. It is also possible that we are just keeping our heads buried in the sand, hoping that these menaces would leave soon.
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