Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

Bangladesh’s economy performed well during last couple of decades, but we had room to perform even much better

Bottomless basket transformed into Export Powerhouse (according to the New York Times), JP Morgan included it in its Frontier 5 list, Goldman Sachs described as one of the N11 countries, UN awarded it as the Role Model of MDG achievements, McKinsey and Company Termed it as Next China, PwC forecasted as it would be the 28th Largest Economy of the World by 2030 and 23rd Largest Economy by 2050. All of the above statements and forecasting were made to describe economic development potentials of Bangladesh. World famous scholars and institutions are considering Bangladesh as a promising economic power in near future. But what we Bangladeshis are observing in it? We see it as a land of challenges and problems like traffic jam in the road, clashes and cheatings in the politics, corruption in the bureaucracy, injustice and inequalities is everywhere in the society. Therefore our rich people educate their children in the western countries, frequently visiting foreign hospitals for medical care, migrating to Canada, Australia and other developed countries to have a peaceful breath with respective families. Brain drainage is one of the oldest challenge of this land. Bangladeshi scientists are doing thousand times better performance in abroad. Similarly our researchers, professors are well accepted in respective fields by the foreign institutions. What is wrong here to perform? What is the harm here to live? Why future is cloudy here after so many forecasting by world famous scholars and institutions? Who are responsible for this cloudy situation? Why we are not able to retain our best brains here to work for this land?

Bangladesh have a long list of policies like Industrial Policy, Import Policy, Export Policy, agriculture policy, handicraft policy, food grain policy, poultry development policy, textile policy, SME policy so on and so forth to promote investment by local entrepreneurs and foreign investors here in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi policies relevant to trade, investment, business and commerce are full with long list of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, weavers, and facilities for the inventors, businessmen, and merchants. We organized Road Shows and Conferences in all the expensive cities of the world to pull up foreigners for investing in Bangladesh. But, end of the day we performed worse than the war devastated Afghanistan in doing business index.

A matter of hope that, government started engineering to reduce our ranking in ease of doing business index. As MDGs provided us few medals and award to us, therefore we are talking much with SDGs from every corner. New positions and platforms were introduced to foster SDG achievement. Hope this time we will get more medals and awards than the previous one. But we have to wait for a long decade to see what SDGs could offer us. But the reality is that, half of the world’s poor people lives in five countries and my beloved Bangladesh is one of these five.

General understanding is that, there is a gap between all those statistics, forecasting and the ground reality. It is because some important fact get cornered while we praise on our performances. Either we became over satisfied with poor performance or we just ignore the negative facts and figures knowingly. Ignoring true facts knowingly could be for ignoring unwanted hassles from the powerful chairs. For example government and political parties are committed to ensure employment to the mass people. But we have a significant part of the society unemployed or underemployed. The figure is not less than 3 million people. Every year another 2 million plus jobseekers are entering into the job market after completing their higher education. But how many of them are getting proper job placement? Why Bangladeshi educated youths are going to Malaysia, or Middle East as labor?  

Bangladesh is paying USD 10 billion plus per year by recruiting Indian, Sri Lankan professionals here in Bangladeshi factories in mid-level positions. There are no authentic source of data that how many foreign professionals are working here in Bangladesh? Unsupported data says that the number is around or less than half a million. We are paying USD 10 billion by employing half a million on the other side 10 million Bangladeshi expatriate workers are earning USD 13 billion. The income and expenditure ratio here could state how measurably our migrated workers are living there and what do they eat. Expert judgment will be that, we recruit mid-level professionals from abroad and export day laborers. Therefore income expenditure ratio is so poor. Now come to the point that why 100 plus Bangladeshi Universities and Engineering Institutes failed to produce those mid-level managers here? Why our patients are not believe in quality of services could offered by our doctors? Why our businesses are not believing on the quality of services that local mid-level managers could offer?

If we go to analyze Bangladesh’s performance in foreign direct investment attraction then we become complacent again. But when we would like to compare our last thirty years performance of attracting foreign investment with last thirty years performance of Malaysia or Vietnam, then we may get the actual picture. Experts become dishearten but policy makers and liable bureaucrats or politicians may make it questionable whether a researcher reserves the right to analyze it? Like we do in terms of World Bank’s Ease Doing Business Index, or Transparency International’s report on corruption. All the praising forecasting methodologies are well accepted to us but while it projects negative performance then we make it questionable.

Finally; Bangladesh really performed well during last couple of decades, but we had room to perform even much better than our current achievements. Congenial political will, bureaucratic assistance, government’s nursing and business friendly policy regime could lead us even far ahead than the forecasted positions. We have to develop concurrent skills, provide equal opportunities for all, and ensure justice for everybody everywhere. We must remember that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, ensuring justice everywhere should be the first priority to build a peaceful, prosperous and developed Bangladesh.           

The writer is a contributor to

The Independent

 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

Bangladeshs economy performed well during last couple of decades, but we had room to perform even much better

Bottomless basket transformed into Export Powerhouse (according to the New York Times), JP Morgan included it in its Frontier 5 list, Goldman Sachs described as one of the N11 countries, UN awarded it as the Role Model of MDG achievements, McKinsey and Company Termed it as Next China, PwC forecasted as it would be the 28th Largest Economy of the World by 2030 and 23rd Largest Economy by 2050. All of the above statements and forecasting were made to describe economic development potentials of Bangladesh. World famous scholars and institutions are considering Bangladesh as a promising economic power in near future. But what we Bangladeshis are observing in it? We see it as a land of challenges and problems like traffic jam in the road, clashes and cheatings in the politics, corruption in the bureaucracy, injustice and inequalities is everywhere in the society. Therefore our rich people educate their children in the western countries, frequently visiting foreign hospitals for medical care, migrating to Canada, Australia and other developed countries to have a peaceful breath with respective families. Brain drainage is one of the oldest challenge of this land. Bangladeshi scientists are doing thousand times better performance in abroad. Similarly our researchers, professors are well accepted in respective fields by the foreign institutions. What is wrong here to perform? What is the harm here to live? Why future is cloudy here after so many forecasting by world famous scholars and institutions? Who are responsible for this cloudy situation? Why we are not able to retain our best brains here to work for this land? Bangladesh have a long list of policies like Industrial Policy, Import Policy, Export Policy, agriculture policy, handicraft policy, food grain policy, poultry development policy, textile policy, SME policy so on and so forth to promote investment by local entrepreneurs and foreign investors here in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi policies relevant to trade, investment, business and commerce are full with long list of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, weavers, and facilities for the inventors, businessmen, and merchants. We organized Road Shows and Conferences in all the expensive cities of the world to pull up foreigners for investing in Bangladesh. But, end of the day we performed worse than the war devastated Afghanistan in doing business index. A matter of hope that, government started engineering to reduce our ranking in ease of doing business index. As MDGs provided us few medals and award to us, therefore we are talking much with SDGs from every corner. New positions and platforms were introduced to foster SDG achievement. Hope this time we will get more medals and awards than the previous one. But we have to wait for a long decade to see what SDGs could offer us. But the reality is that, half of the worlds poor people lives in five countries and my beloved Bangladesh is one of these five. General understanding is that, there is a gap between all those statistics, forecasting and the ground reality. It is because some important fact get cornered while we praise on our performances. Either we became over satisfied with poor performance or we just ignore the negative facts and figures knowingly. Ignoring true facts knowingly could be for ignoring unwanted hassles from the powerful chairs. For example government and political parties are committed to ensure employment to the mass people. But we have a significant part of the society unemployed or underemployed. The figure is not less than 3 million people. Every year another 2 million plus jobseekers are entering into the job market after completing their higher education. But how many of them are getting proper job placement? Why Bangladeshi educated youths are going to Malaysia, or Middle East as labor? Bangladesh is paying USD 10 billion plus per year by recruiting Indian, Sri Lankan professionals here in Bangladeshi factories in mid-level positions. There are no authentic source of data that how many foreign professionals are working here in Bangladesh? Unsupported data says that the number is around or less than half a million. We are paying USD 10 billion by employing half a million on the other side 10 million Bangladeshi expatriate workers are earning USD 13 billion. The income and expenditure ratio here could state how measurably our migrated workers are living there and what do they eat. Expert judgment will be that, we recruit mid-level professionals from abroad and export day laborers. Therefore income expenditure ratio is so poor. Now come to the point that why 100 plus Bangladeshi Universities and Engineering Institutes failed to produce those mid-level managers here? Why our patients are not believe in quality of services could offered by our doctors? Why our businesses are not believing on the quality of services that local mid-level managers could offer? If we go to analyze Bangladeshs performance in foreign direct investment attraction then we become complacent again. But when we would like to compare our last thirty years performance of attracting foreign investment with last thirty years performance of Malaysia or Vietnam, then we may get the actual picture. Experts become dishearten but policy makers and liable bureaucrats or politicians may make it questionable whether a researcher reserves the right to analyze it? Like we do in terms of World Banks Ease Doing Business Index, or Transparency Internationals report on corruption. All the praising forecasting methodologies are well accepted to us but while it projects negative performance then we make it questionable. Finally; Bangladesh really performed well during last couple of decades, but we had room to perform even much better than our current achievements. Congenial political will, bureaucratic assistance, governments nursing and business friendly policy regime could lead us even far ahead than the forecasted positions. We have to develop concurrent skills, provide equal opportunities for all, and ensure justice for everybody everywhere. We must remember that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, ensuring justice everywhere should be the first priority to build a peaceful, prosperous and developed Bangladesh. The writer is a contributor to The Independent