Why we aren't a "basket case"

Ashfaq Wares Khan
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IS Bangladesh poised on the brink of disaster? Well, some hiss that it's the violence; if not violence, it has to be corruption, or the disasters or the mother of all hisses - abject and "hopeless" poverty.

All this hissing and fussing from, both within and without the country, echoes the scandalous remark of a certain ex-secretary of state of the United States (some say it was his aide) right after our liberation "Bangladesh is an international basket case," he said.

Since the man in question is alive, we call upon him to adjust his glasses, sit up and have a look the only basket Bangladesh holds is filled with fruits, rotten or otherwise, from a tree groomed for thirty years, albeit not with particularl care, but groomed (yes, not doomed!) by ourselves.

Basket case or a bottomless basket, they both take the pessimistic view that the country is so hopelessly poor, crowded, and disorganized that it could never feed and educate its people. Yet, Bangladesh, regardless of what or how the Government trumpets its triumphs, has continued to feed and educate it's people, however disconcertingly variable degrees have been. These developments, coupled with the extreme endurance and diversity of its people has held the country together. The following paragraphs explain the degree of local advancements and how they debunk the "basket case" label.

With 170 large-scale natural disasters hitting the country since 1970, and even by the most conservative estimates losing 20 per cent of arable land since 1971, while our population has doubled, the farming machine keeps churning out high yield of crops every year. The farmers and their endurance are again, not working for the betterment of the national image, but daily subsistence. The famines, and near-famine situations in the country, moreover, have not occurred because of large agricultural production shortfalls, there's a small shortfall each year, rather because of unemployment in the rural areas. Furthermore, we can't also ignore the percentage of malnourished children under five has come down by 20.

Education, likewise, has rocketed even more dramatically in the past thirteen ears. The rate for completing primary education has risen from 50 to 70 since 1991, while there are more and more tertiary educational institutions sprouting across the nation. These new graduates, especially from the IT and business sectors, can only add a greater punch to our labour power that has consistently contributed to our explosive export businesses, and the huge remittance figure that the nation receives every year.

The concurrent boom of re-instated democracy and Nongovernment organisations (NGOs) have also witnessed the significant step to fill perhaps the most crucial caveat left by dominant quantitative evaluation of educational developments: the quality of education. Significant moves that complements the governmental services, like NGOs, have made serious headway for our survival and progress by holding lifelines for women empowerment, child-labour prevention and extreme poverty negation in the country.

In no other way, radical politics or state policies, have social and economic opportunities been so ample in provision but the dense networks of NGO activities in the country. From the globally championed micro-credit schemes, to the innumerable social-awareness and activist for the vulnerable they are the storm breaking the ceilings of immobility for the downtrodden.

The inability to foresee these sub-state actors, ala NGOs, by the very state-centric so- called Realist ex- secretary of state, would've also prevented him from seeing million-strong of employment creations by booming industries, although far too concentrated in the metropolitans as of yet.

Industry, in this way, has been equally productive but has also remained unsatisfactory due to the marginalisation of local small-scale manufacturing. The income generating opportunities from export of manufactured-products has breathed new air into the economy that was previously gasping for greater injection of investment. The task for this democracy, is to open this up to the masses in conjunction with the movements in education, and grass-roots developments.

Yet, the biggest companies in the country retain their focus on the domestic market and that is where biggest profits remain to be made. Basket-case country, is not an image that these achievements project not only to the globe, but also to our own population.

Achievements in all these sectors, and a greater push from within has also seen a gradual reduction in our use of aid in public expenditure, and in turn, Bangladesh has been one of the most efficient countries to repay debt servicing in the world. However, this hasn't worked well enough to improve the supposed image that has to be carefully nurtured by the government, since corruption has emerged as the biggest and loudest point for economic complacency by the international community.

Corruption, the biggest visible concern to observers does not usually get the socio-political attention that it requires, and one that would've helped dispel the newest weapon to attack the nation as a "basket case." The recent Transparency International Bangladesh report observes that petty corruption in the state sector is the single biggest culprit for elevating us to the top of the podium once again. However, as researchers have been saying for years, and the World Bank has been advocating this recently, that it is not the petty corruption but the large-scale corruption that is stalling and distorting the state processes.

The sectors targeted as petty corruption havens have, somewhat insipidly, interconnected not only in the TIB report but even more visibly, in the metropolitan societies. In these societies, the concentration of power in a matrix made up of politicians and big business, has pushed a large number of state employees who are endowed with the least bit of authority to utilise that space of their power for mainly monetary gain. This is, however, where most of the visibility is restricted. But, the crucial parallax lies in our re-location for perspective when the corrupted becomes the corrupter. Let's say, for example, the corrupted turned corrupter has to grease a few hands in addition to the required fee for essential institutions like hospitals, schools, transportation, not the least the state's law enforcement agencies. The excess gained by the initial corruption, in addition to their wages, becomes dispersed in all directions, but importantly, is still kept within the economy. This 'black economy' in a way runs parallel to the legal, ethical and accountable economic system, but is not recognised in national economic figures, rather, it is brushed off as negative sums.

Furthermore, inviting greater consumerism into the country in the last thirteen years has been favourable to corruption, pushing it upwards. This has occurred since the employees of state-institutions are being fed with a global standard of consumerism (with the advent of cable tv), but, with third-world country remuneration. Leaving a vast gulf between the income of the employee and the monetary ability to pay for consumerist-requirements of their families, say foreign-made computers, clothing and cosmetics. A requirement that has to be consistently satiated by a "side-income." In fact, in some rural areas these days, potential grooms are not chosen based on their base incomes, but are judged to be a secure destination for a bride only if he possesses a healthy "side-income!"

These two points, under orthodox terms, would be considered somewhat differently the cycle of corruption currency as a sign the country is losing money, while the consumerism is a sign of prosperity. These perceptions would lead an observer to believe that Bangladesh perhaps is a "basket case". However, the cycle of corruption currency, remains within the country and in some way or another would be injected into the economic cycle. As some agencies are advocating now, this unaccounted cycle needs to be incorporated into the accountable sphere.

This is the local turn that one has to take, albeit a big turn to look somewhat positively at corruption, but it has to be taken nevertheless, to understand how in spite of the corruption that has beset Bangladesh's path to security and prosperity since liberation, the country has been peculiarly resilient with the mettle to persevere that it inherits from its ecology and its population. In our epoch of survival, there is no room for foreign depictions of who or what we are. Lending any credibility to such an image could work as a self-fullfiling prophesy and distract us from looking at the demonstrations of our endurance in agriculture, industry and education, and our perseverance in the daily struggles to re-invent our strategies to subsist, prosper and build on promises made to the nation in 1971 and 1991.
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The writer is staff reporter of The Daily Star.