Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Oct 31, 2019

A guiding light for Bangladesh's marginalized communities



Sister Salome Nanuar, CSC (Photo: Rock Ronald Rozario)

As a child Salome Nanuar assumed she would end up becoming a poor and marginalized tea estate worker like her parents.

She was born in 1971, the third of six children of an ethnic Kharia family, at Barmachhera village at Srimangal, a tea plantation hub in the Moulvibazar district of northeastern Bangladesh.
Nearly five decades on, Salome has become a Holy Cross nun, dedicating her life as a teacher, catechist and hostels, in the service of socio-economically downtrodden communities, including tea workers.
Sister Salome’s father died when she was at grade four in primary school.
Thanks to support from her two elder brothers and sister in-laws, all of them tea workers, she was able to continue her education.
The biggest support came from the local St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, the oldest and largest parish in predominantly tribal Sylhet Diocese, set up in 1950 by Holy Cross missionary priest Father Vincent Delevi.


Nov 7, 2012

The path through the fields: From 'basket case' to model

The road to development has been hard and long, but Bangladesh has made it.


ON THE outskirts of the village of Shibaloy, just past the brick factory, the car slows to let a cow lumber out of its way. It is a good sign. Twenty years ago there was no brick factory, or any other industry, in this village 60 kilometres west of Dhaka; there were few cows, and no cars. The road was a raised path too narrow for anything except bicycles.

Now, Shibaloy has just opened its first primary school; it is installing piped water and the young men of the village gather to show off their motorcycles at the tea house. “I have been a microcredit customer for 17 years,” says Romeja, the matriarch of an extended family. “When I started, my house was broken; I slept on the streets. Now I have three cows, an acre of land, solar panels on the roof and 75,000 taka ($920) in fixed-rate deposits.”

Bangladesh was the original development “basket case”, the demeaning term used in Henry Kissinger’s state department for countries that would always depend on aid. Its people are crammed onto a flood plain swept by cyclones and without big mineral and other natural resources. It suffered famines in 1943 and 1974 and military coups in 1975, 1982 and 2007. When it split from Pakistan in 1971 many observers doubted that it could survive as an independent state.

In some ways, those who doubted Bangladesh’s potential were right. Economic growth since the 1970s has been poor; the country’s politics have been unremittingly wretched. Yet over the past 20 years, Bangladesh has made some of the biggest gains in the basic condition of people’s lives ever seen anywhere. Between 1990 and 2010 life expectancy rose by 10 years, from 59 to 69 (see chart 1). Bangladeshis now have a life expectancy four years longer than Indians, despite the Indians being, on average, twice as rich. Even more remarkably, the improvement in life expectancy has been as great among the poor as the rich.

Bangladesh has also made huge gains in education and health. More than 90% of girls enrolled in primary school in 2005, slightly more than boys. That was twice the female enrolment rate in 2000. Infant mortality has more than halved, from 97 deaths per thousand live births in 1990 to 37 per thousand in 2010 (see table). Over the same period child mortality fell by two-thirds and maternal mortality fell by three-quarters. It now stands at 194 deaths per 100,000 births. In 1990 women could expect to live a year less than men; now they can expect to live two years more.

The most dramatic period of improvement in human health in history is often taken to be that of late-19th-century Japan, during the remarkable modernisation of the Meiji transition. Bangladesh’s record on child and maternal mortality has been comparable in scale.

These improvements are not a simple result of increases in people’s income. Bangladesh remains a poor country, with a GDP per head of $1,900 at purchasing-power parity.

For the first decades of its independent history Bangladesh’s economy grew by a paltry 2% a year. Since 1990 its GDP has been rising at a more respectable 5% a year, in real terms. That has helped reduce the percentage of people below the poverty line from 49% in 2000 to 32% in 2010. Still, Bangladeshi growth has been slower than India’s, which for most of the past 20 years grew at around 8% a year. Nevertheless the gains in its development have been greater. The belief that growth brings development with it—the “Washington consensus”—is often criticised on the basis that some countries have had good growth but little poverty reduction. Bangladesh embodies the inverse of that: it has had disproportionate poverty reduction for its amount of growth.

Read the original story here Bangladesh and Development
Source: The Economist

Jul 23, 2012

Bridge of dreams turns bridge of sighs


Padma Bridge will throw lifeline to millions of people and economy of Bangladesh (Photo: www.aecom.com)



Bangladesh has been abuzz with rumors and counter-rumors since last Friday, when the World Bank cancelled its US$ 1.2 billion funding of the country’s longest and most ambitious bridge project.

The Padma Multipurpose Bridge was intended to set up direct road and rail links between Dhaka, the capital, and the southwest. Crossing the mighty Padma River, which is fed by both the Ganges and the Jamuna on its way to the Bay of Bengal, the 6.15 km bridge would undoubtedly bring a host of advantages.

It would save literally millions of hours every year in travel time, cutting the length of a typical journey by as much as 100 km; it would save numerous lives, which are frequently lost in crossing the broad, fast-flowing river by boat and ferry; and it would open up the undeveloped southwest region. It has been estimated that, once operational, it would create a GDP increase of at least 1.2 percent.

This ‘bridge of dreams’ was a centerpiece in the list of pre-election pledges made by the ruling Awami League when it came to power in 2008. The party promised to open the bridge before the end of its five-year tenure in 2013.

Its successful completion could well be a decisive factor in the party winning a second term, for the first time in the history of this fledgling democracy. But we can only speculate on that because, so far, it has failed to start its construction, let alone its completion.

The World Bank has cut off the funds for reasons that are only too familiar in Bangladesh. Its fateful statement of June 29 said it had “credible evidence corroborated by a variety of sources” that some

Bangladeshi government officials, along with executives of the Canadian contractors SNC Lavalin and private individuals, were involved in a “high-level corruption conspiracy.”

Predictably, the government spluttered with indignation, describing the decision as “unacceptable, disgraceful and mysterious,” and demanded a review. This has proved fruitless, as the World Bank has now underlined its determination to pull out, with its new chief Dr. Jim Yong Kim reportedly saying that quitting is the right thing to do.

It would seem that the co-funding promised by the Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency is now also in jeopardy.

The government does have other options. The Islamic Development Bank has expressed an interest, and there is a strong possibility of investment from Malaysia. But analysts say the project will now be much more costly, to a point that may well make it prohibitive.

And in a country where corruption is endemic, the fact remains that no investigation has taken place. Former communications minister Abul Hossain was removed from his post to appease the World Bank. Apart from that, there has been an unsurprising reluctance from the government to take any stern action.

Corruption is a daily reality in Bangladesh, a country where half of its 160 million people earn little more than 50 cents per day, and almost half are illiterate. These are the very people who could benefit from the bridge, as it would bring opportunities, work and income by opening up the southwest’s undeveloped seaports, as well as much needed relief on the many occasions when the region is flooded.

Was the World Bank right to punish a whole, impoverished nation for the misdeeds of a few individuals? Will the government ever admit the existence of corruption in this project? Will it ever take a stand against it?

*This post was originally published on UCAN on July 4, 2012*

দক্ষিণ এশিয়ায় ভোটের রাজনীতি এবং খ্রিস্টান সম্প্রদায়

Bangladeshi Christians who account for less than half percent of some 165 million inhabitants in the country pray during an Easter Mass in D...