One reason Bangladesh has done better than its regional neighbours in improving its economy even during the raging Covid-19 pandemic is its determination to face the bitter facts of life and prepare for hard times well in advance. It has not been surprising to find Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reminding her countrymen of the serious challenges they face in the days ahead and the sacrifices that need to be made.
The contrast between this and the gung-ho attitude towards the short/long-term future emanating from Islamabad or New Delhi is too stark to be missed. In Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan talks of his country’s economy being stronger than that of India. This comes even as Pakistan struggles against the worst inflation it has seen in recent decades and public anger against their rulers’ mounts sharply.
As for India, ruling party leaders proudly point at the ever-rising stock market indices and the growing number of zillionaires who compete with the world’s richest. Economists who point out that over 600 million people are in acute financial distress and farmers/jobless workers continue to commit suicide in ever larger numbers get excoriated in the mainstream media.
In Dhaka and at various international capitals, Hasina never ceases to harp on the problems Bangladesh faces on account of global warming and the crippling burden of a million-plus displaced Rohingyas on its territory. Unlike Indian or Pakistani leaders, she does not resort to public one-upmanship, being only too well aware of the dark days ahead.
This despite the consistently confident assertions of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions that in terms of rising per capita GDP incomes and social welfare indices, Bangladesh will remain well ahead of its regional neighbours including India and Pakistan during the next 5/6 years.
Dhaka-based policymakers, going beyond conventional optimism among a section of economists touting that 2022 will see a turnaround for the better worldwide, are telling their compatriots that the world was about to slip into an even worse recession in the short term.
Keeping aside the good words and praise from various international agencies, the Bangladeshi media is expressing dire concern about the immediate future: alarm bells are ringing over the recent negative trends in the performance of its garments producing sector. A mainstay of the domestic economy as well as exports, this sector finds it hard to stay where it is at, never mind progressing.
As a leading financial reporter recently said during a Bangladesh TV interview, ‘The coming recession would hit us hard. Most countries in the world have been reporting shrinking economies, which means fewer export orders for us. In developing our fledgling industries at their present state, we cannot do very much. Ours is still an agriculture-based economy. No wonder Prime Minister Hasina has urged people to co-operate with the administration in developing the rural economy.’
For the record, Bangladesh authorities have plans to bring more land under cultivation through irrigation and going in for more cash crops wherever possible. They intend to utilise existing water resources, by introducing fisheries in every available pond, no matter their size. ‘Maintaining food/nutritional security for the poor will be a major challenge in the near future,’ the journalist said.
The Awami league government has announced schemes to help peasants/cultivators by providing them with as many inputs as possible in terms of fertilizers, pesticides and strengthening organic farming. Existing subsidies could be strengthened to provide medium-term relief for cultivators. This preparatory purchasing /orders placing for future supplies with selected foreign firms have begun.
One analyst was cautiously optimistic: ‘If these measures are seriously implemented in all of our 64 districts, there might be some relief for the poorer millions!’ The seriousness and commitment among officials cannot be missed. Instructions have been issued to concerned district authorities to draw up a list of the poor/very poor people urgently in need of official help.
These contrasts again, with the hide-and-seek approach adopted by both GOI and West Bengal Government, to take only one example. Opposition leaders belonging to the Congress, the CPI(M), the AAP or the SP in Delhi or Uttar Pradesh — have all accused the ruling BJP and Trinamool Congress of concealing the extent of the financial distress among the poor. Recent pronouncements made by the Supreme Court, as well as the charges made against ruling authorities in many states in prominently, reported PILs, tell their own story.
Except in Left-ruled Kerala, the general advice given by leading economists not aligned with the ruling establishment, to GOI to introduce immediate cash relief for the acutely distressed still remains unheeded. The official emphasis has been on announcing fresh loans, to people who are already indebted to various official agencies or microfinance institutions.
But doubts persist, not just among opposition politicians belonging to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party or Muslim hardliners. Economists critical of the Government remain as vocal as always about the startling financial disparities among Bangladeshis. One negative estimate says that over 30 million are already below the officially UN-defined described poverty line and their numbers would increase.
On a lighter note, old jokes about there being two major cultures in Bangladesh has been revived. Select members of the minuscule minority smoke’ only 555 cigarettes while the overwhelming majority cannot go beyond the good old Bangladesh bidi!’ Just as on Dhaka roads, one sees Mercedes and BMWs — and only rickshaws for public transport!
For the record, unlike India and Pakistan, Bangladesh did not hesitate to scrap its usual massive Poila Boishakh (Bengali New Year celebrations) programmes, not to mention enforcing rigid anti-covid norms during the recent municipal polls.
The well attended political meetings in different Indian states and the so-called cultural gatherings in Bengal where even organisers do not wear masks, highlight the cheap cynicism that affects common people when they know that regardless of the rules, their misdemeanours will go unpunished by ruling establishments running on vote bank populist considerations, not objectives of social/ peoples’ welfare. (IPA Service)