Editorial
Bangladesh ranked 88th
Not that good, but still encouraging
Bangladesh has been ranked 88th among the "best" 100 countries in the world by the Newsweek, an international newsmagazine, which undertook the rather interesting survey. The rankings are based on indicators like education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness and political environment.
Though the 88th position does not speak very highly of our achievements, but it is still good news that we have found a place in the upper half of the nations across the globe. Two other countries in the region have done better than usSri Lanka has been ranked 66th while India finished 78th.
The indicators that the survey is based can of course give a clear picture of how a country is functioning. Education and health are two areas where a developed and a welfare-oriented country has to perform very well. Sri Lanka and India have an edge over us in these two sectors and that has pushed their positions up the scale. Quality of life is also a sore point in our scheme of things with the rich-poor gap being too big. So, we are still grappling with many socio-economic challenges which if met in the right manner should push us further up the ladder.
Economic competitiveness is something that all developing nations are trying to achieve to survive in this age of globalisation. Bangladesh was performing reasonably well in RMG, but recent developments might have lowered our position in the international market.
Political environment is perhaps the most important pointer of how a country is being governed. It is a yardstick of democratization and fulfillment of the basic rights of people. Bangladesh has had a democratic government for nearly 20 years, except for brief periods when caretaker governments took charge. However, political environment of the country is still not stable or tranquil enough to be compared with the mature democracies in the western world. Political acrimony or even intra-party conflicts still stand in the way of consolidation of democracy.
On the positive side, the country maintains a healthy growth rate of GDP and encourages foreign investment in the true spirit of open market economy.
The peaceful Nordic countries have finished ahead of even the most advanced western countries. That only shows that social stability and peace are two of the most important criteria used by the Newsweek for judging a country's performance. It is true that social stability contributes to enhancing the quality of life. However, for obvious reasons some societies are more volatile and less predictable, but that does not mean that they cannot be the very best in the world.
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