Rebuilding Bangladesh
Photo: Amdadul Huq / Driknews
Bangladesh faces many challenges. As a small developing country with a colonial past we have to transform our economy from that of a backward primary producer to an industrial country that fully adds value to our natural and agricultural resources. We have to develop our human resources optimally and also to build up the capacity to use them fully and effectively, converting the brain drain situation into a “brain gain” one. Our products and services must reach and maintain international standards to meet our own needs, and also capture foreign markets in a highly competitive world market situation. In the context of the emerging global financial and economic crisis and a collapsing market this task becomes more difficult. However, in the process a major impediment, the dogma of neo-liberalism seems to be getting cast aside once and for all, so that the country can build on the foundation that has been laid in the last three years. Bangladesh has to emerge from poverty (which leads to problems like malnutrition, inadequate housing, lack of clean water and proper sanitation, unemployment and underemployment, poor health and so on) and become a developed country as quickly as possible. Despite many limitations, Bangladesh has made reasonably good progress and already achieved several of the Millennium Development Goals (which are scheduled for 2015), but we need to do better. When economic and social development, in the competitive world of today, is technology based, and the poverty gap is a technology gap, it is by generating and using both cutting edge technology and appropriate technology that we can bridge this gap and emerge from poverty. In the context of the global economic crisis when local SME production has to be considerably increased, especially to reduce imports, the need for both types of technology increases. The major challenge is to generate the technology to produce good quality products at the lowest possible price. In view of the emerging world food crisis, agricultural productivity has to be maximised so that Bangladesh becomes self sufficient in food and the scientists have to play an important role there too. It is time we considered seriously the possibility to progressively give up the use of imported synthetic chemical inputs and shift to organic and natural farming, not only from environmental and health considerations, but also from the economic angle.
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