His Cambridge friend Amartya Sen became his close partner in this journey. Other luminaries like Paul Streeten, Gus Ranis, Frances Stewart joined this core group. Coincidentally Amartya won his Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1998 for his contribution to advance the notion of human development, best captured by the first sentence of the 1990 Human Development Report, that ‘people are the wealth of nations.
The government has every reason to celebrate that Bangladesh has fulfilled during its time in power the UN eligibility criteria to become a developing country. The country will now work to graduate itself to the status of developing nation by 2024 as it has come out from the Least Developed Country (LDC) status. Bangladesh unkindly bracketed as bottomless basket when it attained independence.
But reaching success to become a developing country the politics of the country has to be changed like many other policy changes.
Indulging in corruption and not to be a government of democratically accountability will not be helpful to meet the new challenges. It is the result of many years of slow economic growth under various governments. And major contribution was made by the sector in our agriculture based economy.
Criticising the German think-tank for terming Bangladesh an autocracy is not fully justified. The present government believes in democracy of development and that is not democracy.
The present government knows it is not a properly elected government but that is no concern for the government. It is not willing to hold free election by resigning from power the same way it is done in other parliamentary systems. Its attack on the judiciary to deny its independence is also not a secret. The government does not believe that there should be opposition in the parliament. The government’s intolerance to opposition politics outside is for everybody to see. The people are not assured of their lives free from fear. So this is not democracy. True we are not yet under absolute autocracy. But the bureaucrats know only the autocratic way.
The government needs to be democratised if it wants to be known as democratic government. Let it start with free election and faith in public support.
Let us come back to the discussion on Bangladesh graduating towards a developing country. The challenges of becoming a developing country will be much harder. There will pressure for democracy and transparency in public expenditure.
The banking scandals are one example of what we need to shed to be truly developing-the corruption. Big corruption exists primarily in the public sector of our economy must be halted. We can invest billions to build highways and flyovers but if we cannot reduce corruption the overall costs of development go up.
Cleaning up the financial sector is essential towards reducing the costs of investment for true investors. Bangladesh’s woven garments are losing competitiveness in the global market mainly for longer lead time, poor backward linkage, and insufficient gas and port facilities – so more investment in this sector is essentially important if we are to remain competitive in the international market. We would lose GSP facilities and we have to overcome it improving efficiency and reducing cost of doing business.
We have also to strengthening the democratic process to prepare ourselves for good and accountable governance. It needs an inclusive election to avoid factors which may cause economic slow down. The UN body has also cautioned us about the need for acquiring the ability to meet the challenges of becoming a developing country by 2024. We need national unity and not divisive politics for us to go forward together. Political instability is no way to achieve steady progress.
