THE gap between rich and poor people continues to widen in Bangladesh, which also ranks among those countries with the fastest-growing number of very wealthy people. Bangladesh, according to the Poverty and Shared Prosperity-2018 report by the World Bank, has been ranked fifth behind India, Nigeria, Congo and Ethiopia for extreme poverty. The report says Bangladesh is home to 24.1 million extremely poor people who earn less than US$1.90 a day, the international poverty threshold. This comes against the backdrop of the country’s remarkable progress in reducing the poverty rate in recent decades.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the poverty rate fell from 44.2 percent in 1991 to about 15 percent in 2016-17 because of 6 percent annual growth during this period. Bangladesh will record the third-quickest growth in the number of high-net-worth individuals in the world in the next five years. The widening gulf between rich and poor shows a disparity in the distribution of wealth and an unfair share of economic dividends.
The country is progressing fast to be a sustainable economy from a lacklustre economy but the problem is that wealth distribution is not fair enough and discrimination is still high. There is also a tendency of getting rich by adopting illegal and immoral means. The economic success story is overshadowed by a manifold rise in wealth disparity. Rights activists have sought the government’s intervention in the disbursement of economic dividends to the poor and ultra poor and illegal accumulation of wealth. The people who amass massive wealth through irregularities, corruption and crimes such as drug peddling and smuggling remain above the law for their economic and political connection.
Undeniably, both the reports reflect the reality of Bangladesh where rich are getting richer, often immorally and criminally, and the poor remain neglected and discriminated. The country still has a long way to go to ensure a reasonable wage for working-class people, a just taxation policy, expenditure on the social sector and a proportionate increase in employment. No development can be sustainable if we fail to reduce the gap between rich and poor.
