{"id":17007,"date":"2018-05-24T10:34:08","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T05:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/jwt2015\/?p=17007"},"modified":"2018-05-24T10:34:08","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T05:34:08","slug":"the-bangladesh-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/studykit\/currentaffairs\/daily-articles\/the-bangladesh-success-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bangladesh success story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite dismal initial economic conditions, Bangladesh has unfolded a new and remarkable Cinderella story as its economy has staged a turn-around, leapfrogging over its much more affluent peers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bangladesh is reportedly on the verge of becoming the next Asian tiger, while Pakistan \u2014 arguably its political nemesis \u2014 has been chasing that mirage almost ever since the former\u2019s birth. After a brief and abortive flirtation with socialism in the early 1970s, Pakistan seems to cosy up to the ambitions of its old and strident ally, China, which has agreed to invest over $50 billion in a massive infrastructure-building programme that is in consonance with the country\u2019s master-builder Nawaz Sharif\u2019s investment strategy.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Asian tiger\u2019s dream was personified by Nawaz Sharif, the country\u2019s thrice-elected prime minister, who is in the midst of his worst political troubles at the moment. However, both Bhutto\u2019s romance with socialism and Nawaz Sharif\u2019s fascination for making Pakistan an Asian tiger (which he proudly used as an electoral symbol for his political party) have been thwarted by the establishment. The West Pakistani ruling elite \u2014 despite belonging to a minority province \u2014 treated the people of East Pakistan with contempt and considered its economy as a drag on the country\u2019s overall economic growth. Many in Pakistan celebrated Bangladesh\u2019s separation as \u201cgood riddance\u201d and a good omen for resuming West Pakistan\u2019s fast-track growth trajectory which had an abortive run during Gen. Ayub Khan\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

In the initial years of its existence, in the midst of political and economic instability, the Pakistani junta\u2019s prophecy was beginning to prove right and Bangladesh was considered as an economic basket case \u2014 devastated by a costly war of liberation, persistent poverty, famine, floods and cyclones \u2014 for many years after independence in 1971. The international community rushed to its rescue, flooding it with aid and bringing corruption in tow.<\/p>\n

Despite such dismal initial economic conditions, Bangladesh has unfolded a new and remarkable Cinderella story as its economy has staged a turn-around, leapfrogging over its initially much more affluent peers, India and Pakistan, who have been vaingloriously fighting over the dominance of the South Asian region, with callous disregard for the welfare of their own people.<\/p>\n

When Bangladesh\u2019s annual GDP growth exceeded Pakistan\u2019s for the first time in2006, most analysts treated it as a mere blip, but the year has proved to be an inflection point, according to Prof. Kaushik Basu, a former Chief Economist of the World Bank. Since then the country\u2019s GDP has consistently exceeded Pakistan\u2019s by roughly 2.5 percentage points per year and in 2018, its growth rate is likely to surpass India\u2019s. Moreover, Bangladesh\u2019s population growth of 1.1 per cent per year is nearly half of Pakistan\u2019s 2 per cent rate, which boosted its annual per GDP growth rate over Pakistan\u2019s by approximately 3.3 percentage points per year.<\/p>\n

In a recent article in World Development, Prof. Wahiduddin Mahmud, a distinguished economist of Bangladesh (and a former student of this author at QAU in 1969-70) has carefully analysed the story of Bangladesh\u2019s growth renaissance \u2014 which started after its \u201clost decade\u201d of 1970s \u2014 by dividing it into two periods. In the first period, from 1980 until the early 1990s, growth was lackluster, as the foundational structure of its grass-roots-based development strategy and governance reforms were being laid. But it accelerated after 1995 and remained sustained in the new millennium. As a result, it overtook Pakistan\u2019s growth rates in the mid-1990s, and maintained the growth advantage afterward, although it has been well below that of the average Asian developing economy and India. Bangladesh\u2019s growth momentum has not declined and has performed better than the average developing economy, despite the worsening global economic environment since 2007-2008.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh now consistently ranks among the top 10 nations in gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Its economy grew 7.28 per cent in the past fiscal year, for example, exceeding the government\u2019s already optimistic projections. Bangladesh\u2019s annual GDP rose from $100 billion in 2009 to $250 billion in 2017, an eye-popping 150 per cent increase. The rapid expansion, coupled with sustained poverty reduction, put it on the fast-track and well within reach of its Asian tiger economy aspirations.<\/p>\n

Like all dynamic economies, Bangladesh also continually diversified its economy. Much of its early growth came from the ready-made garment industry, which remains the most dynamic segment of its industrial sector and continues to serve as its engine of growth. More significantly, the sector has proved to be a boon for women\u2019s employment and empowerment, which is the bedrock of Bangladesh\u2019s model of development, epitomized by the (Nobel laureate Dr Yunus-led) Grameen and (Magsaysay award winning Fazle Abed-led) BRAC movements, covering almost all the districts of Bangladesh and almost 80 per cent of the rural population and focused primarily on women. Their efforts have had a transformative effect on Bangladesh\u2019s social indicators summarised by the rise in average life expectancy which has now touched 72 years, surpassing those for India and Pakistan by 4 and 6 years, respectively.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh has achieved significantly higher progress, compared to economies sharing similar levels of income, in terms of a wide range of social indicators: female education, child health, and fertility. Bangladesh has, since the 1970s, managed to reverse its abnormally high record of average total births per woman \u2014 and since the 1980s, it has even outperformed countries with similar levels of income. Between 1980 and 2010, Bangladesh\u2019s ranking for fertility data within the developing world improved rapidly while only modest improvements were achieved by Pakistan and India. Between 1980 and 2010, the ratio of women using contraception jumped from 10 per cent to nearly 60 per cent, while the 2005 figures for Pakistan and India were 30 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively. As a result, fertility also declined progressively compared to that in peer countries, with favourable impact on per capita incomes and poverty reduction; it is estimated that by 2010, women in Bangladesh were giving birth to an average of two fewer children than in other economies at the same level of income.<\/p>\n

No less impressive was Bangladesh\u2019s performance in the health sector, especially when compared to Pakistan\u2019s dismal and shocking record in recent years. While Pakistan recently hit the headlines for having the worst infant mortality rate in the world \u2014 one in 22 new-born babies having a chance of dying within a month of their birth \u2014 a figure worse than even that for very poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa. In Bangladesh, high infant and under-five mortality rates became history in the 1990s, well before the country saw a large-scale reduction in poverty. Preventive measures such as immunization have also played a key role in Bangladesh\u2019s phenomenal success in the health sector \u2014 the rapid increase in the immunization rate from one per cent in the early 1980s to over 70 per cent within 10 years was a development that UNICEF has called a near miracle.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Bangladesh\u2019s gender gap in primary and secondary education disappeared by the mid-1990s. Since the late 1990s, Bangladesh has outperformed other comparator countries in terms of female primary and secondary schooling, although it still lags behind at the tertiary level. Bangladesh was enrolling over 7 per cent more girls in primary education than other economies at the same level of income, while Pakistan has the dubious distinction of standing second in the world ranking of out-of-school children with only Nigeria ahead of it, as revealed by a UNICEF researcher in a Lahore seminar on April, 25.<\/p>\n

Overall, the empirical evidence shows an unmistakable trend: that Bangladesh has steadily progressed over the past four decades. In particular, overcoming the gender disadvantage in primary and secondary education by the mid-1990s was path-breaking since Bangladesh \u201cbelongs to a regional belt, stretching across North Africa and South Asia, which is characterized by patriarchal family structures along with female exclusion and deprivation\u201d.<\/p>\n

What is more surprising about the Bangladesh story is that, unlike in Pakistan, the remarkable achievements in the field of economic growth and human development were not achieved through large public expenditures on mega development projects financed through domestic or international borrowing, but through the mobilisation of resources at the grass roots level involving microfinancing and with the active support of civil society and a committed and concerned intelligentsia. Pakistan, and to a lesser extent India too, relied on a much more traditional, elitist, misogynist and exclusivist model of development, which pays scant attention to the problems \u2013 and, even existence \u2013 of the poor, the downtrodden and the minorities in general and women in particular. These inherent biases in the social and economic dystopia that afflicts the two relatively more affluent South Asian siblings, have enabled Bangladesh to catch up with the long-run development marathon, the trophy for which is still up for grabs.<\/p>\n

No unique factor can be identified for the success of Bangladesh in the current lap of the race. Instead, it seems to be the confluence of several factors \u2014 largely institutional in nature \u2014 that occurred simultaneously to eventuate what Wahiduddin Mahmud, understatedly, describes as Bangladesh \u201cdevelopment surprise\u201d. Whether it would mutate into a \u201cmiracle\u201d any time soon, would depend on a number of factors \u2013 domestic, regional and international.<\/p>\n

By: S.M. Naseem
\nSource: http:\/\/tns.thenews.com.pk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite dismal initial economic conditions, Bangladesh has unfolded a new and remarkable Cinderella story as its economy has staged a turn-around, leapfrogging over its much more affluent peers Bangladesh is reportedly on the verge of becoming the next Asian tiger, while Pakistan \u2014 arguably its political nemesis \u2014 has been chasing that mirage almost ever …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":17009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5285],"tags":[497,257,9668,358,258],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}