Whither development, our cherished dream since Independence?

Bangladesh. Photo Credit-Google

To us development is a very tantalising word and a long cherished dream in our national life. This dream is now 40 years old. But it seems that we are still not matured enough to achieve this change in our life. There is a great confusion regarding our living standard or our status of development, whether we are developed, developing or underdeveloped. If you are accustomed to listening to political rhetoric, I am sure, you will agree that we are going to emerge as a world economic power very soon! It would be very true, if you see eye to eye with the government party, but if you belong to the opposition, it would be empty talk. But, if you are like me a "Sadharon janagan", than we cannot be so optimistic or too pessimistic. The pathetic truth is that our development is stalled.

Normally, development means ensuring an acceptable standard of living for all people by improving their economic and social conditions. In context of poverty, it is eradication of poverty. In context of child labour, it is about protecting them from illegal employment. In case of illiteracy, it is ensuring education for all. Reaching a decent standard of living for all people, including giving everyone access to the basic rights- healthy food, housing, equal employment opportunity, standard health care, education, safety and security. The aim of development is to help people become more productive and to improve the quality of life of individuals, families, communities and the country as a whole. 

In this country development is one of the most pronounced words. Every day at least a hundred seminars on development issues are held in the capital city.

Development is a complex and difficult trajectory to go. A country must pay sufficient attention to social, economic, political, cultural and environmental issues to ensure development that would be sustainable and beneficial to all.

In case of Bangladesh, development is all about eradication of poverty. Poverty is more than a lack of money. It also means an uncertainty of the future and living one day at a time in great uncertainty. Poverty means lack of basic rights: nutrition, health, quality education, freedom of speech, and freedom of representation. It is about being invisible in society, voiceless in decision-making and powerless in the face of discrimination to improve their living conditions on their own.

In Bangladesh, poverty is the mother of all misfortunes. In a landscape of poverty many things come to light-from the quality of public services to unemployment, illiteracy to child labour, malnutrition to incompetence and corruption to lack of transparency. Our children are not getting even the basic, let alone quality education, our population is not productive enough, our women are not empowered sufficiently, our public services are not transparent enough, and our health care facilities are a mockery of the name.

None of the above is isolated. Each of them is related to the other. As our children are not getting education they remain less or unproductive. Because they are illiterate they are not conscious about their rights. As parents they will certainly live without jobs or have below standard income and live in abject poverty, and will also raise their children in starvation and illiteracy. The children will grow in malnutrition as part of an incapable and unproductive population and certainly would not have jobs or have underpaid jobs and become young parents themselves like their parents and will father another generation of unproductive population. It is a vicious circle devastating us and threatening our future. 

Despite vociferous talks on poverty alleviation more than 40 per cent of our total population still live under poverty line, and 25 per cent live in abject poverty. According to HDR (Human Development Report) -2009 of UNDP, Bangladesh ranked 112th in respect of human poverty, whereas, countries like India, Pakistan, Bhutan and Maldives ranked 88th, 101th, 102th, and 66th respectively.

It is a constitutional obligation of the government to ensure a decent living standard for all the population by alleviating poverty and ensuring basic rights. But majority of our population are denied a decent standard of living. Here development is all about lectures, big political rhetoric and unaccountable activities of the Non Government Organisations (NGO). No major initiative of the government to address this crucial problem has yet been taken. Even now, addressing poverty remains a great challenge, mainly due to non-integrated policy, ineffective strategy and resource constraints. 

To achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and alleviate poverty, the government has a number of programmes such as, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), social safety net, VGF and educational programmes.

Unfortunately, all these initiatives of the government get bogged down and fail to achieve the expected results. Now, the word development has become synonymous with NGO activities, as the government remains a mere spectator.

Poverty is now the name of a profitable business in the country. It inspires the dream of glory and fame. Everyone wants to be a hero either by helping the hapless or by helping himself or herself in the name of the philanthropy. It seems that everyone is interested in social work and wants to help the poor in all possible ways, but in reality it is different. Most of the NGOs giving micro-credit indiscriminately have no clear target, as to how they actually want to help the poor. Things start with giving a certain amount of loan at a certain interest rate and ends up leaving the loan-takers in a worse condition than before. It is easy to be paralysed by the enormousness of the initiatives, but it seems that our policymakers have no or little time to think on the matter twice. 

Major setbacks for development are: The lack of participation in decision and policymaking. Most of the policies related to poverty alleviation are formulated without taking any suggestions from the people living in poverty. 

Secondly, absence of integrated development framework-NGOs work on its own, while the government follows its own programmes. But for expected result an integrated work plan is needed.

Corruption and lack of transparency, imposed development policies by development partners, inefficient and insincere policy-makers, un-integrated mass initiatives, absence of proper monitoring cell for non-government development initiatives, exclusion of victims from policymaking, and political divisiveness are some of the other major problems thwarting development.

Development is a long cherished dream in our national life. We fought against Pakistani occupation forces with the dream of ensuring a decent life for our people. 

Even today that remains unfulfilled. Still challenges lie ahead. To us solution is always accidental. But in reality it is a process, systematic, logical and integrated. Since poverty is a tough enemy to defeat, an unplanned and un-integrated mass initiative can make the situation worse.As a nation we are now passing a crucial moment. The deadline for fulfilling MDG is knocking at the door. Standing at this crucial moment, time is now to take historic steps. So that we can tell our future generations that we are leaving this country-a safe and developed nation for them.

P.S-the article first published in The Financial Express. Here published by author