News from Bangladesh-Updates and Discussion

[Skies]

14th Asian Art Biennale held in Bangladesh's capital

English.news.cn 2010-10-12 20:12:47



DHAKA, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The 14th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh, an international exhibition of visual art, is being held in Bangladeshi National Art Gallery in capital Dhaka on Tuesday.

More than 300 artworks -- including paintings, drawings, sculptures, printmakings, installations, woodcuts and works in mixed mediums -- by 144 foreign and local artists from some 27 countries of Asia and the Pacific region are being displayed in the international gala which kicked off on Oct. 8.

Kamal Lohani, chief coordinator of the exhibition, told Xinhua on Tuesday that the Asian Art Biennale will help the Bangladeshi people approach the arts from other countries.

He said "We organized this Asian Art Biennale to create friendship with artists from different countries, and at the same time enrich our young artists to know the standard of international exhibition."

Tarique Hasan, a university student who was visiting the exhibition, told Xinhua that the exhibition can let the Bangladeshi people know what the other countries are doing.

He said "It is an international exhibition. There are several artists' works are being displayed in this event. I am gathering knowledge about the other countries' art works."

The month-long exhibition will continue until Nov. 6. Bangladesh has been hosting the biennial exhibition aimed at showcasing the artistic heritage and contemporary art in Asia and kindred regions since 1981.

14th Asian Art Biennale held in Bangladesh's capital

 

[Skies]

Official presentation of the Inditex Spanish Language Chair at the University of Dhaka (Bangladesh)
13.10.2010

A ceremony today marked the presentation of the Inditex Spanish Language Chair at the University of Dhaka, with the Bangladesh Minister of Education, Inditex's General Counsel and Secretary of the Board and the rectors of the universities of Dhaka, A Coruña and Santiago in attendance. Courses will be held at a newly-built university building designed and financed by Inditex. The minister and top university officials officially opened the facility yesterday. The building will house a Spanish Language Library, whose materials were also provided by Inditex.

The Inditex Spanish Language Chair was created following an agreement signed in May between Inditex, Dhaka University, the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and the University of A Coruña (UDC).Thanks to this agreement, the aforementioned universities in Spain's Galicia region will provide teaching staff to the University of Dhaka for classes in Spanish language and culture. Additionally, the project calls for Dhaka University professors and researchers to travel to Spain for educational enrichment in these subjects. Inditex will also implement a grant programme for graduate and post-graduate students of the Bangladeshi university.

The Dhaka University academic chair is just one of the social investment and revitalisation projects Inditex carries out worldwide, with academic initiatives in countries such as Chile, Peru, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti or Nicaragua, and the International Professorship for Corporate Social Responsibility matters in Northumbria (UK).

 

[Skies]

The Tau Index: Bangladesh, Ukraine, Morocco Top it Deployment Efforts

New Measurement Grades it Expenditures and Income Disparity

Do you want to be where the action is? Witness a society transforming itself through the wonders of IT? Maybe China, or India? Brazil? Estonia, perhaps?

Try Bangladesh or Ukraine instead. Visit Morocco and Egypt. Honduras is lovely almost any time of year, as is Senegal. Many places in Eastern Europe aren't so bad, either.

These are among the countries at the top of a new scale I've created called the Tau Index. Tau is the Greek letter for T, so the Tau Index stands for Technology, sort of. The letter is used in many areas of science to describe stress, perception, clarity, and velocity. In physics, the Tau factor goes down as your speed approaches that of light. In my simple measure, the Tau Index goes up as you develop IT expenditures more aggressively.

How Does it Work?

The Tau Index takes into account the percentage of a nation's economy devoted to IT expenditures, along with its per capita income, its cost of living, and its income distribution.

The Tau Index is a way to tease out those countries that may be overlooked because of their small size, seemingly ingrained poverty, or both. I explained how I derive it in a previous post, and am happy to explain it further to anyone who wishes to know more.

By factoring in the cost of living (or "per capita GDP in PPP terms" in wonkspeak), and relative income distribution (a measure known as the Gini coefficient), the Tau Index gives a fighting chance to those countries who are working hard to raise their standard of living, but who may be lost in the shuffle of the major economies.

However, it does give a fair shot to those major economies, and is weighted equally among enough factors to show how well highly developed nations are doing. Maniacal South Korea, for example, scores very well. as do better-known hotbeds such as the Czech Republic and Malaysia.


................................................................................................................................
The Tau Index Weighs it Expenditures, Per Capita GDP, and Income Disparity
Which countries are the world's most aggressive deployers of Information Technology? How do you measure this?

I came up with an idea called the Tau Index a few days ago, in which countries are compared to one another in

terms of their IT expenditures weighed
against the size
and composition of their local economies.

It produced some surprising results. Bangladesh, Morocco, and Morocco emerged at the top of the heap. Honduras emerged as the most aggressive IT deployer in the Americas. Three of the four BRIC countries did OK; Brazil did not. The US looked stagnant, Western Europe even more so. Eastern Europe looked dynamic. Asia was a house on fire.

The Tau Index has two key elements: 1. it adjusts a nation's IT expenditures for the local cost of living--IT costs the same in absolute terms everywhere, so makes a bigger impact in poorer countries. 2. it rewards countries that have smaller income disparities--IT's advantages should be able to be better distributed in a society with more uniform income distribution.

The idea of the Tau Index is to provide a real-world snapshot of how things look on the ground in a country. How dynamic is the country really? How well arre IT's advantages being shared with everyone? How hard is a country fighting to enjoy IT's rising global tide?

Let's Go to the Polls
I think it's useful to compare the Tau Index with traditional ways of looking at global IT expenditures.

In other words, it's time for a series of rankings, you know, like the BCS college football polls in the US. Let's hope these rankings are more rational than the BCS system!

I am using World Bank statistics for GDP, and United Nations figures for income disparity.

I'll provide five separate "polls" here:

A. Total IT expenditure
B. IT expenditure per capita (per person)
C. IT expenditure as a percentage of total GDP
D. Nominal Tau Index (a number that adjusts IT expenditures for income disparity)
E. Tau Index (the nominal rating adjusted for local cost of living, aka purchasing-power parity, or PPP)

The members and leaders of each poll will differ, but I think we'll see some patterns emerge.

 

[Skies]

Bangladesh—Eco Symbol?

From the port of Sadarghat, the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka unfolds itself in an inclement palette of greys and browns. The Buriganga River, stretching out in each direction like a puddle of mercury, is dotted with hundreds of river craft, some dredging trash from the riverbed, others weighed down with passengers and piles of vegetables.

Moored nearby, bleeding rust, sits the country's fleet of 'rockets'—colonial-era paddle steamers fitted with belching diesel engines that ply Bangladesh's extensive network of waterways. The road running along the riverbank, the old Buckman Bund of the British colonial era, is today a bottlenecked mass of overladen trucks and tinkling rickshaws.

A magnet for rural migrants, low-lying Dhaka—already one of the most densely populated megacities on earth—is likely to come under increasing strain as the country comes face-to-face with the effects of global climate change. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says Bangladesh is likely to face cyclones, drought and flood events of increasing frequency and intensity as global warming sets in. In its 2005 report, the IPCC also estimated that a one metre rise in sea-levels could put 17 percent of the country underwater and cut its food production by 30 percent by 2050. Much of Dhaka, which lies in a flood plain protected only by giant embankments along the Buriganga could be engulfed by even a 'slight rise' in sea level, according to another report by UN Habitat. It described the megacity—largely unplanned and lacking basic infrastructure—as a 'recipe for disaster.'

In May last year, Cyclone Aila lashed the southern part of the country, breaching giant embankments and flooding large tracts of low-lying farmland with salt water. Of the 900,000 families affected by the storm, about 100,000 people are still living in makeshift camps on top of the flood embankments—the only place beyond the reach of the floodwaters. Luigi Peter Ragno, a project manager at the International Organisation for Migration who is working with communities affected by Aila, says an expected spike in extreme weather events due to global warming will likely accelerate the age-old flow of rural poor to the cities.

'Looking at the future, you can see that environmental degradation can have a cascade effect into the cities and the urban areas,' he says. 'Everybody will be affected.'

As Munjurul Hannan Khan, deputy secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests told a conference in Dhaka last month, 'For the north, [climate change] will mean a compromise with lifestyle. For us, it’s about future survival.'

But the sight from Old Dhaka is not all as grim as these projections alone suggest. While Western policymakers direct their focus toward mitigating carbon emissions, Bangladesh is one of the few countries to accept the inevitability of climate change and start tackling adaption head-on. Once the very symbol of backwardness—an 'international basket case' in Henry Kissinger’s infamous words—today's Bangladesh may well soon be leading the way into a shared future of climate insecurity.

Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, says Bangladesh, with its relatively high levels of education and a burgeoning awareness of climate change issues, was well placed to establish a 'comparative advantage' in adaptation research. 'Over the course of the next ten years, this is where the world will learn how to deal with climate change,' he says. 'This is ground zero.'

 

[Skies]

Indian enclave attacked after Bangladeshi killed

2010-10-17 13:50:00

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Dhaka, Oct 17 (IANS) Police detained three people who burnt over 200 houses at an Indian enclave on the border after a group of Indians killed a Bangladeshi, a media report said Sunday.

A mob reacted violently after the Indians killed Ramjan Ali and refused to return his body in Garati, the Indian enclave, the New Age newspaper said Sunday.


Surrounded by the Bangladeshi territory of Panchagarh, the Indian enclave is one of over a hundred that dot the India- Bangladesh border drawn by the British in 1947.


Quoting 'local people', the newspaper said the initiative to retaliate was taken by local leaders of the ruling Awami League.


Awami League leader Osman Ali said the villagers decided teach the Indians a lesson after they beat the Bangladeshi to death.


'We are looking into the matter. The situation is now normal,' Deputy Commissioner of Panchagarh Bonamali Bhowmik told the New Age.


Panchagarh Superintendent of Police Shahriar Rahman said: 'Garati is beyond our jurisdiction. We are not allowed to move into the Indian enclave.'


But he added that relief was being reached to the enclave 'on humanitarian grounds'.


In January, when the prime ministers of India and Bangladesh met, they agreed in principle to 'exchange' the enclaves to smoothen the movement of their inhabitants without affecting their respective jurisdiction.

 

[Skies]

Nepal-Bangladesh climbing team summits virgin peak

Kathmandu - A joint team of Nepalese and Bangladeshi mountaineers have scaled a virgin peak in Nepal's eastern Himalayas, the climbers said Monday.

The 10-member team said it summited Mount Chekigo, considered one of the most challenging in mountaineering, on October 18.

Abdul Mohit, leader of the Bangladeshi team, said he was happy to have been part of an expedition that conquered the difficult peak for the first time.

"Thirteen expeditions from different parts of the world have attempted the peak before us but failed," Mohit said. "It's a very tough climb, the most difficult I have experienced because of its deep crevasses and knife ridges."

Chekigo rises 6,257 metres above sea level in the Guri Shanker Himalayan range.

"I have climbed Mount Everest 10 times, but this was the most difficult peak to climb in my mountaineering experience," expedition leader Pemba Dorjee Sherpa said.

"I could see Chekigo from my window when I was growing up in my village in the lap of the mountain, and it was always a dream to conquer it," he said.

The Nepal Mountaineering Association said some objectives of the joint expedition was to promote Nepal tourism and to encourage Bangladeshi mountaineers and trekkers to visit Nepal. The mountain has been christened Nepal-Bangladesh Friendship Peak.

"I used to read about Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hilary's Everest expedition in school, and climbing a mountain was a dream I grew up with while I lived so close to the sea," Mohit said, referring to the first summiteers of the world's tallest peak.

 

[Skies]

25/10/2010
Bangladesh calls UNFPA report ''unauthorized meddling''

Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, Oct 25 (PTI) Bangladesh is likely to launch a formal protest against a population report launched by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) calling it an "unauthorized meddling", officials said here today.

"We are set to hold a meeting later today on the UNFPA report, which has been launched apparently without valid reference just months ahead of the launching of our National Census in March 2011", a senior planning ministry official said.

He said Finance Minister AMA Muhith, who yesterday termed the UNFPA''s report as "unauthorised meddling", called the inter-ministerial meeting, which is expected to take a decision for a formal protest.

"They (UNFPA) did not consult with the government and it was done in a peculiar way," Muhith told a seminar adding that the UN agency did it beyond their authority.

He also suspected some "evil quarters" were behind the report.
UNFPA on Thursday in its "State of the World Population 2010" report revealed that the population of Bangladesh is now 164.4 million, with a growth rate of 1.4 per cent per thousand.

The report also predicted that country''s population would be 222.5 million by 2050.
Health Minister AFM Ruhul Haque earlier said they were unaware about the statistics of the country''s new population figure revealed by the UNFPA that claimed Bangladesh''s total population rose to 164.4 million in 2010, from 124.3 million in 2001.
"I have no knowledge about the UNFPA claim and I was not consulted before revealing such a report on Bangladesh," he earlier told the state run BSS news agency.
The UNFPA report came ahead of Bangladesh''s national population and household census scheduled for March 2011 while the last national population census was conducted in 2001.
The UNFPA report said, Bangladesh''s population is increasing at a rate of 1.4 per cent per year and predicted it to be 222.5 million by 2050.
Director of Family Planning Directorate Ganesh Chandra Sarker, who attended the report launching programme, contradicted the UNFPA claim and said the present size of population might be as high as 4.4 crore.
Senior planning ministry official Kazi Akhtar Uddin Ahmed said they examined the original UNFPA report and found it to be of without any "reference" to validate the claim.
UNFPA officials were unavailable for comments despite repeated efforts by PTI to reach them.

 

[Skies]

Bangladesh: A systematic approach to improving the investment climate

Overview
Poverty reduction needs a strong economy at its heart and in Bangladesh, the government faces numerous hurdles in attracting the investment it needs for a vibrant private sector that will provide jobs and raise incomes. The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has worked with Bangladesh and other partners from the development community in modernizing laws, rules and regulations, streamlining administrative procedures, improving working conditions and environmental performance.

Challenge
Investors in Bangladesh face a variety of constraints. Power supply is inadequate and unreliable. Clearing a consignment through the ports takes several days. The regulatory framework is cumbersome, unpredictable and non-transparent. Corruption is widespread. Access to the factors of production is limited - in a 2007 enterprise survey, almost half of the enterprises cited access to land as a major problem and one quarter found skilled labor to be in short supply. In the 2010 Doing Business Report, Bangladesh ranked 119 out of 183 countries.

Improving the investment climate is a daunting challenge for the government as its capacity to design and implement solutions is poor. Past donor efforts to catalyze change has often been ineffective. Behind this has been a failure to take a holistic view of things, to engage various stakeholders to create a voice for reforms, and to mobilize their knowledge and energy to help government bring about changes.

Approach
In contrast to past approaches, IFC has taken a path that stresses good donor coordination to achieve the best results. The Bangladesh Investment Climate Fund (BICF), managed by IFC in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Developmentand the European Union, has worked with the Government of Bangladesh and other stake-holders to put in place a systematic and holistic approach to improving the investment climate.

BICF’s main goal is to help create productive jobs by creating an environment conducive to investment. It provides technical assistance and advisory services in support of actions by government and other stake-holders to achieve the following results: transparent, predictable and streamlined regulatory engagement between government and the private sector, improved supply of industrial infrastructure through a modern economic zone regime, and enhanced private sector development-related capacity in government. This eight-year program—funded by the European Union and U.K. Department for International Development and managed by IFC—is helping to institute a holistic and systematic approach to improving the investment climate, replacing previous approaches that were partial and ad-hoc. A multi-track approach of engaging stakeholders, raising awareness, building capacity, and measuring results underpins its core program areas of regulatory reforms and economic zones. The programmatic approach supports client-centered and adaptive interventions.

Results
Because of its holistic nature, the BICF program has catalyzed a variety of results. Here are some notable examples:

Following automation and business process re-engineering, the company registration process has improved dramatically, the time taken to register a company has fallen from about 30 days in early 2009 to less than a week for most cases by the end of that year.
For the first time, a comprehensive Economic Zones Law was enacted in July 2010 and a Competition Act is close to being enacted. Far-reaching amendments were also made in July 2010 to the VAT (value-added tax) Law and Rules.
Property registration fees were reduced by more than a half in September 2009.

A group of about 100 mid-level officials have been formed and trained in private sector development subjects; several members of this group have started taking bottom-up reform initiatives.
Working conditions have been substantially improved in more than 200 factories in the country’s export processing zones.
Five universities have set up investment climate units to conduct courses and carry out research on investment climate.
Public-private dialogue platforms have been set up in four district towns-more than two dozen reform actions have been taken by local governments as a result of these dialogues.

Partners
EC and DFID together provided US$55.0 million for the eight-year program. There is no funding from the World Bank Group itself. The program works with multiple partners. Within the government, the Board of Investment is the main counterpart and there are engagements with a number of key ministries, such as the Ministries of Commerce, Law, Land and Establishment and agencies, such as the Bangladesh Bank (central bank), National Board of Revenue (the tax administration) and the Bangladesh Export Processing Zone Authority. Several chambers of commerce, industry associations and think-tanks are partners in BICF’s work.

Toward the Future

Several BICF-supported activities will be scaled up during its life time. For example, BICF has helped the government of Bangladesh lay the ground for an ambitious nationwide program of land record digitization, which the World Bank is likely to support through a sector loan. In some cases, other donors may pick up the agenda. BICF is also working to improve the measurement of private sector development efforts through the donors’ Private Sector Development Local Consultative Group, and the government’s own planning division. BICF, itself born out of donor coordination, is thus emerging as a useful instrument for further coordination between donors in the area of the investment climate. BICF is also working toward a model where many of its activities are gradually taken over by think-tanks and private sector chambers before the program ends in 2014. The BICF experience is also being applied beyond Bangladesh. A similar, albeit smaller, investment climate advisory facility has just been established for Nepal with DFID funding and managed by IFC. Insights and knowledge from BICF activities and approaches are now feeding into a number of World Bank Group initiatives, such as the “re-invention” of the World Bank Institute and the Financial and Private Sector Development network, and innovations in the advisory business of IFC.

http://www.worldbank.org.bd/WBSITE/...PK:217854~theSitePK:295760,00.html?cid=3001_7

 

[Skies]

Workington fashion show will boost health care in Bangladesh


A FASHION show at Workington’s Theatre Royal on Sunday will raise money towards health care checks in Bangladesh.



The event has been organised by the Workington Inner Wheel Club.

Organiser Eileen Sacre said: “The colours and fabrics have the wow factor.

“The money raised will help to provide early identification of health problems and will improve maternity care and hygiene, which are the things we take for granted.”

She hoped the show would raise more than the £700 that the group managed last year for the International Aid Trust.

Outfits have been provided by Alice Turner of The Collection, Wilson Street.

A dress from the shop will be given away at the end of the night in a free draw.

Cherryll Hamilton, manageress of Tony Marks on Finkle Street, will style the models’ hair.

The show will start at 7pm. Tickets cost £5 and can be bought from Tony Marks.

First published at 19:31, Thursday, 04 November 2010
Published by Times & Star | Home

 

[akash57]

Bangladesh's HDI rose by 81pc in 30 years

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched its Human Development Report 2010 saying Bangladesh's Human Development Index (HDI) increased by 81 percent in the past 30 years.

A UNDP statement issued here on Friday said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Thursday launched the global report that "spotlights Bangladesh as one of the countries that has made the greatest progress in recent decades as measured by a new version of the HDI".

It said on the basis of comparable data, Bangladesh's HDI almost doubled since 1980, and out of the 95 countries for which data is available, Bangladesh was ranked third in terms of the improvement over that period.

"This should be a source of national pride for every single citizen of Bangladesh. To have managed to continue its vision of development in a very steady manner despite many enormous challenges is a very considerable achievement", UNDP Bangladesh Resident Representative Stefan Priesner said.

Ban and Sen jointly released the report, The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development, at a ceremony in New York on Thursday coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the UN HDR.

The report revisited the original analytical exercise of 1990, using new methodologies and international data sources, clearly recognizes Bangladesh's developmental achievements.

The first Human Development Report introduced its pioneering HDI and analyzed previous decades of development indicators, concluding that "there is no automatic link between economic growth and human progress".

The 2010 report's rigorous review of longer-term trends looking back at HDI indicators for most countries over the last 30 to 40 years - showed there is no consistent correlation between national economic performance and achievement in the non-income HDI areas of health and education.

According to the 2010 HDI, Bangladesh ranked 129th out of 169 countries, where complete HDI data are available.

UNDP officials said when comparing HDI trends over past two decades, Bangladesh and Cambodia were the `best improvers' in the Asia and Pacific region comprising 24 countries.

"A big factor has been improvements in life expectancy. Indeed, over the past 40 years, this increased by 23 years in Bangladesh, compared with 18 years in Iran, 16 years in India and 10 years in Afghanistan," the UNDP statement said.

The Report this year included 2010 HDI rankings based on a reformulated HDI and new Indices for Inequality, Gender and Poverty.

Bangladesh's HDI rose by 81pc in 30 years

 

[Skies]

Oregon Governor To Visit Bangladesh
Visit Will Include Oregon National Guard

POSTED: 3:18 pm PDT November 5, 2010
UPDATED: 3:34 pm PDT November 5, 2010

SALEM, Ore. -- Gov. Ted Kulongoski will be traveling to the South Asian country of Bangladesh, one of the most populous countries in the world.

The governor’s office says the three-day visit is set to begin Sunday and will be part of the State Partnership Program, which aims to help build long-term relationships between individual states, National Guard units and foreign countries.

Accompanying Kulongoski will be the adjutant general of the Oregon National Guard, Raymond Reese.

“The three-day visit is part of a continuing effort to discuss mutual best practices for natural disaster response and medical mass casualty training exercises. The team will visit with various government ministries and Bangladeshi military leaders," the governor's office said in a Friday release.

Bangladesh, nearly surrounded on all sides by India, has been hit by several weather disasters and is especially vulnerable to monsoon flooding and cyclones.

The governor’s office says the visit is also intended to highlight mutually beneficial economic ties between Oregon and Bangladesh and foster international goodwill.

NOw read the funny comments: Oregon Governor To Visit Bangladesh - Portland News Story - KPTV Portland

Bet_on_red
60p
· 8 hours ago
What, stay home, don't spend our oregon tax dollars for such foolishness. Will Bangladesh help Oregon when we have a natural disaster? I think not. If you want to donate your dollars to foreign countries for disaster relief that is just great but don't expect the Oregon taxpayer to give our tax dollars. We have had enough of this one-way street of handout to foreign countries and watched as the money was stolen by their government officials.
Check Haiti grab for the cash. Foreign aid needs to be ended.

goosehunter
92p
· 8 hours ago
With any luck Kitzaber will go along and they will keep them there. We have a finacial problem here let's get it fixed before we start giving money to other countries.

nolibtards
92p
· 6 hours ago
This is why liberalism is a mental disorder....... Only a libtard Governor with a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR budget shortfall would still feel the need to jet half way around the world to foster international goodwill.

And I'm sure K1again will be just as bad K2 is now.

Wadda wanna bet they'll be on a private jet

Disenchanted1
76p
· 6 hours ago
O bama's going to india spending big bucks and big K to Bangladish both on the taxpayers dime to foster relations! lots of $$$ spent overseas traveling! People get the politicians they elect!'

jaynaandi
78p
· 6 hours ago
UNBELIEVABLE!!!! Let's keep going on these "feel good" trips and doing ZERO for Oregon. It's the Kulo-Kitz BS fest!!! Hurray Oregon. Maybe he can take a pack of those Liberal Fruit Loops from Multnomah County with him. Let me work on the plane they are taking.

 

[eastwatch]

Bangladesh's HDI rose by 81pc in 30 years

Here is another related news printed in the Independent: eastwatch

BANGLADESH 3RD AMONG 95 NATIONS
Saturday, 06 November 2010
Author / Source : STAFF REPORTER

Bangladesh's Human Development Index (HDI) increased 81 per cent since 1980, and is ranked third among the 95 countries in terms of improvement, according to the Human Development Report 2010. On November 4, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen released the 20th anniversary edition of UNDP's Human Development Report. Pathways to Human Development, that revisits the original analytical exercise of 1990, using new methodologies and international data sources, clearly recognises Bangladesh's developmental achievements, the report said.

"This should be a source of national pride for every single citizen of Bangladesh. To have managed to continue its vision of development in a very steady manner despite many enormous challenges is a very considerable achievement”, Stefan Priesner, the resident representative of UNDP in Bangladesh, said in a statement yesterday.
UNDP, which has been conducting this survey since 1990, has adopted a new methodology for the study.

The first Human Development Report introduced its pioneering HDI and analysed previous decades of development indicators, concluding that "there is no automatic link between economic growth and human progress". The 2010 Report's rigorous review of longer term trends – looking back at HDI indicators for most countries over the last 30 to 40 years – shows there is no consistent correlation between national economic performance and achievement in the non-income HDI areas of health and education.

This year, Bangladesh’s HDI stands at 0.469 and the country ranked 129 among 169 nations. When comparing HDI trends over the past two decades, Bangladesh and Cambodia were found to have improved their performance the most, in the Asia-Pacific region, the study revealed. Over the past 40 years, life expectancy has increased by 23 years in Bangladesh, compared with 18 years in Iran, 16 years in India and 10 years in Afghanistan.

However, the HDI has seen major changes in its parameters and includes new indicators, and therefore, cannot be compared with past data. Previously, the HDI was calculated as the simple average of the dimension indices. Comparable country rankings in the HDI are reported over a five-year comparative period, rather than on a year-to-year basis, to better reflect long-term trends.

Due to the methodological refinements of the HDI formula, the 2010 rankings are also not comparable to those published in earlier reports.
The 2010 Human Development Report continues the HDI tradition of measurement innovation by introducing new indices that address crucial development factors not directly reflected in the HDI. It also included a new measure of gender inequities, including maternal mortality rates and women’s representation in parliaments.

The report features a new multidimensional poverty measure that complements income-based poverty assessments by looking at multiple factors at the household level, from basic living standards to access to schooling, clean water and health care.

 

[eastwatch]

Human development in Bangladesh

Sunday, November 7, 2010
Editorial: Human development in Bangladesh
UNDP report should be a spur to better performance

Good news has always a cheery ring to it. There are all the moments when the state of the country's politics has a disquieting effect on us all and for the right reasons. Even so, for all the confrontational nature of politics, for all our feeling that we may have been caught up in a morass, we do get to be encouraged when we are given a glimpse of the inner strength of our people which reports of a global nature sometimes hold up for us.

The UNDP's Human Development Report 2010 is one of those instances that should be acting as a spur to our goals, to a fulfillment of them, for the future. In a wide-ranging survey of countries, the report places Bangladesh in third position among 95 countries in terms of an improvement in the quality of life. For good measure, the report shows that the Human Development Index in Bangladesh has gone up by as much as 81 per cent since 1981.

Of course, one does not really require a report to know of the various areas where the country has made advances. In terms of the economy, such fields as garments have performed remarkably. In similar manner, the remittances that have made their way into the country from abroad, owing to the presence of a large body of Bangladeshi manpower in various countries, have brought about qualitative changes in life, particularly at the rural levels.

The UNDP's Human Development Report 2010 makes note of a remarkable improvement in life expectancy in Bangladesh. In the last forty years, life expectancy has surged by 23 years, which is again a good indication of the possibilities before the country. The need now is focus. We cannot afford to lose more time in trying to catch up with the rest of the world. Let us be under no illusion that as a nation we have emerged from the trap of poverty.

We have not and all signs indicate that poverty alleviation will require a maximum of effort in the years ahead given that the projections about population increase are rather uncomfortable. Unless we are able to prioritise policies and policy implementation effectively at present and in the immediate future, we will be facing a population figure of 220 million by the year 2050. The negative impact of such a phenomenal rise on development can only be imagined. Which is why the UNDP report should act as a guideline, broadly speaking, in how we can handle conditions from here on.

Given all the difficulties, political and social and those caused by nature, we are usually confronted with, our position in the report can be looked at as a mark of the resilience that can help us turn conditions around. Overall, our rank is 129 among a total of 169 nations. Of course, there is no reason to feel complacent about such a placing.

With all the necessary steps that need to and must be taken in the varied region of national development, we can surely look forward to a better position on the global development index in the future. The prerequisite here is a focused assessment of the ground realities and a subsequent carving out of a path toward making things better than what we have achieved so far.

 

[CaPtAiN_pLaNeT]

Rehabilitating city's hawkers

Rehabilitating city's hawkers


Khalilur Rahman

The government has postponed eviction of hawkers from the city's footpaths till the ensuing Eid-ul-Azha. The drive to evict the hawkers was due to begin from November 1. The purpose of the eviction as disclosed by the Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain on October 21 last is to facilitate the movement of pedestrians as well as to ease traffic jam. In addition to evicting hawkers from footpaths, it was also planned to keep the city streets free from illegal parkings and occupation for various purposes. To start with, Shahbagh and Farmgate areas were selected for eviction.

With regard to postponement of eviction drive, the Communications Minister also said that the decision was taken following an appeal from hawkers' representatives for undertaking a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate them before dislodging those people from their trade. The Communications Minister noted with satisfaction that the hawkers' leaders appeared very much cooperative in carrying out the drive. But they requested the government to proceed in consultation with them.

Meantime, hawkers' leaders have threatened to go for a tougher movement in the city after Eid-ul-Azha if the government sticks to its decision of eviction without their rehabilitation. A report published in The Financial Express in its issue of October 30 last says that the hawkers' leaders who represent about 0.2 million roadside vendors in the city expressed fear that the poor traders might get involved in various crimes for survival if they were thrown out of their profession.

This is indeed a serious problem concerning the livelihood of a vast community of people who run their trade in open air shops on city's footpaths. Undoubtedly poverty breeds crimes and it is likely that the displaced hawkers in their desperation to survive might engage themselves in mugging, robbery, theft, pickpocketing, etc., as apprehended by their leaders. On the other hand, the acute gridlock persisting in the city without any immediate solution in sight has caused utmost sufferings to the townspeople. Any fruitful move by the government to resolve this crisis will come as a great relief to the inhabitants.

Under the prevailing circumstances, one can assume that hawkers' presence in footpaths is not the lone cause of traffic jam. Illegal parking of vehicles beside the roads, even in some places on the footpaths, wayside dumping of construction and other materials, holding of rallies on the streets and inundation of thoroughfares after rains are some of the major causes of gridlock. But the concerned authorities appear to be not so serious to resolve the problem. These obstacles to smooth movement of vehicular traffic and pedestrians can be removed quickly if the concerned authorities pay attention to the matter. The hawkers' rehabilitation, however, is not that easy. We know in the past the successive governments tried in vain to rehabilitate the hawkers. The Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) constructed several markets for hawkers' community. But many genuine hawkers did not get room in those DCC markets due to exorbitant prices and induction of wealthy businessmen.

In the absence of dependable statistics of genuine hawkers in the city, their exact number is not known. This newspaper in its report quoted a study which shows that 46% of the hawkers of Dhaka city are permanent and the rest are regarded as seasonal. The seasonal hawkers come to the city from across the country during holy Ramadan, Eid, Puja and other festivals. Nine per cent of the total number of hawkers are women and their buyers constitute people from middle class and lower income groups.

The rehabilitation of hawkers as announced by the government is indeed a noble venture, but very difficult to accomplish. Abject poverty and growing unemployment force people to come to the cities in quest of livelihood from rural areas. The majority of these people turn rootless when their homesteads and farm lands are devoured by the rivers. The influx of these people to the city contribute largely to swelling the number of hawkers, day labourers, push-cart drivers and rickshawpullers, etc. During the rule of the immediate past caretaker government, hawkers were ruthlessly evicted from footpaths. Even those poor people who used to run their small trade at hats and bazaars in rural Bangladesh were not spared. But the ultimate result of the government action was a big zero. Therefore, the authorities should now take lesson from past experience and draw short-term and long-term plans to rehabilitate vendors on the basis of our available resources.

We must not forget that the rehabilitation means restoration of a person to his or her former home or position .

 

[CaPtAiN_pLaNeT]

Micro-credit made few poor solvent
Social welfare minister tells PKSF seminar

Staff Correspondent

The social welfare minister, Enamul Huq Mostafa Shaheed, on Sunday said there were few instances of attaining self-dependence using micro-credits, although micro-credit programmes had been being implemented in the country for a long time.
He made the comment while addressing a seminar on ‘social safety net in Bangladesh: reality and
our doings’ organised at
the Bangabandhu Inter-national Conference Centre in the city by Palli Karma Sahayak Founda-tion as a part of its 4-day programme to mark its 20th founding anniversary. Bangladesh Economic Association president Abul Barkat presided over the seminar.
In an oblique reference to non-governmental organisations implementing micro-credit programmes, the minister said, ‘If you could really make micro-credit work for poverty alleviation, the situation now would be much better.’
He alleged that the NGOs concerned wanted the poor to remain poor and criticised them of making business in the name of poverty alleviation.
As an example, the minister said, ‘I met a poor Sidr victim who received two bundles of tin from an NGO that also provided him with micro-credit. Later that NGO took the bundles of tin away as he had failed to pay its loan refund instalments.’
He however acknowledged the necessity of loans, saying that farmers needed loans in due time for agriculture and that the banks had been providing them with the loans.
The minister emphasised the need for land policy reforms and development of agriculture for poverty alleviation.
Poverty will have to be managed first and then it should be eradicated, said Awami League lawmaker Saber Hossain Chowdhury.
He also said that the exact number of poor and ultra-poor people in the country was not known yet and expected that the issue would be discussed by the Jatiya Sangsad.
Key-note speaker of the seminar Professor Dr MM Akash said most of the social safety programmes were implemented in villages. He said, according to a World Bank report published in 2006, the villagers covered by such programmes account for only 15.6 per cent of the country’s total population, although 40 per cent of the villagers were poor. In the same way, merely 5.5 per cent of the urban population are covered by the safety net programmes, although 43 per cent of the urban people are poor, he added.
Dr Akash said time had come to think about micro-credit programmes as most of the borrowers had to pay 30 to 60 per cent interest that forced them to reduce consumption and work more.