Should India Learn From Bangladesh?

[Black_cats]

Should India Learn From Bangladesh?
By
Himanshi Parihar
-
February 5, 2019
There was a time when Bangladesh was considered to be a ‘basket case’. No one believed it when it registered a higher growth rate than Pakistan in terms of economic growth in 2006!

It has come a long way from 1971, when Bangladesh fought a liberation war (backed by Indian) and was carved out of the poorest areas of Pakistan. Soon it was hit by a famine and then by an economic recession.

Things are much different now, the ‘T-shirt factory’ of the world is booming, to the surprise of many.

Soon it will shed its tag of Least Developed Country (LDC) to become a Developing country like India. It might also beat India in projected economic growth rate by 2020.

Bangladesh had made significant socio-economic developments that cannot be covered in 1 article. Still here is a list of things that India needs to learn from the Bangladeshi model.

1. Inclusion of Women
While India was spending on building statues, Bangladesh spent on its women. Consequently, female participation has constantly increased in Bangladesh to almost 50% of its workforce, women therefore enjoy economic and social status. On the other hand, it has decreased to 27% in India.

Educating and employing women, both of which was done by Bangladesh, led to several benefits most of which were portrayed in its social indicators.

2. Economic Model
Bangladesh, being a densely populated country, focussed on a labour intensive industry like garment manufacturing. Such industries don’t need expensive college degrees to fetch employees. It usually employs women and poor people (which later led to inclusive development).

On the other hand India, jumped from agriculture to service sector, while developing and skipped manufacturing. Even though it is a densely populated country, it never focused on labour intensive industries. Consequentially, mostly educated people got new jobs- a reason why we see concentration of wealth now.

To get the promised 10 million jobs, India needs to tap on low-cost manufacturing industries like garment making.

3. Inclusive Development
Bangladesh has developmental outcomes owing to the nature of it’s economic model that focussed on inclusive development. Bangladesh’s GDP per capita has increased 125% in the past decade to $1750 in 2017, which is exemplary and verifies that the growth was indeed inclusive. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about India.

Also Read: In Pics: These 9 Indian Billionaires Have More Money Than Bottom 50% Indians

4. Social Indices
Bangladesh has done remarkably well in some social indices. The average life expectancy of an average Bangladeshi is 72 years, while that of an Indian is 68. These social indices verify the success of the factors stated above.

Another appreciable index is Global Hunger Index where Bangladesh(considered to be poorer than India) performed better than India, yet again.

What is the use of growth when it cannot feed our poor?

5. Stable, Neutral Polity
Many would argue, but Sheikh Hasina has (by hook and by crook) kept the domestic affairs stable enough for socio-economic development. Internationally, through her neutral stance for all countries, she kept good relations with India, China and Russia, together.

India on the other hand, suffers in South Asia because of it prefers certain parties in power. Hasina was in good terms with India during UPA’s term as well as that of NDA.

Bangladesh is not a perfect country. The repressive policies used by Sheikh Hasina to suppress domestic affairs has been under criticism. Still what counts is that until very recently, Bangladesh was a very poor country and it managed to make significant developments in a short time.

Both India and Pakistan can learn from Bangladesh, because we all have a shared history and similar a culture & society which make it easier to implement similar models.

https://edtimes.in/should-india-learn-from-bangladesh/

 

[Saiful Islam]

You can take your dig at us for being rag stitchers or peasant Dorzis, but it was this that made us our cake.

 

[Nilgiri]

Much for both sides to learn from the other. This is not some vantage superiority game.

 

[DrasticMeasure]

You can take your dig at us for being rag stitchers or peasant Dorzis, but it was this that made us our cake.

Now eat that cake and move on. Its time BD diversifies its industries and move into more hi-tech industries like power, electronics etc. Just depending on garments for growth is a strategy for disaster. It's like how Venezuela depended on OIL or almost 80% revenue and when OIL prices fell it led the country into hyperinflation.

 

[Tshering22]

I really think that there is a lot we can learn from each other. Bangladesh has impressively managed to thwart any attempts for major powers to gain any significant political influence inside. While many people on this forum accuse the Hasina government to be a puppet and whatnot, she has actually managed to balance USA, China and India very well to the advantage of her country.

Jobs are being created, economy is rapidly growing and there is a demand for infrastructure development in Bangladesh. There is much that India can learn in terms of political consistency which we would like to have to sustain our momentum.

This is not about who's superior or inferior; it is about learning to manage with limited resources.

 

[Bengal71]

I really think that there is a lot we can learn from each other. Bangladesh has impressively managed to thwart any attempts for major powers to gain any significant political influence inside. While many people on this forum accuse the Hasina government to be a puppet and whatnot, she has actually managed to balance USA, China and India very well to the advantage of her country.

Jobs are being created, economy is rapidly growing and there is a demand for infrastructure development in Bangladesh. There is much that India can learn in terms of political consistency which we would like to have to sustain our momentum.

This is not about who's superior or inferior; it is about learning to manage with limited resources.

Indian foreign policy has always been far more astute when it comes to maintaining good relationship with all powers, yet not giving them much influence to the detriment of the country. BD only recently entered this phase under Hasina, kudos to whatever genes Sheikh Mujib carried and passed on to his daughter. He was a man with a big fat spine. Hasina is a carbon copy of Bangabandhu.

 

[Bilal9]

Now eat that cake and move on. Its time BD diversifies its industries and move into more hi-tech industries like power, electronics etc. Just depending on garments for growth is a strategy for disaster. It's like how Venezuela depended on OIL or almost 80% revenue and when OIL prices fell it led the country into hyperinflation.

WRONG!

I don't believe we need this prescription.

The future of Bangladesh will be solidly labor-intensive, where semi skilled workers can get on-the-job training and make everyday items the world needs in massive numbers.

The world does not need more high tech industries, back office jobs, FABs for chips and electric vehicles, China and the West have saturated that market already and the majority of Bangladeshis can provide little if any value addition there. Massive numbers of people in Bangladesh are uneducated (same in India as well), and we are under no delusion of this sort which Indian planners are in, that they want to make India into the EU and USA tomorrow and float up the GDP by way of service sector.

What the 160 Million Bangladeshis can offer is expert hands assembling basic in-demand mass market items like motorcycles, appliances, kitchen electrics, household implements, shoes, leather-goods, and incidentally also mass market electronics like tablets, laptops, cellphones. There is massive global demand for these and Bangladeshi labor rates are incidentally half that of India, so Bangladesh is ideally placed to add value in this area.

We're talking a numbers+low-level-manufacturing game here, not mid-level service industry situation which only floats the few middle class folks and results in unequal development, as the article says.

There is still a thread in this sub-forum that talks about the dismal unemployment scene in India (Chaiwala Redux...) because the poor are basically unemployed and have no semi-skilled job prospects.

When the lower class gets employed, that automatically builds stability in a country and gives the economy a solid foundation to build on.

The results speak for themselves - for those living in Bangladesh. We don't need pie-in-the-sky schemes from foreigners who don't understand basics and practicality.

 

[jetray]

Bangladesh is a good example of what a stable local environment and judicious foreign policy can achieve a good economic growth. In fact it was very smart of them not to engage with myanmar militarily on rohingya issue but pursue them diplomatically which shows mature thinking on part of policy makers.

This is not some thing new if we look at past history of malaysia,taiwan,korea..etc they all have had autocratic rulers in the past who were able to maintain a consistently stable environment even though just like Hasina their methods might not be democratic by any means.

The results speak for themselves - for those living in Bangladesh. We don't need pie-in-the-sky schemes from foreigners who don't understand basics and practicality.

Although westerners are modern in thoughts their thinking is still narrow minded. They always say/apply what is good for them should be good for others too. This might be either to deliberately mislead others to ensure they are not overtaken economically or parochial thinking at the best.

Westerners always promote superman/spiderman attitude where individual is more important than society. It fits them very well bcos of their small population and vast opportunities.

On the other hand populated countries have sacrifice individuals for the overall good of the system. A good example is china,japan,korea...etc. In these countries society comes first and individual next hence they have made more progress. They adopt things which is good for the mass instead of focusing on individual. In fact thats the reason why never hear about a individual japanese or chinese being famous but only their companies being famous.

Japanese are a good example of this practicality.

 

[Michael Corleone]

Now eat that cake and move on. Its time BD diversifies its industries and move into more hi-tech industries like power, electronics etc. Just depending on garments for growth is a strategy for disaster. It's like how Venezuela depended on OIL or almost 80% revenue and when OIL prices fell it led the country into hyperinflation.

Which is also being done. Tech outsourcing work, electronics manufacturing etc are slowing growing up. But the next big thing from bd will be pharmaceuticals, then ship building and only then ICT

 

[mb444]

Now eat that cake and move on. Its time BD diversifies its industries and move into more hi-tech industries like power, electronics etc. Just depending on garments for growth is a strategy for disaster. It's like how Venezuela depended on OIL or almost 80% revenue and when OIL prices fell it led the country into hyperinflation.

BD abdolutely needs to diversify but the venezuela example is not appropriate.

BD economy is not export centric, our economy remains inwardly focussed in satisfying the needs of 170m people. Our export basket is tiny in terms of range that needs to be addressed however if tomorrow there is a disruption to the garments sector BD will be massively impacted but the nation will not fall apart like Venezuela.

Venezuelas problem stems from the fact that it is petrodoller focused economy that dabbled with mass scale nationalisation of companies which were subsequently mismanged into nonproduction. Venezuela produced not a lot, bought everything in and when oil price fell they were hit hard. The whole situation was magnified due to also midmangement of the oil sector. For Venezuela as oil prices fell.... so did their production capacity..... as they have not bothered to even sustain internal agriculture.... everything fell apart....

 

[DrasticMeasure]

BD abdolutely needs to diversify but the venezuela example is not appropriate.

BD economy is not export centric, our economy remains inwardly focussed in satisfying the needs of 170m people. Our export basket is tiny in terms of range that needs to be addressed however if tomorrow there is a disruption to the garments sector BD will be massively impacted but the nation will fall apart like Venezuela.

Venezuelas problem stems from the fact that it is petrodoller focused economy that dabbled with mass scale nationalisation of companies which were subsequently mismanged into nonproduction. Venezuela produced not a lot, bought everything in and when oil price fell they were hit hard. The whole situation was magnified due to also midmangement of the oul sector. For Venezuela as oil prices fell.... so did their production capacity..... as they have not bothered to even sustain internal agriculture.... everything fell apart....

Agreed, Venezuelan problems are far bigger and complicated than BD. BD is in no position of falling apart. In fact it is prospering towards a great future. But to sustain this growth. BD needs to invest in new industries. Recently Pharma and Auto sectors in BD are gathering pace. Its a positive sign. I am not saying that BD is not working towards diversification, all I am saying it is essential to sustaining the high growth rate.