Human talent could help Bangladesh realise its vision: Golden Bengal

Saifur Rahman

Bangabandhu and Sheikh Zayed

When Bangladesh came into being in December 16, 1971 after a nine-month bloody war, it was a nearly destroyed, looted and violated land filled with 75 million people cramped within 144,000 square kilometres with broken infrastructure, zero money in the exchequer and perhaps more devastating – no hope.

A few weeks later Bangladesh’s Founding Father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, more famously referred to ‘Bangabandhu’ that means ‘Friend of Bengal’, returned to the war-ravaged Bangladesh with an emotional reception in Dhaka on January 10, 1972, unsure how the country would turn around. With his return, hope for the emancipation returned among the 75 million people.

As Bangladesh celebrated 51 years as an independent nation on December 16, 2022, most people including international observers wonder how this country not only survived, but progressed so well, to become one of the best performing economies in the world. In many socio-economic indicators, Bangladesh has done better than its regional peers.

Bangladesh attained an average GDP growth rate of over 6 percent during the past decade and emerged as a lower-middle-income country in 2015. The accelerated growth continued in a persistent manner. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladesh posted 8.15 percent GDP growth, the highest among the Asia-Pacific countries.

Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this country that was once written off as almost a failed state, achieved a GDP growth of 5.24 percent in 2020, which is the highest in Asia.

The economy already started rebounding and is projected to grow by 6.9 percent in FY 2022-23. According to international experts, the country is poised to maintain high economic growth in the coming years to emerge as the 26th largest economy in the world by 2030.

The question is, how did the country achieve this? Well, it all started with the heroic return of Sheikh Mujib on January 10 1972. The solution to this question was given by Bangabandhu in an interview given to an international media a few weeks after his triumphant return to Bangladesh.

In the interview, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was asked way back in January 1972 on how he had planned to rebuild the economy of Bangladesh with broken infrastructure, with no money and no natural resources to bank on. How did he plan to develop the proverbial Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal)?

Bangabandhu knew, his country lacked natural resources, it was still an agrarian society with little or no industrialisation. Most people were illiterate and unskilled. The country’s progress could only be ensured by educating, developing and empowering people.

Then he replied, smiling – “To build the Golden Bengal, we need Golden People.”

It was a very simple, but a very powerful reply. The strength of the message had almost got lost in the simplistic nature of his reply. But it summed up his roadmap for the future of the country. So, building human capital and empowerment of people was at the core of his development plan.

While Bangabandhu had started re-building the country after presenting his people a modern and liberal constitution in November 1972, followed by a general election in March 1973, a countrywide famine worsened the situation in 1974, that prompted a section of the global media to write off Bangladesh as a “Bottomless Basket’ or a ‘lost case’.

Following his tragic assassination along with most of his family members on August 15, 1975, Bangladesh again entered into a period of uncertainty – with military taking control of the country. His assassination was followed by a series of killings and assassinations that plunged the country into darkness.

The new military regime then identified ‘Population’ as the No 1 ‘Problem’ of Bangladesh. The road towards building human capital lost focus, although the educational institutions continued to educate young men and women. For the next 15 years, Bangladesh was run by the military – without a proper vision or direction – till its overthrow in December 1990 through popular political movement.

Fast forward to 2021-2022, when Bangladesh celebrates 51 years of independence. What do we see?
During the last 50 years, Bangladesh’s economy experienced a significant transformation from an agriculture-dependent economy to and industry and service sector-led one. Despite persistent growth in agriculture, the sector’s share to GDP decreased from 60 percent in 1972 to 13 percent in 2020 due rapid expansions of manufacturing and service sectors. The share of the manufacturing sector in GDP accounted for 29.5 percent in 2020. Services sector dominates the Bangladeshi economy which contributes about 56 percent of the GDP.

In the recent years, the local industries witnessed a significant growth and upgradation to cater burgeoning domestic demands and high-end international market. As a result, Bangladesh’s export basket experienced progressive diversification resulting in a significant increase in export earnings, according to reports.

Bangladesh is now considered to be a lucrative destination for foreign investments owing to its pro-investment policies, investment-friendly environment, upgraded infrastructure, ever expanding domestic market, strategically important geopolitical location, political stability and competitive labour force. The government is setting up 100 economic zones to facilitate investments.

Many articles and analyses have been written to understand the economic miracle of Bangladesh. What are the key reasons behind the socio-economic success in the first five decades of Bangladesh – a natural disaster-prone climate victim country, whose progress was marred by frequent military coups, political movement, corruption, nepotism and other man-made and natural calamities?

While many experts attribute the success of Bangladesh to the country’s dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina – who is also the daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – other pundits attribute it to the success in Ready-Made Garments exports. All these are true and part of the key factors that contributed to the country’s success in the last five decades.

However, they have collectively failed to identify the single-most important factor for Bangladesh’s economic miracle – that is, its people! Empowerment of people, especially women.

Bangladesh hosts 165 million people – or half of the entire population of the United States – confined within a land area of 148,460 square kilometres that is slightly smaller than the US state of Florida, or slightly bigger than New York State. If half of US population was forced to live either of the states, how would the economy do in 50 years? Most people think it would have been chaotic, or a mess while others don’t want to think about it!

The 165 million people of Bangladesh share 148,460 square kilometre landmass that make up the length and breadth of Bangladesh – at the rate of 1,124 persons per square kilometres – with no or very little resources, without much law-and-order incidents or social unrests, let alone chaos or a mess. That’s the inner beauty and the inner power of the people of Bangladesh, and Bangabandhu understood this better than anyone else.

With two square meals a day, clothing and shelter, these 165 million people can develop themselves without any external help.

It took a young man, Dr. M. Sabur Khan, to start thinking about the future of Bangladesh during his days as a student in the 1980s – almost in line with what the Father of the Nation had envisioned in his statement – to “To build a Golden Bangla, we need Golden people.”

He shared the Vision of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, when he started his entrepreneurial journey in 1990. After completing his studies, Dr. Sabur Khan started his vision with a small computer outfit, called Daffodil Computers Ltd. Like most visions, he thought big, but started small. His vision was global, but he started local. He started by training students on word processing, accounting and information processing. It was the beginning of the Personal Computers (PCs) – powered by the first-generation X880, X286 and X386 processors.

“I knew in those days, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) would play a crucial role in reshaping the future of our country and if we want to build a strong and prosperous future, we need to train people in ICT. So, I started my entrepreneurial journey with PCs – buy, import, sell and then assemble PCs in Bangladesh,” he recalls, as Bangladesh celebrates 51 years of success after the country’s independence.

“I then started importing PCs from Singapore and selling in Bangladesh. Then I started value-addition with assembling PCs in Bangladesh. Later I ventured into software development. However, throughout the decade of 1990, our company continued to train thousands of young boys and girls in IT training through Daffodil Institute of IT (DIIT) and other companies.

“This is when I started to seriously investing in getting involved in education – which is crucial in building a prosperous future for the country. I always believe, it is education and skill development that could help Bangladesh in empowering its people, reduce poverty, build human capital and generate wealth.”

Dr Sabur Khan

In 2002, he established Daffodil International University – to provide quality education to students of Bangladesh – that has now become the largest private university in Bangladesh. Over the last 32 years, Dr. Sabur Khan’s institutes provided quality education and training to more than 100,000 people – all are successful and are doing well in more than 100 countries.

He is doing what Bangabandhu envisioned – to create Golden People – or building Human Capital – that will help build resource-constraint country like Bangladesh.

As a person, he remains very simple – the man next door. He talks less, but thinks a lot. He let his work do the talking. His thoughts and vision are greater than the actions – that has not been revealed or discovered by the national media in Bangladesh.

He has recently undertaken a new initiative, Change Bangladesh – to change Bangladesh for the better.

He is now taking his local expertise to the international markets. He has recently registered International Online University (IOU) in the United States that will soon disrupt education by creating an OTT platform in education, like the Netflix of Education. This reflects his futuristic vision. Now he wants to bring the young men and women of all countries into the new education movement through IOU – which might have its functional office in Dubai – if the government permission is obtained.

He also plans to create a new educational rating and ranking system that will be based on more stringent criteria, based on better and more scientific markings.

“The people of Bangladesh have been at the core of the country’s success in the last five decades. Despite lack of natural resources, lack of education, basic healthcare, food, hygiene, and the abundance of poverty, the country progressed well – for a single factor: its people,” Dr Khan, who was recently in the UAE to expand his education services in the GCC region, says.

“Bangladeshi people are peace-loving but entrepreneurial. They can take risk. They are productive and creative. If left to themselves, they know how to change their fate. The people of Bangladesh are productive enough to ensure a 5-6 percent growth in GDP every year.

“Bangabandhu – the visionary leader of Bangladesh – knew it all along. It is the people – the Golden People, who could transform the ‘Bottomless Basket’ into a ‘Golden Bangla’. The leadership of his daughter Sheikh Hasina – has unlocked their potential and demonstrated that possibility – as Bangabandhu did not live long to fulfil his second struggle – the struggle for economic emancipation.

“Sheikh Hasina knows, if the poor people can be empowered with education, skills and other resources, Bangladesh economy will continue to grow much faster than many other countries due to the accelerated domestic demand growth which will fuel domestic consumption and economic growth.”

The case of the 4 million garments workers – 90 percent of whom are women – who belong to the lower income group, is a case in point. They are the engine of Bangladesh’s economic growth. Over the last four decades, these women have developed themselves, raised family, educated their children and gradually became consumers, while fetching US$36 billion export earnings every year.

However, the country needs massive investment in development works – to build the physical and soft infrastructure on which the future of Bangladesh will be built on. The government of Sheikh Hasina is currently investing more than US$100 billion in building the infrastructure of Bangladesh that will help the country to grow in future.

While Bangladesh has achieved remarkable feat in its first 51 years of inception, time has come for the country to look at the next 50 years. How can Bangladesh become one of the top 15-20 large economies in the world? How can average Bangladeshis become richer than their peers in other countries?

How can Bangladesh take a leadership role in the next digital race? The answer lies, again, in its people. Bangladesh needs to digitise its people!

Bangladeshi education institutions have started to introduce curricula linked to the Fourth Industrial Revolution such as Internet of Things, Robotics, Data-Science, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Cyber Security, Biotechnology, 3-D Printing, etc.

To change its future, the country needs to invest in its young people – develop them into knowledge workers. Because, in future they will be working in knowledge economy and living in knowledge society.

“The future of Bangladesh – again – lies in our people! The government and the private sector need to invest in empowering our people with digitisation skills – more than before,” Dr Khan says.

“From brick-and-mortar, the world is shifting towards a digital world. Web-based applications are disrupting traditional businesses. The world has already embraced the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The future is data-driven. Data is the new oil, gold or real wealth. The future of a nation will be determined by the focus it gives on innovation.

“We need to invest in digitising the country, digitising services and economy. However, in order to achieve this, we need to digitise its people, their mindset. This is exactly what we are doing – grooming more than 25,000 students in our campus to become digital netizens and lead the future with coding and software and application-based solutions.”

Although, Bangladesh Government is working on to realise the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and Vision 2041 – when the country targets to become a Developed Nation, it is time to also think of a Vision 2071 – when Bangladesh celebrates 100 years!

The future of Bangladesh – the proverbial Golden Bengal – is Digital Bangladesh and the country needs knowledge workers and digital people. So, it’s time for Vision 2071.

Dr Khan is currently planning to adopt 4,000 orphans and provide the food, shelter, education and jobs – to offer them hope for a better future – with his own, hard-earned money, among other philanthropic activities.