Globaleyes

Globalization and Bangladesh

By Derek D’Silva

Has the world ever been non-global? We in the Indian sub-continent have been subjected to globalization for at least 250 years. Even before the British government took over the governance of the Indian sub-continent, the East India Company did business there with the might of the British Empire backing it up. The East India Company had permission to maintain their own forces – not from the Indian princes but from the British government.

Ramsay Muir writes about how men in the East India Company’s service enjoyed power without responsibility, unleashing onto the unhappy Indians “a plague of devouring locusts.”¹ Our destinies were not in our hands and our institutions were formed not for our best interests but for the interest of our colonizers.

What is happening now is nothing new. Just as the East India Company did not do business fairly, today too, trade is not totally fair. Some of the owners of capital may be different and former colonies (India and China) have come to challenge and compete with their former colonizers in business and domination. But these new business people follow the same values and business practices as those who ran the East India Company – to make money and safeguard their investments. What is different today is the fact that military intervention to back up business is not as easy as it once was. Instead, military intervention has generally been replaced by other forms of control, such as protectionism and subsidies, to keep competitors under check.

Another significant difference today is that job losses are happening in the industrialized world and not in countries like Bangladesh. Poor, skilled, semi-skilled and non-skilled people from Bangladesh are finding work in many foreign markets, selling their labour in places and under conditions where others would not. Meanwhile, the small amount of foreign investment in Bangladesh has helped employ millions who would otherwise have gone without food, shelter, education, clothing or medical attention. The swift movement of capital and its connection to other factors, such as skilled labour and low cost of operations, is a major characteristic of globalization. And if this is what globalization is, then I like it, for it brings capital and productivity to countries like Bangladesh.

Just look at some of the development indicators.

• Bangladesh has climbed 14 places on the UN’s Human Development Index.²
• The reduction of underweight children was halved from 65.8 in 1990 to 47.4 in 2004. 
• Maternal malnutrition decreased from 53 per cent in 1996/97 to 32 per cent in 2005.³

Furthermore, a World Bank report compared Bangladesh’s progress between 1971 and 2007 and found that:

• Life expectancy rose from 50 to 64 years.
• Population growth rates of 3 per cent a year have been halved to 1.5 per cent.
• Unemployment that ran at 25-30 per cent shrunk to 4 per cent.
• Child mortality rates have been cut by 70 per cent.
• Literacy has more than doubled, and Bangladesh is on track to meet its Millennium Development Goal on gender parity, having already achieved the goal in primary and secondary schooling.”⁴

Moreover, since 1990 the annual economic growth rate has been 4 to 5 per cent.⁵

This does not mean that Bangladesh has solved all its problems. Malnutrition remains a serious problem. However, when we look at what Bangladesh has achieved over the past 30 years it is commendable. The per capita food production has not changed much over the past 45 years but the population has doubled. This ability to produce enough food to maintain the status quo has been no mean feat given that the cultivable area of 21 million acres in 1971 has been reduced to 18.8 million acres in 2002-2003. ⁶

Feeding a burgeoning population while the main resource base (cultivable land) kept shrinking is a challenge that Bangladesh has dealt with well, despite facing major calamities, such as the floods of 1988, 1998, and the cyclone of 1991.

There are other problems, such as poor governance and weather calamities, but these cannot be laid on the shoulders of globalization.

Mahfuz R. Chowdhury writes: “What went wrong with Bangladesh? The simple answer is its corrupt political system that has miserably failed to implement the kind of changes required for turning the country around.”⁷ Indeed, this corruption could possibly be reduced by opening up the country to “globalization.” Richard Fisher argues that, “Policies in more globalized countries tend to be less corrupt, more stable and effective.”⁸

As posited earlier, business has not changed much since its inception. However, today business is stepping out across national boundaries and investing where it makes business sense for it. Poor countries can make the most of this by participating rather than complaining. Bangladesh as a poor nation is doing well as shown by the different indicators; however it would do better by reducing corruption and inviting in foreign capital and management expertise.  

Indeed, the real question may be why globalization has become an issue today. Is it that the weak but relatively well off in the developed countries are losing their jobs to the poor of the developing countries? Is it that many in the developed countries have priced themselves out of the labour market?

The people of Bangladesh have always been at a disadvantage; they have competed against the unfairest system (colonization) and have survived. Despite all the fears that globalization would produce many ills for us it appears that Bangladesh has done well so far. For us, this new globalization may well be something to celebrate.  

 

Derek D’Silva joined MCC Bangladesh in 1974 and spent many years working in the agriculture program. He is currently associate director of MCC Bangladesh. Derek has an MSc in International Community Economic Development from New Hampshire College. He and his wife Yvonne have three children.

 

The perspectives included in Globaleyes do not necessarily reflect MCC opinion.