Leaving Bangladesh

I have been staying here as project manager of a diesel power plant financed by a foreign company since June 2003.

On the occasion of my leaving after successful completion of my project, I would like to leave an advice to Bangladesh from the view point of a foreigner.

I have read many articles in The Daily Star on democracy, political culture, corruption, development, law and order, gangsters, etc. According to its articles, we can easily find that there are numerous factors combining together as obstacles to the country's development. However, Bangladesh doesn't have enough well organised human resources and enough financial resources to improve or resolve all the problems within a short period. We have also noted that it is very difficult to practically improve the situation or sometimes even approach the problems, while it is very easy to talk about that. That is why most of the underdeveloped countries have failed.

It will be very difficult to create or set up any scheme for the country's development in the initial stage without any model cases. However, fortunately, there are some countries to be benchmarked which have succeeded in their development efforts after the Second World War , i.e. South Korea, China, etc. Please make a case study and apply the same to Bangladesh with some modifications that are suitable, considering the country's prevailing state.

In case of South Korea, they have developed their country by concentrating on economic issues. They laid emphasis on a few items, not many items. Finally, they have achieved a remarkable growth in export amounting to some 20 million dollars(1961) to some 20 billion dollars(1979).

Korean people also became aware of the fact that most of problems are resolved or improved if people are getting richer, but there is no solution or improvement if people remain poor.

The above observations should be helpful for the development of your country.