Implementing PRSP
Poverty situation in this country, as everyone knows, is not simply disparities of income. It goes well beyond that to include education, health, nutrition, risk and vulnerability, crime and violence, and powerlessness and absence of voice. Reducing poverty therefore is about bringing social transformation that needs a comprehensive framework and multi-dimensional approach. True, as the Prime Minister has said, its success depends on the proper implementation running about ten years from now. In light of the UN Summit on Millennium Development Goals, Bangladesh envisages to reduce poverty situation to half its present by 2015. The stipulated target of 3.3 per cent reduction, experts opine, is hardly achievable.
Out of the eight most important sectors of the PRSP, the stipulated investment to be made in primary education sector will rise to $1200 crore in 10 years including the school tiffin project costing about $100 crore and the rural sanitation project during these years will involve an expenditure of about $50 crore. But the entire programme, a highly cost intensive one could only be implemented with spontaneous flow of donor assistance.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The ambitious project targeting education, healthcare and sanitation running about 10 years with massive inflow of donor assistance combined with the country's own share has been formulated sidelining the main opposition party and as such it suffers from consensus based on perception parameters.
It is true when these sectors are addressed properly, the growth phenomenon is likely to spawn business and industry. But it is a utopian proposition, a road riddled with hurdles and uncertainties. Because Bangladesh is a country where certain ad-hocism has defined the collective mentality of a people accustomed to letting events shape their destiny. They have readily accepted and adapted to change but have shown a curious reluctance to initiate it. Instinctively the country has preferred tradition and habit to radicalism. It isn't conservatism. Intellectual laziness would be a better description. On one side the sleazy role of the politicians and highhandedness of the bureaucracy on the other have stifled the growth of the country.
Of course it wasn't all gloom and doom. Remarkably adept in the art of surviving, some of the people with ingenuity have taken on the task of beating the system. They rode over the system that was relegated to a series of intricate negotiations -- whether it's securing a child's admission to school or purchasing a railway ticket. We have wasted valuable 33 years experimenting on system and methodology either in education sector or development dynamics. Whether it is at the top tier of the administration or at the lower level of bureaucracy, successive governments have been fond of instituting commissions, checks and counter checks allowing the problem to fester without looking at the solutions that lay near at hand. Egged on by global currents, the country has just blundered on.
Technology has changed, economic assumptions have shifted, expectations have soared and lifestyles have altered but our governments over the years have put their thoughts of the big changes on hold. Pleasant enough, the P.M .while holding a meeting with the secretaries of various ministries in the second week of this month asked the officials to transact business by e-governance but unfortunately our dilly-dallying about incorporating fibre optics in the information technology sector and sub-marine cable have thrown us back from the information super highway. .Just compare our position with Thailand where the prime minister has declared to give one laptop computer to everyone of the two and half lakh Thai primary school children at a cost of $100.00 each at the beginning of 2006. Paradoxically, we cannot even think of giving at least one computer to each school in the country.
Innately true, the government sometimes invites disaster and lurches from one catastrophe to another.. The government is making a dangerous experiment of introducing a unified system of education without making any effort of bringing English medium, Bangla medium and Madrassah system in one stream. Alarmingly, this is being done without any brainstorming or without diagnosing the ills the prevalent system has generated. On the other hand the shortcomings in our present system of education have been lost sight of. Nowhere in the world could we find such discriminatory, divergent and messy system running parallel at the early stages of schooling, one for the elite class and the other for the poor.
Surprisingly, English medium schools and Madrassahs have sprung up in the nook and corner of the country sidelining the traditional system of schools. Nevertheless in an age that rides over scientific and technological progress, emphasis on science education is a must to catch up with the world trend. If our education system either at the primary or secondary stage of schooling has failed to generate the desired fruits, the fault lies somewhere else. Since the government grants started dwindling, the system of elementary and secondary education in the country started breaking down. Today it is an immense chaos with little hope on the horizon. The system has turned into a battle of contending dooms: poor quality teaching, uninspiring textbooks, shabby and dilapidated school building, high dropouts and shrinking academic facilities.
Further analysis has revealed that because of our apathy and neglect to enforce strict standard through selection of appropriate textbooks and recruitment of competent teachers learning process has suffered and students mostly from the rural areas of Bangladesh have cut a sorry figure at the SSC examination in large numbers and even those who have become successful go for higher education in colleges with a very poor background achieved at the primary and secondary level of schooling. They have not learnt the basics and the worst situation is they have hardly any proficiency in English. Textbooks prescribed these days for learning English from the early stages to the Higher Secondary are functional in nature and neither inspire nor allow a student to have command over the language. Faulty teaching coupled with the dearth of efficient teachers in our system of education contributed to the festering ills and large scale dropouts.
There has been an alarming liquidation of old schools both at the primary and secondary stages that once produced a talented pool of students. These institutions with a rich legacy and tradition had catered education to hundreds of students born of poor parents who later adorned the different service sectors and other professional bodies. Because of resource crunch, lack of interest in education in general and poor management mired in dirty politics most of these schools and colleges are struggling for survival. Unfortunately these institutions do no longer have committed teachers and bright students on the roll.
In a bid to pin point the real malady in our education system, we have to focus our attention at the core issues: efficient teaching staff, flow of funds and proper management free of politicisation. The deterioration in school level teaching, infrastructural deficiencies like dilapidated buildings or absence of any building or classroom in most schools of rural Bangladesh are indications of the rot that has affected the growth of education or to speak more bluntly has eaten into the vitals of the nation.
In most non-government schools and colleges qualified people or teachers with initiative, skill, dedication and commitment hardly get a job unless they have political connections. While the government frets about embarking on a grand scheme of eliminating poverty, the ongoing scenario of corruption at the educational institutions and administration and immoral and unethical practices adopted in preparing and selecting textbooks must be stopped once for all.
There has to be a radical change or so to say improvement in the distribution of income and wealth that the state generates from various sources. More appropriately, the benefits of growth for the poor may be eroded in absence of a proper and equitable pattern of distribution of income. It needs hardly any elaboration after the country passed through all these years of trials and tribulations that economic growth is meaningless unless it leads to social development. True prosperity is that which benefits the last man in the last row.
The landless farmer the weaver, the fishermen and the vast multitude of people driven from their homes and professions because of the fury of nature and more so the woman who is denied equality of status in a social order that continues to be male dominated should be the focus of our attention. The question that ad nauseam strikes our mind is: can we leave behind us forever the horror of hunger and the darkness of illiteracy? Can we create a society free of discrimination of any form? Yes , we can. If, as a nation we can rekindle the hope ,courage and enthusiasm that suffused the people and revive the determination that drove the entire nation 33 years ago.
After all, we have been blessed with a fertile land and natural resources , a major portion of which still remains hidden and unexploited. We can definitely achieve the millennium development goals if we could have a new positive mindset attuned to the realities and geared to the challenges of the new century. One really wonders why a vibrant, multi-party democracy that have matured over the past 33 years, cannot produce men and women of sturdier political morality.
While leaders are making great fuss about image boosting and economic emancipation and development even after the country has been branded as the most corrupt in Transparency International(TI)'s corruption perception index for the fifth consecutive year, no effort to halt this continuous slide is visible. Meanwhile the educational structure of the country is crumbling down. John Ruskin, the great social thinker believed that "education was not teaching the children the shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers and leaving them to turn their arithmetic to roguery and their literature to lust but giving them training which make them happiest in themselves." Because we have failed in orienting the students and giving them a sense of direction in the pursuit of learning and character development, the nation now finds itself mired in crisis of overwhelming proportions.
The planners and policy making cell of the government must not consider PRSP as just a state philosophy, mostly confined to an exercise in futility. They must implement it to reduce poverty and in doing so they must empower the poor, provide them with security and create opportunities for them. Education brings both opportunities and empowerment. Undeniably true, empowerment is fundamental, because without it the poor are unable to influence decisions that affect their lives. At the same time, without security the poor can't use assets efficiently, nor can they be sure of holding on to them (assets) and enjoying the benefits of their productive use.