Day 16: Bangladesh

[Tetro Kornbluth]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh



Despite being only slightly larger than England, it is about three times the population at 156.6 million, making it the eight largest country in the world. Formerly East Pakistan it broke away from that ramshackle construct in a war in 1970 which the rest of the world forgot about which was followed by a terrible famine, which also the rest of the world forgot about. Nationalism in Bangladesh is strongly associated with language and religion, it essentially being a state for Bengali speaking Muslims, and in those two areas it is strongly homogenous, unusually for an Asian state, especially a large South Asian one. Unsurprisingly given its history and geography, its politics, organization and culture sometimes resemble more a large Indian state rather than a highly distinct entity.

Below is a map of the Bengali speaking regions with Bangladesh outline in dark red. Bengali is one of the ten largest languages by number of speakers.

[Simfan34]

I wonder what Xahar has to say about this (and I don't mean to offend him), but I've always had the impression that Bangladesh, between the extreme density, poverty, and maladministration (if I'm not wrong, Bangladesh had until some time after independence the highest per capita GDP on the subcontinent), a rather unpleasant place verging on the utterly miserable.

While to be honest I don't know that much about Bangladesh, I looked around Dhaka on Google Street View-- which rather surprisingly* covers most of the country-- and I found it to line up pretty closely with my expectations. I find it hard to think of any other city of such size with so little in the way of redeeming characteristics, or indeed any character at all.

What I'd like to know is why Bangladesh is like this. It can't be the population: for as horrendous as it may sound (and it sounds pretty terrible), Java gets by pretty well with a similar population density. More specifically, I've wondered as to why they've failed to move from garment and other low-cost manufacturing up the value-added chain.

Indeed, the fact that they seem to be stuck in something of a "sweatshop trap", rather than developing on the typical export-oriented path, is unsettling on a rather personal level, since it suggests that other countries (by which I mean African countries, hence the personal level) could one day find themselves in a similar position-- and that "sweatshops" may not be as good a thing as developmentalists make them out to be.

So what explains their chronic misfortune?

*Even more surprisingly, Street View has complete coverage of Bhutan!

[TDAS04]

Bangladesh deserves credit for surviving and doing as well as much as it has (even if that isn't very well by global standards), considering its challenges.  Not only is it so crowded, but the constant flooding adds to the headache, yet they manage.  They've also reduced their birthrate since independence.

[Figueira]

A pretty interesting country that gets way too little attention considering its population.

[ingemann]

Not much to admire, but preferable to West Pakistan.

[Хahar 🤔]

If you're interested in where I stay when I'm in Dhaka, it's on this alley (no Street View there, alas) in South Bashabo near the base of the Khilgaon Flyover.

I've never ventured outside the city, but it is indeed a rather unpleasant place. I suspect much of that has to do with how new it is. Dhaka was a major city during the Mughal Empire, but that city has little relation to the city today. Under British rule the great metropolis of Bengal was Calcutta. The Dhaka that exists today is only as old as Pakistan.

With regard to the country in general, one of the main problems is certainly maladministration. Bangladesh has at no point in its nearly 45 years of existence had a government that was either competent or committed to democracy. Going further, I agree with the notion of a "sweatshop trap". Low-wage work creating garments for foreign countries does not lead to better opportunities.

[DavidB.]

Not only is it so crowded, but the constant flooding adds to the headache, yet they manage.

What I don't understand is that the Netherlands faced similar massive floodings too, centuries ago. The Netherlands wasn't richer than Bangladesh nowadays is, and we didn't have access to any advanced technologies, yet save for some remarkable exceptions we managed to hold back the water most of the time. It has always puzzled me why Bangladesh is facing such a similar problem yet has had a much harder time dealing with it.

[Crumpets]

Has anybody heard how the mass exchange of enclaves and exclaves with India has gone so far?

[Хahar 🤔]

Not only is it so crowded, but the constant flooding adds to the headache, yet they manage.

What I don't understand is that the Netherlands faced similar massive floodings too, centuries ago. The Netherlands wasn't richer than Bangladesh nowadays is, and we didn't have access to any advanced technologies, yet save for some remarkable exceptions we managed to hold back the water most of the time. It has always puzzled me why Bangladesh is facing such a similar problem yet has had a much harder time dealing with it.

Flooding in Bangladesh comes from rivers, not the sea.