Made in Bangladesh: Homegrown Development in a Global Economy - Current History
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“Few big countries . . . have had their fortunes so profoundly shaped by a weak
position in the global system.”
Made in Bangladesh: Homegrown
Development in a Global Economy
NAOMI HOSSAIN
I
n less than half a century of national indepen- unrecognizable as the “basket case” it was de-
dence, Bangladesh has transformed itself from scribed as by then–US national security adviser
an agrarian backwater and a byword for disas- Henry Kissinger in 1971, its year of independence.
ter and deprivation into one of the fastest-growing Indeed, Bangladesh is something of a canary in the
economies in the world. It has made good use of globalization coal mine, and the world has much
its global connections in the form of aid, trade, and to learn from its experiences.
migration, achieving rapid progress on human de- In key respects—its opening up to global ex-
velopment and women’s empowerment. GDP per port markets in garments and migrant labor, its
capita has increased more than fourfold since inde- exposure to climate change effects, and its early
pendence, and Bangladeshis live longer and health- but rapidly declining dependence on international
ier lives. Yet the challenges of meeting the needs of aid—it has been a sometimes reluctant pioneer, a
170 million people, densely packed into a small ter- “test case for development,” as one World Bank
ritory with few natural resources, remain daunting. country representative wrote. How Bangladesh
Millions are still locked in poverty, and the overcame the unenviable distinction of being one
old problem of hunger has been compounded by of the world’s poorest large countries, and ended
modern forms of malnutrition such as obesity. up being singled out as an example of pro-poor de-
Exploitation of export manufacturing workers velopment success and a new “tiger economy,” is
sometimes ends in disasters like the 2013 Rana a remarkable tale of policy innovation and politi-
Plaza factory collapse, which killed 1,138 garment cal commitment. There are lessons to be learned
workers and jeopardized the future of the apparel about what has succeeded in making Bangladesh a
sector. Climate change unleashes ever more pow- more prosperous country, and what has not.
erful cyclones as well as slow-onset crises like Bangladesh’s homegrown efforts at national de-
water salination as sea levels rise around the low- velopment reflect what it means for any country to
lying south. be exposed to globalization on unfavorable terms.
State institutions, businesses, and the country’s Few big countries—by population, Bangladesh is
internationally renowned nongovernmental orga- the eighth-largest nation in the world—have had
nizations (NGOs) and civic groups must navigate their fortunes so profoundly shaped by a weak po-
a political setting that has long been characterized sition in the global system.
by corruption, weak rule of law, and personalistic The country’s political history can be sum-
governance. The party that led the national libera- marized as a struggle by the mostly Bengali and
tion struggle, the Awami League, is increasingly Muslim population of the Bengal Delta to survive
dominant and intolerant of opposition. and thrive despite its vulnerability to global mar-
Despite these significant challenges, as it nears ket volatility and natural disasters. This struggle
its half-century milestone Bangladesh is all but culminated in a national liberation movement to
secure the protections denied by foreign rulers.
Since then, the national project has both embraced
NAOMI HOSSAIN is a research fellow at the Institute of Devel- the opportunities of globalization and fortified the
opment Studies, University of Sussex, and the author of The
Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success population against serious threats in the form of
(Oxford University Press, 2017). food crises, natural disasters, and chronic poverty.
130Made in Bangladesh • 131
Bangladesh is by no means the only develop- the Bengal Delta. This long history of adverse in-
ing country to have experienced what the political corporation into the global system helps explain
economist Karl Polanyi called a “double move- why Bangladesh started life as the poster child for
ment” of global market integration alongside a Third World misery—and why its ultimately suc-
pushback from political parties and civil society cessful push for national liberation allowed it to
demanding greater social protection from those steer a more prosperous path through the risks
markets. But it was one of the poorest countries to and opportunities of globalization.
have done so.
Initial conditions in 1971 were so unpromis- DISASTER POLITICS
ing that Bangladesh looked set for long-term aid One of the best ways of assessing Bangladesh’s
dependence. Its devastated postwar economy had transformation is to note what no longer happens:
suffered decades of underdevelopment; millions since the mid-1970s, its citizens’ chances of dying
were displaced and most of the population impov- in a natural disaster or suffering from starvation
erished and hungry; the civil administration was have rapidly diminished. This may not sound like
weak and the political elite corrupt and fractious. a great achievement; most people in developed
Aid donors soon displayed signs of fatigue and countries enjoy such fundamental security with-
unwillingness to support the new regime. What out even noticing (though climate change may
changed after the darkest days of the mid-1970s, alter that). But the people of the Bay of Bengal en-
and why Bangladesh was able to pick up the pace dured a series of crises of subsistence and survival
of progress and develop in a surprisingly inclusive in the early 1970s that were of such magnitude
manner, deserves to be better known. and severity that they could not be written off as
Some history helps show why Bangladesh of- “natural” disasters beyond the scope of public in-
fered an early warning tervention.
about the costs of global- Many people know that
ization. It has long ap- Elites agreed on the need to turn the Bangladesh won its inde-
peared to be a traditional, pendence in a devastating
closed, and agrarian so-
country’s only wealth—its vast human war that left millions dead
ciety, yet it was open for resources—into economic growth. or displaced. Fewer know
business through trade, that the war was imme-
migration, and experi- diately preceded and fol-
ments with international aid soon after its birth. lowed by catastrophes that killed up to 2 million
For over a century before independence, it was more Bangladeshis. These events turned the lack
embedded—on mainly adverse terms—in global of basic protection into a political matter, signal-
circuits of commodities and capital, as a hinter- ing the need for a sovereign state to take action on
land to British India’s onetime capital and indus- fundamental matters of life and death, and shap-
trial center, Calcutta. ing its foundational policies on disaster manage-
British imperial trade imperatives pushed the ment and food security.
peasants of Bengal, which had been a rich and First came the 1970 Bhola cyclone, which
flourishing economy of agriculture and fine tex- struck the southern coast of what was then East
tiles under the Mughal Empire, into debt and de- Pakistan just weeks before Pakistan’s first demo-
pendence on the volatile international jute market. cratic elections. The cyclone packed immense
The Raj presided over major Bengal famines in the force, unleashing a 20-foot tidal wave that swept
eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, away up to half a million people as well as live-
in each of which millions died. Twice, millions of stock, trees, and buildings. It still ranks among the
the region’s people were casualties of power shifts most destructive natural disasters in world history.
on the world stage, first following the criminally The cyclone drew international attention and
inept withdrawal of British rule from South Asia in a massive humanitarian response. But the (West)
the 1947 Partition, and then again in 1971, when Pakistani regime was callous and negligent toward
Cold War geopolitics permitted Pakistan to un- what it openly viewed as a routine disaster in a po-
leash a genocidal attack on its breakaway eastern litically and economically unimportant backwater.
province. The failures of the Pakistani response quickly be-
Subjection to global forces over which they have came central to the election campaign, and Sheikh
little control is thus an old story for the people of Mujibur Rahman’s East Pakistan Awami League132 • CURRENT HISTORY • April 2019 scored a stunning victory that should by rights time) perished from disease and other effects of have made him prime minister of Pakistan. The starvation in 1974 and early 1975. Pakistani army responded with a genocidal attack The effects of the famine and the associated on the Bengalis in March 1971, triggering the lib- economic and political crisis were profound and eration war. Pakistan was defeated within 13 days, lasting. Against a backdrop of leftist opposition, after India entered the war. political divisions, and popular discontent over Upon coming to power as prime minister in inflation, law and order, and corruption, the once- independent Bangladesh in 1972, Sheikh Mujib heroic nationalist democrat Sheikh Mujib amend- started a national cyclone-preparedness program, ed the constitution to create a single-party state in now one of the longest-running and largest initia- 1975. Within a year, he was assassinated alongside tives of its kind anywhere. Bangladesh has faced his family. A series of coups and political murders a series of devastating tropical storms—those in followed, preparing the ground for military rule 1991, 2007, and 2009 came close to Bhola in their that lasted until 1990. ferocity. But an increasingly robust capacity for Food security topped the national policy agen- early warning and action has sharply reduced the da then and remains a high priority nearly half a death tolls; the storms to which the region is so century later. There have been no famines in Ban- exposed no longer wreak the vast human and eco- gladesh since 1974. Every potential food crisis has nomic destruction they once did. Similar progress been more or less successfully managed thanks to has been made in the management of excess flood- grain reserves used to stabilize prices, more open ing, to which this low-lying delta is also prone. trade, food transfers and other social protections The second major disaster of the independence for the poorest, and agricultural policies designed era was the famine of 1974, which taught the new to boost productivity and national food security. Bangladeshi elite comparable lessons about food Several of the country’s well-regarded NGOs were security. Global commodity price movements, co- also founded in response to these disasters, which lonial agricultural and land policies, and natural touched the national community as a whole and disasters had all played their part in major fam- bound it in agreement that such tragedies were in- ines in the region’s past. The 1974 famine had a tolerable in a sovereign nation—that they could complex set of causes common to post-conflict and should be prevented. settings. Over time and across party divides, ruling elites Excess flooding was particularly severe, and led have agreed on the need to honor this minimal so- to the collapse of agricultural wages for millions of cial contract (if nothing else). They recognize that the landless poor. Public finances were too weak failure to do so could threaten their political le- for the technically bankrupt government to im- gitimacy and very survival. Meeting these commit- port grain, since international commodity prices ments required strengthening the government’s had spiked with the OPEC oil embargo. The do- capacity to monitor and respond to potential di- mestic price of rice also spiked, probably due to sasters, being more receptive to Western aid, and speculative hoarding and smuggling. The United creating space for non-state actors. States withheld access to international food aid, Elites also learned that the political payoffs citing a US law banning aid to countries that trad- from protecting the population were rarely earned ed with communist states (Bangladesh had sold $5 in the short term, but easily squandered by care- million worth of jute sacks to Cuba). By the time less handling of a disaster. Protection demanded US food aid finally arrived, the worst of the famine long-term planning, investment in state capacity, was over. and sustained commitment by successive govern- The Bangladeshi government in any case lacked ments. The results have been vital but invisible. the administrative capacity and know-how to Bangladesh’s improved ability to respond to po- deliver effective relief to its starving people, and tential crises has enabled its citizens to go about proved unwilling or unable to divert what food their lives with far less experience of disasters and aid it did have from rations for the politically im- hunger than their parents or grandparents. portant urban middle classes to the starving rural poor. Some aid was offered in soup kitchens, but MAKINGS OF A MIRACLE this neither nourished the hungry adequately nor A more visible achievement can be seen in Ban- protected them against disease. An estimated 1.5 gladesh’s unexpectedly rapid human development. million people (2 percent of the population at the This has been enabled in part by greater economic
Made in Bangladesh • 133
and social stability since the 1970s, and also by a have been recruited into small enterprises and the
pluralist approach to bringing health and educa- cash economy through the country’s Nobel Peace
tion within reach of the rural masses. Prize–winning microfinance programs, giving
“Have you heard about the miracle that has them business experience and additional funds to
happened in Bangladesh over the last 30 years?” help them manage their households.
asked the late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling in Fertility control was the primary goal of aid
one of his popular teaching videos. The “miracle” policy in the early decades. High birth and infant
was that this impoverished country had managed mortality rates amid famine and poverty cast Ban-
to bring its population growth under control so gladesh as a Malthusian nightmare. The overrid-
rapidly. That is one of several examples of unex- ing objective was to reduce the number of babies
pected social transformation. being born. Medical ethics were often cast aside
Against the odds in a poor, patriarchal, Muslim- as Bangladeshi women were experimented on with
majority society, women and girls have won more contraceptive technologies like Norplant, deemed
rights and taken an increasingly prominent part too risky to be tried on American women.
in public life. Women are more visible in politics, The number of babies born per mother dropped
administration, and civil society than in the past. from 7 in the 1970s to 2 by the 2000s, reflecting
There has been rapid progress toward gender par- latent demand for reproductive control. A national
ity in key education and employment indicators, program recruited community health workers to
though women still bear the burden of reproduc- reach poor rural women with contraception and
tive work, limiting their employment options. family-planning advice, bringing together govern-
Elites agreed on the need to turn the country’s ment agencies, donors, and NGOs in one of sev-
only wealth—its vast human resources—into eral such partnerships. Infant and child mortality
economic growth. This meant declined sharply: the under-five
transforming the population to mortality rate (per 1,000) was
equip it for competition in the Bangladesh has seen the 223 in 1971, but by 2011 it had
global system—a project that fallen to 47, and the life chanc-
entailed a key role for mothers
life chances of its children es of Bangladesh’s children con-
and demanded that they receive improve for both genders. tinue to improve.
the necessary services, from Progress has also been made
health care to education and so- on immunization and common
cial protection. childhood diseases. A simple at-home oral rehy-
The headline indicators of Bangladesh’s devel- dration treatment pioneered by the NGO BRAC has
opment have been its robust economic growth, prevented millions of avoidable infant deaths from
averaging over 5 percent for two decades, and its diarrheal diseases at home and abroad. Interven-
visible transformation from an agrarian to an in- tions to tackle micronutrient malnutrition, im-
creasingly modern industrial and export-oriented prove water and sanitation access, livelihoods, and
economy. Other countries have experienced faster food security, and deliver a range of reproductive
growth and more thorough structural transfor- and basic health services have all contributed to
mations. But as a 2013 special issue of the Brit- better living standards. The people of Bangladesh
ish medical journal The Lancet noted, Bangladesh now can expect to live longer and healthier lives,
has emerged as a “positive deviant” by improving and to see their children survive and have a decent
on a range of human development indicators fast- chance to thrive.
er than its per capita income and poverty levels Inventive NGOs like BRAC (known as the world’s
would predict, and at a lower cost. This points to largest) and microfinance institutions such as the
a purposive and concerted effort to lift the popula- Grameen Bank have justly received international
tion out of poverty. acclaim for their work. In addition to its oral rehy-
The task of rolling out mass public services has dration therapy, BRAC’s successful models include
been mammoth. Bangladesh made rapid progress the DOTS tuberculosis treatment, non-formal pri-
on enrolling children in school in the 1990s and mary education for poor rural girls, and “gradu-
2000s, achieving gender parity at the primary and ation” programs designed to permanently lift the
lower secondary levels. Immunization and other extremely poor out of poverty. The Grameen Bank
basic public-health provisions have reached more developed a rural banking system with a wide ar-
or less full coverage. Millions of rural women ray of financial and related services for poor wom-134 • CURRENT HISTORY • April 2019
en. Both BRAC and Grameen Bank have spun off a this time in the “dark Satanic mills” of Rana Plaza–
range of for-profit and nonprofit companies and style factories. Wages are low and labor rights are
initiatives, including the country’s largest mobile weak. But while there can be no doubt that Bangla-
phone service provider, GrameenPhone, and its deshis have rapidly entered global labor markets
biggest provider of mobile money services, BKash, on unfavorable terms because that was the best
which is part of the BRAC group. option they had, most nonetheless have benefited
Governmental and NGO programs have been from doing so.
able to scale up partly because of the nation’s Two foreign exchange–earning sectors predom-
population density and ethnic and cultural ho- inate: ready-made garment production at the low
mogeneity. Viewed from the outside, NGOs have end of the value chain, accounting for some 83
sometimes overshadowed the role of the state. But percent of export earnings in 2018; and low-wage
within Bangladesh it is clear that successive gov- labor migration, mainly to the Middle East and
ernments have played major roles, and not only Southeast Asia. Remittances from overseas work-
by granting private initiative the space in which ers through formal channels alone accounted for
to operate. Some of the most effective solutions over 5 percent of the country’s GDP, or $15 billion,
to health, education, hunger, and other problems in 2018. Together these sectors have provided cru-
have harnessed public and private efforts. This is cial sources of employment and income for a large
part of the wider elite consensus about the impera- younger generation whose improving health and
tive to protect and transform the population. education levels fitted them for recruitment into
The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya global labor markets, with both positive and ad-
Sen (who was born in East Bengal in British In- verse effects.
dia), has said that Bangladesh’s achievements can Starting in the 1980s, the garment sector helped
be explained in part by a lack transform gender relations in
of adherence to ideology and Bangladesh, drawing the “nim-
an experimental pragmatism There have been ble fingers” and supposedly
in public policy. Governments docile bodies of poor, young,
have been ready to try anything
no famines in rural girls and women into
that might work. Policy makers Bangladesh since 1974. wage labor in global production
in contemporary Bangladesh networks. As the economist
aim to show the world that Naila Kabeer and the late devel-
homegrown solutions can succeed. opment expert Simeen Mahmud have shown, this
Over time the state has expanded its outreach to changed the relative valuation of girls and boys in
the population, and it now provides many services a patriarchal and mainly Muslim society—which
that people need and want. Of course, not all of its helps explain why Bangladesh has seen the life
programs have proved equally successful. In some chances of its children improve for both genders.
cases they have been of poor quality, designed to The “son preference” that killed so many infant
reach many but not necessarily well. The past de- girls in China and India has disappeared as wom-
cade of Awami League rule under Sheikh Hasina en’s relative status has improved.
has brought a new generation of experiments with Women garment workers have clearly valued
digital means of reaching the people, including the autonomy and identity they gain through paid
biometric data, smart cards, and mobile money. employment. But the jobs are physically tough,
But there are concerns that these tech initiatives low-paid, and dangerous, as the Tazreen fire and
may not be entirely benign, and could be used for the Rana Plaza collapse revealed. Workers remain
surveillance. at the mercy of global market conditions for fast
fashion.
GLOBAL WAGE LABOR The rising level of labor militancy since Rana
If this fairly rosy picture of pro-poor progress Plaza shows that women garment workers increas-
does not fit in with common knowledge of Ban- ingly have the consciousness and the means to mo-
gladesh, that is largely due to the first part of Po- bilize for their common interests. They draw on
lanyi’s double movement—the global economic their connections with international trade unions
forces against which the impulse to protection re- and labor rights advocates when needed, and are
sponded. The excesses of globalization have once aware of their own power to disrupt or facilitate
again made Bangladesh synonymous with misery, production. This is a kind of women’s empower-Made in Bangladesh • 135
ment that aid donors have been slow to support; As the country benefited from the global eco-
most prefer programs that integrate women into nomic rebound after the 2008 financial crisis, an-
markets over efforts to strengthen their bargaining nual growth rates hovered at an impressive 6–7
position. percent range. Poverty rates have dropped sub-
While global export manufacturing has the Cin- stantially. The coverage and quality of public ser-
derellas of the modern female precariat, migrant vices, particularly infrastructure and energy, ap-
labor has chiefly drawn in millions of young men pear to have improved.
who travel abroad for low-wage work, enjoying The Awami League decade, however, has also
few rights and protections because of their weak been a time of closing democratic space. The op-
position in the global system. They are attracted position Bangladesh National Party and critics of
by construction and domestic and retail service the regime have been silenced or criminalized.
contracts in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Ara- Some have been imprisoned or disappeared. The
bia, and Malaysia—and the opportunity to send re- crackdown on purportedly criminal behavior has
mittances home. But often they are cheated of the been justified in part by a series of Islamist terror-
down payments required to secure jobs, or pushed ist attacks on secular and foreign targets in Ban-
into insecure and unsafe labor. Many return home gladesh, culminating in a July 2016 massacre at
having lost everything and earned nothing but the Holey Artisan Bakery café in Dhaka’s upmar-
the experience of gross injustice and exposure to ket Gulshan area that left 20 hostages dead, mostly
Salafist versions of Islam. foreigners. Terrorist suspects were rounded up and
These violations of its people’s rights abroad killed without restraint.
have sorely tested Bangladesh’s diplomatic capaci- The comparatively moderate Jamaat-e-Islami,
ties and economic clout. Since the country contin- the main Islamist political party, has been disabled
ues to depend on this vital source of foreign ex- by the execution of five of its top leaders who were
change and employment, it has been chronically convicted by the International Crimes Tribunal, a
constrained in its ability to demand better protec- Bangladesh court set up to finally try the alleged
tions for its citizens overseas. war criminals of 1971. Jamaat is visibly in disarray
at the start of 2019, and there are fears that the
CLOSING SPACES absence of a moderate Muslim political movement
For observers unaware of the foundational pol- may push some toward extremism. A growing
itics of crisis and disaster in Bangladesh’s national number of voices and organizations are pushing
liberation era, the country poses a paradox: how, for more radical Islamist influence in public policy,
with its notoriously fractious and violent politics with some effect—restrictions on madrassas have
and venal elites, has it managed to achieve such been loosened and the minimum marriage age for
inclusive development? The answer is that the girls has been reduced in recent years.
elites’ interest in their own success and survival A broader concern is the effect of shrinking
led them to forge a consensus to better protect the civic space as the media, think tanks, civil soci-
population. The consensus held together whether ety groups, and NGOs face tighter regulations and
the government was elected or not, and shaped threats against outspoken dissenters, targeting the
the centrism and relative openness of both major political opposition as well as secularists and hu-
parties during the period of multiparty democra- man rights defenders. Bangladesh has benefited
cy that began in the 1990s. from openness that keeps market information
The “double movement”—toward greater eco- flowing, enables learning about what works to fos-
nomic growth and integration in global markets, ter development across different sectors, and en-
and toward stronger protection of the population sures a rough kind of accountability, often through
from those forces—has, if anything, speeded up in public naming and shaming. Whether the country
the past ten years under the Awami League gov- can maintain its distinctively inclusive model of
ernment led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, development under less liberal conditions remains
one of the surviving daughters of Sheikh Mujib. to be seen.
The Awami League took power in 2009 with an After what was widely seen as a thoroughly
unprecedented popular mandate after a two-year rigged election in December 2018, there is little
military-backed caretaker regime overstayed its optimism about the prospects for participatory de-
welcome, having presided over a massive spike in mocracy in Bangladesh. The Awami League holds
the price of rice. increasingly unchecked power over party poli-136 • CURRENT HISTORY • April 2019
tics and institutions of the state and civil society. were once the forests of Cox’s Bazaar in the bor-
What the political scientist Mirza Hassan terms a der area on the southeast coast. The relief effort
“dominant political system” has made it possible has involved complex global cooperation, and the
to address problems that require long-term plan- government has won praise for its generosity and
ning and action. But it has also deafened the state capacity to coordinate the delivery of vital aid.
to emerging issues. There have been mass protests In the precarious twenty-first century, with its
over road safety, civil service recruitment, and contagious financial crises and complex climate
minimum wages in the past year alone. change effects, Bangladesh faces new challenges
and will need to renegotiate its social contract to
A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT? better protect its citizens. Its institutions do an ef-
Bangladesh increasingly promotes its own de- fective job of protecting them from natural disas-
velopment successes and takes a leading role in ters and food crises. It is taking rapid strides to-
regional and global policy discussions on climate ward a modern social security system intended to
change and migration. There is a national ambi- provide protection from the volatility inherent in
tion to replace the old “basket case” image with globalization. Yet the government has proved less
that of Shonar Bangla or Golden Bengal, in the able to protect Bangladeshis from the precarity of
words of the national anthem—a song written wages and working conditions in local and global
by yet another of this land’s Nobel Prize-winning labor markets.
sons, Rabindranath Tagore. In a marked reversal Will Bangladesh continue to improve the lives
of its earlier role as a recipient of aid, the country of its citizens at an impressive pace in the future?
now sends well-regarded peacekeeping troops (in- The lessons of the past suggest that the gains
cluding many women officers) abroad to protect made so far have depended on a pluralist politi-
others as part of United Nations operations. cal culture in which citizens can articulate discon-
For the first time in its independent history, tent and dissent. This is how untenable policies
Bangladesh has taken a position of some impor- are changed over time, and how public policy re-
tance in geopolitics by extending its protection to sponds to mass needs.
over 700,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide Can the dominant party system protect citizens
in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, adding to the approx- against the worst effects of being at the bottom of
imately 300,000 Rohingya who were already in the global economic system? As Bangladesh moves
Bangladesh after previous ethnic-cleansing cam- toward its half-century mark in 2021, the direction
paigns against this mainly Muslim ethnic group. of change will start to become clearer. For now, the
Despite a long-standing resistance to accepting rest of the world should see in Bangladesh a wit-
refugees seen in Myanmar as “illegal Bengalis,” ness to the human effects of untamed globaliza-
the government of Bangladesh took them in and tion, and learn what it takes for a country with
set in motion a vast effort to provide shelter and little but its sovereignty to push back and succeed
sustenance to this traumatized population in what against the odds it faced at its difficult birth. ■You can also read
