Cover image The American Embassy in DhakaS. M. Samsu

Understanding

Bangladesh’s unexpected

success

About The Aid LabIn 2013, Ferdous Jahan of Dhaka University and I were researching a DFID-ESRC project called Food Riots and Food Rights. We kept being told that it was ‘because of the famine’ that Bangladesh managed the 2008 food crisis so well.

People don’t talk much about the famine of 1974. The silence got me wondering: was it possible that that terrible event had had wider impacts? What had it meant for the elite and their views on the development project? What did it mean for what Mushtaq Khan calls the

‘political settlement’?

Rereading the literature on Bangladesh and reflecting on my own decades of research, I concluded that the famine led to a ‘subsistence crisis contract’ between the Bangladeshi elite, the masses, and their donors. This meant a commitment to protecting against the crises of subsistence and survival that rural landless Bangladeshis, particularly women, so regularly faced. This, I believe, provided – continues to provide – the strong foundations for Bangladesh’s human development success.

Why is Bangladesh The Aid Lab?When it won independence in 1971, Bangladesh had virtually no geostrategic significance. Yet it now plays a critical ideological role in the contemporary world order, as proof that the neoliberal development paradigm works under the most challenging of circumstances.

I call Bangladesh ‘The Aid Lab’ as a reminder of the real – often far from ethical - experiments through which aid tested development theories and practice

on the Bangladeshi nation.

I chose this rickshaw painting of the American Embassy in Dhaka to highlight the significance of global actors and institutions in Bangladesh’s development process. But I also like how it suggests their domestication: Bangladesh has reshaped development ideas, and now seeks to promote ‘the Bangladesh model’ of development. It has nationalized the Aid Lab, turning it into its own machine.

Bangladesh’s

surprising success

A Police officer from Bangladesh, serving under the United Nations Police attends a ceremony during which a total of 56 vehicles were handed over to the Somali Police Force. The vehicles were donated by the Government of Japan through UNSOM in Mogadishu, Somalia on 9 September 2015.https://www.flickr.com/photos/unsom/

What’s so surprising about Bangladesh’s success?The surprise is that Bangladesh has progressed faster on human development than many of its comparators, and from a lower base. External observers were not optimistic about Bangladesh’s prospects in the early years.

This success cannot be explained by economic growth alone. The state and Bangladeshi NGOs have used aid and their own resources to play a major role here, delivering services right to rural households, typically reaching women first in highly innovative ways.

This poor, agrarian, patriarchal society has been transformed in this time, most visibly in the life-chances of rural women.

Bangladesh now plays an increasingly prominent role in global development, trade, and climate change negotiations. Bangladeshi women are no longer depicted as poor victims as often as in the past; instead we see them travelling, earning, organizing and even (as in this picture) keeping peace around the world.

Malthusia

Picture: ©NOAA (Mariners Weather Log, January 1971, pg. 19) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

BayofBengalTCNov1219700956UTCITOS1.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File

%3ABayofBengalTCNov1219700956UTCITOS1.png

Was Bangladesh really a ‘basket case’?Henry Kissinger’s reference to Bangladesh as a ‘basket case’ in 1971 was a crude but accurate enough summary of conditions facing the new nation. In the early 1970s, the new nation of Bangladesh became the poster child for Malthusian ideas and policies among the right, and the object of humanitarian concern among progressives.

But the ‘basket case’ label ignored the political ecological, imperial and neo-colonial conditions that impoverished the vast Bangladeshi population in the first place. The 1971 war of liberation was devastating, a genocidal effort to

suppress a rebellious province. It followed a series of major historic disasters that the people of East Bengal had faced without the help of a state that had their back, including the 1943-4 famine created by Churchill’s wartime policies.

The liberation struggle was triggered by the 1970 Bhola cyclone which killed up to 500,000 people (previous picture). The Pakistani regime showed it cared little for the people of the Bay of Bengal. Protecting people against deadly disasters became central to the nationalist struggle, and to the mandate of the new state.

A Banglades

h Paradox?©Arju Rahmanen.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Shahbag_ProtestFebruary 11, 2013Used under Creative Commons Licencehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/arjurahman/8465758848/in/dateposted/

Is there a ‘Bangladesh paradox’?From these Malthusian beginnings, Bangladesh made rapid progress, and by the 2000s was lauded as a development success story. The World Bank identified a ‘Bangladesh paradox’, puzzled by the fact of rapid development success without ‘good governance’. (Naturally, the World Bank concluded their policies explained Bangladesh’s success.)

Politics remain confrontational and governance is far from perfect. But

successive Bangladeshi regimes have consistently focused on human development, and been highly responsive to basic needs. Disaster management, poverty reduction and food security have remained ‘above politics’ or party competition, and largely insulated against ’bad’ governance. This is a classic case of Merilee Grindle’s ‘good enough governance’.

A human development success story

Sustainable Development GoalsIcon credit:

http://unicdhaka.org/files/2015/09/SDGs-Bangla-Icons-final.jpg

Development success as performance legitimacyBangladesh performed creditably on the Millennium Development Goals, winning a load of awards and acknowledgement for its achievements. It is proceeding full steam ahead with plans to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and with its own home-grown development agenda.

Development performance has become an increasingly important part of

government legitimacy in Bangladesh. Governments report performance on development indicators as a sign of their commitment and competence. It may be particularly important for the legitimacy of the present government, because of the effective absence of political competition and the closure of democratic space in recent years.

The elites, the masses, & their donors

Cover of Ajker OrthokontoSeptember 1, 2013. Issue 4, Year 3http://businessnews24bd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Cover-Final.jpg

The emergence of a ‘subsistence crisis contract’The argument of this book rests on the idea that out of the horrors of the cyclone, war, and famine, a social contract emerged between the Bangladeshi elites, the (mainly rural, landless) masses, and the country’s aid donors. This was a contract of domination, not of equals, and Bangladesh was pushed into liberalizing policies it had not originally planned. But the contract to protect against crises of subsistence and survival has held over time, because the elites knew their

survival depended on it. There was a strong elite consensus on the basics of development that has lasted across regimes.

It helped that the Bangladeshi elite have been unusually close to the rural masses. This situation is now changing with the new affluence and the rise of new business interests, such as ‘Prince Dr. Moosa (pictured above). For now, however, the compact appears to hold.

The broken patriarchal bargain

Bengali women fetching water from the well in earthenware pots, 1944.Picture: Cecil Beaton for HMG Ministry of InformationNational Archives catalogue reference.: INF 14/435/7 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bengali_women_fetching_water_from_the_well_in_earthenware_pots,_1944.jpg

The breaking of the patriarchal bargainWhat Deniz Kandiyoti calls the ‘patriarchal bargain’ had been breaking down in East Bengal over decades or longer. The agrarian basis for family and social life changed as more people became landless, and women’s post-harvest processing and child-bearing became less central to family survival and success.

From conversations with Naila Kabeer, I started to think about the effects of wartime violence including the campaign of mass rapes, and the collective trauma this meant for gender and social relations.

The anthropologist Nayanika Mookherjee has shown that the new Bangladeshi state took a pioneering role with respect to women who had been raped during the war. I argue that this was the start of a strikingly different relationship between Bangladeshi women and their state. This relationship was an important source of ‘biopower’, or the state’s ability to exert power over life and death.

The emergence of

the ‘woman issue’ in

developmentThe War in the Far East, 1944. Indian women labourers, engaged in

airfield construction work, pass mechanics working on a Royal Air Force Consolidated Liberator bomber at a base in Bengal [note: possibly

Tejgaon Airport).Credit: Royal Air Force official photographer

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_War_in_the_Far_East%2C_1944_CF166.jpg

Women at the centreThe image of East Bengali women carrying water c. 1944 by Cecil Beaton of Vogue fame, suggested an unchanging traditionalism in the lives of rural women.

But in key respects, the lives of Bengali women were not those of an unchanging peasant patriarchy. They were already on the frontline of global crises and conflicts, through empire, trade and climate change. In the previous image we see women

building a WW2 airforce base, probably the Tejgaon airport in Dhaka. This was also during Churchill’s wartime famine.

As the sociologist Sarah White has argued, representations of Bangladeshi women have always been deeply problematic, veering between victim and heroine, closely shaping the development interventions intended to ‘bring women into development’ and empower them.

1974

© Lutheran World Federation photoKurigram gruel kitchenNovember 1974Used in The Lutheran, January 22, 1975. ELCA Archives imagewww.elca.org/archives

The last famineIt is difficult and contentious to discuss the famine of 1974, but I worry that if we forget that it happened and what it meant, we risk forgetting its vital lessons.

The 1974 famine was the product of a lethal combination of factors: major floods, a global food price spike, aid donors playing Cold War politics with food aid, inadequate relief, and a political economy that favoured the urban middle class over the rural poor. If the population

had not been so poor and hungry already, devastated by the events of previous years, 1.5 million (2% of the population, according to estimates by the economist and chronicler of the 1974 famine Muhiuddin Alamgir) may not have died.

Part of the tragedy of 1974 was that this was not a famine caused by a negligent political elite, but fundamentally by a lack of state capacity, the lack of the power to keep its most vulnerable citizens alive.

Never again

Local vegetable market in Khulna, Bangladesh. April 17, 2014.Credit: M. Yousuf Tushar.©WorldFIsh https://www.flickr.com/photos/theworldfishcenter/Used under Creative Commons license

The long shadow of famine1974 was the last major food crisis Bangladesh suffered. Disasters never stopped – in fact they increased in frequency – but capacity to warn, protect and recover was built. Food security was gradually assured through a mix of agricultural investment, opening food markets, and food and cash transfers to the hungry.

Why did famine have this effect in Bangladesh? One reason was the political crisis, particularly the brutal assassination of the founding father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, along with most of his family in 1975. A second was the economic crisis that engulfed the bankrupt nation. The political

settlement that emerged in a 15 year period of authoritarian rule gained legitimacy by building the foundations for food security and disaster management for which the nationalists had struggled.

The famine also inspired several of Bangladesh’s famous NGOs and the Grameen Bank. Witnessing the devastation firsthand provided a strong motivation to work with grassroots communities, particularly women, to do development from the ground up.

Making Bangladeshis

Three Kids, Three WIndows September 22, 2012Credit: ©Sudipta Akra Das https://www.flickr.com/photos/sudiptadas/Used under Creative Commons licence

Building biopowerIn the years after the famine, there was a strong, aid-driven focus on population control. But for the ruling elite, the development project was to turn rich human resources into national wealth. For that, the people needed basic education, to be able to benefit from new opportunities. And they needed to survive in order to be able to thrive.

From the democratic period (after 1991), human development indicators improved steadily. With the help of aid, the state built schools and clinics and outreach services, partnering or competing with the growing NGOs to reach women and

children in the poor rural heartlands. National statistics systems enabled the state and its aid and NGO partners to monitor progress, detect problems, and plan new policies and programmes.

This new state capacity amounted to what Foucault called ‘biopower’, or the power over life and death. Biopower was essential to the development of a state that had been pushed into global markets with little but its labour power to sell. Crucially, the project of human development aligned closely with the desires of the population itself.

Aerotropolitans & Cinderellas

Patiently waiting for a flight home. Bangladeshi migrant workers who have crossed the Egyptian border wait patiently for a repatriation flight home, relieved to have escaped the fighting in Libya.Credit: ©Stabilisation Unit /DFIDhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/5755270530

Bangladeshis in the global economy

Bangladesh is now firmly part of the global economy, mostly positioned near the bottom of global value chains. But exports of readymade garments and migrant labour have made a vast difference to foreign exchange earnings and GDP.

Ongoing struggles over low wages in the garments industry have demonstrated the limits of a development model based on very hard and hazardous work for very low pay. In the global economy, few workers have rights. This is particularly true of the ‘aerotropolitans’

who cross borders in their search for a living.

Bangladesh is particularly famous for micro-credit, but this technology has gone, as Jayati Ghosh put it, ’from hero to zero’ in a decade. Indebtedness and market saturation are factors in Bangladesh, too. But I argue here that this anti-poverty technology very likely helped rural Bangladeshis build their resilience to the myriad everyday disasters of poverty. Microcredit continues to evolve to meet the emerging needs of Bangladesh.

Post-Malthusian futures

Hatirjheel by night. January 4th 2014.Credit: ©Nadia HossainUsed with permission

Towards a new social contract?Bangladesh’s unexpected success owes much to its foundational subsistence crisis contract against repeated threats to life and livelihood from disasters and food shocks. The old threats of climate change, food crises and domination by bigger powers remain. And there are new threats, notably religious extremism. Industrial unrest continues, and Bangladesh’s migrant workers are the precariat of the global workforce. Business interests increasingly dominate politics and Parliament.

As Bangladesh transforms itself into a middle income country, its continued success implies a

move towards a rights-based social contract. This means enforcing the de facto elite consensus on development with legal rights and public provision. It also means a massive investment in upgrading education, health and social protection provision, to meet the demands of a middle income society for a more skilled, resilient and empowered population.

Authoritarian rule did not prevent Bangladesh’s success. But its greatest achievements were in the democratic period. The recent narrowing of democratic space must be watched carefully to ensure its success is not jeopardized.

Picture credits1. The American Embassy in Dhaka: S. M. Samsu (2016)2. A Police officer from Bangladesh, serving under the United Nations Police attends a ceremony during

which a total of 56 vehicles were handed over to the Somali Police Force. The vehicles were donated by the Government of Japan through UNSOM in Mogadishu, Somalia on 9 September 2015. https://www.flickr.com/photos/unsom/

3. Satellite image of the Bhola Cyclone , 12 November 1970. ©NOAA (Mariners Weather Log, January 1971, pg. 19) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABayofBengalTCNov1219700956UTCITOS1.png

4. ©Arju Rahman en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Shahbag_Protest. February 11, 2013. https://www.flickr.com/photos/arjurahman/8465758848/in/date posted/

5. Sustainable Development Goals. http://unicdhaka.org/files/2015/09/SDGs-Bangla-Icons-final.jpg6. Cover of Ajker Orthokonto. September 1, 2013. Issue 4, Year http://

businessnews24bd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Cover-Final.jpg7. Bengali women fetching water from the well in earthenware pots, 1944. Picture: Cecil Beaton for HMG

Ministry of Information. National Archives catalogue reference.: INF 14/435/7

8. The War in the Far East, 1944. Indian women labourers, engaged in airfield construction work, pass mechanics working on a Royal Air Force Consolidated Liberator bomber at a base in Bengal [note: possibly Tejgaon Airport). Credit: Royal Air Force official photographer https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_War_in_the_Far_East%2C_1944_CF166.jpg

9. © Lutheran World Federation photo. Kurigram gruel kitchen November 1974. Used in The Lutheran, January 22, 1975. ELCA Archives image www.elca.org/archives.

10. Local vegetable market in Khulna, Bangladesh. April 17, 2014. Credit: M. Yousuf Tushar. ©WorldFIsh https://www.flickr.com/photos/theworldfishcenter/ Used under Creative Commons licence

11. Three Kids, Three WIndows September 22, 2012 Credit: ©Sudipta Akra Das https://www.flickr.com/photos/sudiptadas/ Used under Creative Commons licence

12. Patiently waiting for a flight home. Bangladeshi migrant workers who have crossed the Egyptian border wait patiently for a repatriation flight home, relieved to have escaped the fighting in Libya. Credit: ©Stabilisation Unit /DFID https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/5755270530

13. Hatirjheel by night. January 4th 2014. Credit: ©Nadia Hossain. Used with permission

Picture credits

@nomhossain@IDS_UK

https://nomhossain.wordpress.com/

Continue the discussion

Further reading on the political economy of Bangladesh’s development

Talukder Maniruzzaman. 1988. The Bangladesh Revolution and Its Aftermath. 2nd edition. Dhaka: University Press LimitedMushtaq H. Khan 2011. “The Political Settlement and Its Evolution in Bangladesh.” http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/12845/1/The_Political_Settlement_and_its_Evolution_in_Bangladesh.pdf.Mirza Hassan. 2013. 'Political Settlement Dynamics in a Limited-Access Order: The Case of Bangladesh.'. http://www.effective-states.org/wp-content/uploads/working_papers/final-pdfs/esid_wp_23_hassan.pdf.Wahiduddin Mahmud, Sadiq Ahmed, and Sandeep Mahajan. 2008. ‘Economic Reforms, Growth, and Governance: The Political Economy Aspects of Bangladesh’s Development Surprise.’ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTPREMNET/Resources/489960-1338997241035/Growth_Commission_Working_Paper_22_Economic_Reforms_Growth_Governance_Political_Economy_Aspects_Bangladesh_Development_Surprise.pdf

Centres of research on the political economy of development in Bangladesh

Centre for Policy Dialogue: http://cpd.org.bd/Department of Development Studies at the University of Dhaka: http://devstud-udhaka.ac.bd/Effective States and Inclusive Development (University of Manchester): http://www.effective-states.org/Department of Public Administration at the University of Dhaka: http://www.du.ac.bd/academic/department_item/PUBPower and Participation Research Centre: http://www.pprcbd.org/BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BRAC University): http://bigd.bracu.ac.bd/Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex: http://www.ids.ac.uk/