Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Bangladesh: falling in love the 2nd time
There was just this personal connection that I felt once again with Bangladesh as I went there for APXLDS 2005. This country has definitely caught my attention and interest in so many ways. As you may have thought from the title, it's not falling in love with someone but simply falling in love with the country in general. Absurd feeling as it may seem to you, but definitely there's a lot to a country like Bangladesh that you can definitely start to see.
People
Yes, it's always something that catches your attention how much you get along with people when they welcome you with warm hearts. My 2nd journey in Bangladesh started with meeting all the AIESEC Organizing Committee members and Member Committee for one dinner together with the rest of the MCPs family. This is not a small group to host, not only in numbers but more on the variety of the nationalities that we were coming from(facilitators from 8 countries), yet being able to appreciate Bangladesh food very much.
The hospitality doesnt just end there as I felt them taking that extra mile to bring us around the chaotic city of Dhaka. The first day was definitely with a different definition of city tour, which means shopping for different saris and kamise and eating different kind of Bangla food.
The environment
I myself come from a developing country, and traffic jams are not something new to me. Yet somehow the way each person drives in Dhaka, be it riksha, CNG or taxi driver, it's just an endless way of cutting through from one point to another and you just get amazed by how the passengers survive that journey.
Yet this is just one part of Bangladesh where the roads may not be a pleasing journey but just enjoy the ride with a positive experience and you'll see that these things you think you can only survive in movies. On the other hand, if you travel just about an 1.5 hours from Dhaka you have the rural life which makes you closer to nature.
The conference venue was a place that has given us this atmosphere. Delegates traveling all the way to Bangladesh; leaving their countries and their own responsibilities; being away from realities of the world to be in a one week conference. In the conference venue we had enough space for some discussions in the grass, outdoor activities on a warm night, boating around the lake during lunch breaks. It may not have been the five star hotel that has given us that luxury, but the beauty of nature which we barely see anymore because of our busy schedules was something that was given to us as part of the great learning experience.
Challenge to the development of Bangladesh
From what I mentioned above, it's not a perfect picture or a perfect world that I was able to see that made me fall in love again with a country like Bangladesh. Yet, again coming from a developing country like the Philippines, I realized there's still a lot of development as well that Bangladesh has to go through. I saw a lot of similarities in terms of the need for development as well as the funds that are probably available through foreign or local investments, yet I couldn't see the developments to be progressing within the country through their basic infrastructures. Now, this is where my positive thinking starts to work, where I actually see a lot of opportunities in the current development that they are undergoing.
Opportunities for further development
First is the rise of telecommunication in their country, which I myself experienced the same way in the 1997 where mobile telecommunication seem like impossible and indeed a luxury for a teenager like me to own thus I just had to settle on receiving messages through pagers. Just a year later, 1998 almost everyone in my university were purchasing their own mobile phones and thus even the issue on using mobile phones while classes are going on. 7 years down the line, you can see that kids as young as 7 years old can already own a phone because of features like kid locator that allows parents to track where their children are-indeed a product development that's marketed for parents even if the consumer is a 7 year old kid who's just learning how to spell and add 1+1.
Right now they have Grameen Phone as the leading phone industry with a few competitors of which are not even close to a threat to Grameen Phone. Yet as from experience myself of Globe Telecom having the biggest market share in the Philippines in mobile telecommunications, in a few years time Smart Communications also came in that was followed through by other emerging competitors in the market. Indeed the key to continuous development would be to keep the competitive advantage that they would have and keep innovation coming in.
Second would be around the infrastructure development such as roads and transportation. From the way I saw it, the only public transportation were rikshas(tricycles driven manually by people), CNG(similar to tuktuk which uses converted natural gas), or buses(some airconditioned and mostly not but totally contributes to more pollution due to the old model it has). Overall transportation seem to be either for small group or just a big group that doesn't allow efficient movement of people from one point to another. If there are a lot of these small vehicles moving around the roads(not so wide ones) then definitely it will take about an hour to reach one short destination. They are definitely the ones causing traffic as these are not even countries. Add on to the fact that the roads are not that wide and with so many potholes, and each vehicle just stopping anywhere as people cross the road courageously.
Lastly would be the fact that these is a country of about 80 million population, either you see these people as assets or liabilities and I would agree to the former. There are definitely a lot of development and education that you can build on these people, with most of them really eager to learn. I visited this NGO last December that actually provides practical training education for young people in which they learn the theories and have practical technical training in which they have actual products that the NGO sells afterwards. This is just an example of how you can actually utilize certain skills training and development into practical output in which the country can definitely utilize as well. Now given the fact that these people are also breadwinner for their families, this NGO provides an efficient learning cycle that allows student to go to school for only 4 hours a day and then have time to work and earn living for their family.
I don't know if you now see from my perspective the excitement I feel for a country like Bangladesh. It may have seem like a market analysis, of which you can definitely see that there's a lot of development opportunities that not only Bangladesh can capitalize on but other neighboring emerging economies.
I was once asked how come the world seem to be focusing only in China and India and forgetting that there are other countries in Asia. Of course this member was referring to me as well focusing a lot on the development of China's contribution in the Asia Pacific. That question stunned me for a moment, realizing that equally important to the development of a country like China would be other emerging countries that would just need the eye of Nostradamus to foresee other opportunities as well. Bangladesh can definitely be one of those countries.
Key questions that we just need to focus on would be how much really is their government able to work on developments for their own country? How are the NGOs able to utilize the funds given to them by different foreign aids? How are the companies responding to contributing to the development of their country and not just development of their organization?
Answers to these questions I shall try to seek if ever I get a traineeship in Bangladesh, otherwise it's something I would like to further challenge any trainee who would quest for the opportunity of going to Bangladesh.
