Dr. Ziauddin Hyder :
The famous line from the movie “The Godfather,” “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse,” implies that when the mafia boss asks you to do something, you do it.
Similarly, Sheikh Hasina made Bangladesh an offer – development in exchange for democratic rights. Like many characters in The Godfather, it was an offer the people of Bangladesh could not refuse. Hasina created, presented and closed the deal all by herself.
How can development get a boost by choking democracy and crushing human rights? Did Hasina come up with a novel strategy altogether? As Bangladesh embarks on a new journey, I have made a preliminary attempt to unmask some of her frequently quoted development claims with data-driven insights.
Let’s start with GDP, perhaps the most widely used yet abused indicator of development and Hasina regime’s biggest bragging point. GDP is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced within a country’s border within a year. Hasina’s ministers would often tell us that they brought the GDP of Bangladesh from a mere US$102.5 billion to a whopping US$460.1 billion between 2009 and 2023. Indeed, it sounds like a feat! But there are a few tricks in it.
How confident can we be about the accuracy of the data? Weeks prior to Hasina’s ouster, Bangladesh Bank revised Export Promotion Bureau’s export figures saying that they were inflated by almost 30%. They also explained that this would not require any adjustments to GDP figures. But this nevertheless raises questions about the other components of GDP.
Below chart shows you Bangladesh’s per capita GDP growth in constant 2015 dollars since 1991. BNP years are in green, Awami League in brown, and Caretaker Government years are in grey.
Do you see any exceptional growth during the last 15 years? Our supposed gains from forgoing democracy? Indeed, Bangladesh has maintained a steady growth in the last 15 years (notwithstanding possible data manipulation).
But where is the exceptional development? In fact, BNP appears to have kick-started a stagnated economy twice and taken it to new heights. Bangladesh achieved its highest growth yet towards the end of the last BNP term, which I believe should be articulated better and communicated further.
Income is just one aspect of a country’s overall economic situation. Other factors like poverty rates, education, healthcare, etc. also play important roles in understanding a country’s development.
Sheikh Hasina and her cronies loved to tell us that the average income of Bangladeshi people has increased threefold in the last 15 years.
In 12 years between 2010 and 2022, average household income increased 2.8 times, from 11,479 taka to 32,422 taka. But between 2005 and 2010, in only 5 years, it increased 1.6 times from 7,203 taka to 11,479 taka. In other words, average household income grew by an average 9.8% annually between 2005 and 2010, which was a mixture of BNP and caretaker government term. During Hasina’s painfully long reign, it grew by annual average of 9%. How exceptional is that really?
Now, combine it with the fact that the prices of everyday goods (as measured by the consumer price index) increased 2.16 times between 2010 and 2022, and that income inequality has also increased, add to it a little bit of common sense and you arrive at the horrific realization that the poorest of the poor might have actually become poorer as far as real income (i.e., not nominal) is concerned under Hasina’s oppressive regime.
Shekh Hasina’s regime frequently claimed that their victory over poverty was almost absolute. That poor people were becoming extinct in Bangladesh. I suppose the windows of their tariff-free SUVs were tinted both ways.
Bangladesh has indeed made great strides in poverty alleviation.
Between 2010 and 2022, percentage of people living under $2.15/day has reduced from 18.2% to 5%. That’s roughly 5 percentage points reduction every 5 years. It is really good, but the question is “is it exceptional”? Did poverty eradication benefit from the eradication of our democratic rights? See below chart for answers.
In fact, Bangladesh saw its biggest drops in poverty, 8 and 9 percentage points, during 1991-1995 and 2000-2005, respectively. Both were non-AL, dare I say, BNP terms.
It is true that as poverty rate drops, every further percentage point reduction becomes increasingly difficult. That being said, Hasina regime’s claim that they and only they have contributed to poverty alleviation in Bangladesh could not be the truth.
Now we could look into each and every sector such as employment, health, education, exports and so on and bust the myth of exceptional development in the last 15 years. But that would be a book, not an article. It should be noted that this article took all data at face value.
We could do a deep dive to ascertain the accuracy of the data but that too is beyond the scope of this analysis. The main point of this analysis is to show that Hasina’s development narrative is just that, a narrative.
Where Sheikh Hasina’s regime truly stand out are in foreign loans, corruption and money laundering. They also seem very successful on paper in electrification.
But we all know how that was done – unsustainably, wastefully and with a total dependence on fuel imports. We will be reeling from the impact of this “development” for a long time.
One could of course argue that Sheikh Hasina does have some major infrastructure projects to her credit. It is true. But we need to remember that these projects are “inputs” for development, not development itself.
Only if and when they contribute to the improvement of people’s wellbeing do they become a success. We will have to repay the loans for these unusually high costs projects.
It is also important to remember that there are two types of infrastructure – hard and soft. Bridges, roads and ports are hard infrastructure and are of course important.
But institutions, the soft infrastructure, are even more important for long-term, sustainable development of a country.
Many middle-income countries today have the hard infrastructure of developed countries. But they are stuck in the “middle-income trap” because they never invested enough in building the soft infrastructure of good institutions to match that of the developed countries. The autocratic regime has left our institutions on life support. On a “net” basis, we have regressed, not progressed in the last 15 years.
So, in the future, if any autocrat wannabe Prime Minister presents us with a “development in exchange for democracy” deal, they should get a resounding “shut up” in reply from 180 million voices.
(The writer is former Director Research, BRAC and Adjunct Faculty of University of Toronto and University of the Philippines).