Letters: A lesson from Bangladesh

This is with reference to “A tale of two countries” (April 22), which has brought out how Pakistan, which at one time was economically best off among the three countries of our sub-continent, is drifting towards the third rank and how Bangladesh the poorest of the three, is gradually moving up to the second position. The article at one point refers to Pakistan’s “slightly larger population” than that of Bangladesh. This feature, it would be interesting to recall, has emerged only after the break-up between the two countries. East Pakistan (EP)’s population was always more than that of West Pakistan (WP) and that is why EP had more members than WP in the Pakistan’s central legislature. And it is because of this that Mujibur Rehman and not Z A Bhutto was poised to become the Prime Minister of undivided Pakistan after the 1971 election. As it was a proposition not acceptable to WP, came the war which ended in the creation of Bangladesh. Thus if EP’s population was slightly less than that of WP in 1971, Bangladesh might not have come into existence, at least at that point of time. This is a major irony of history not much noticed.

The article refers to hundreds of civil society movements in Bangladesh that have helped it tackle socio-economic challenges. A major one among them is BRAC an internationally recognised experiment in Non-Formal Primary Education, through which Bangladesh has successfully taken up a “daunting challenge” of eradicating illiteracy among its teeming millions, particularly girls, in community-run neighbourhood schools, spread all over the country. It is a model which any developing country can emulate with profit.

R C Mody | New Delhi

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