Bangladesh
Sheikh Hasina | Bangladesh Bangladesh is rising star of South Asia
Dhaka: Rising from ashes like the Phoenix, Bangladesh has now strongly established itself as a growing South Asian nation.
Under the leadership of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the country has now become self-dependent on several aspects and it is striving to become more robust.
In an essay ‘innovations: Bangladesh at 50’ published by MIT Press, US she reminisced the macabre that took place in her family in 1975 when 18 of her close-knit family members were assassinated. She along her younger sister could escape the assassination since they were abroad. She described how she was not allowed to return to the country.
Upon returning to the country, it was not easy to fight the political battle and rise to her current position. She has been the prime minister of Bangladesh since January 2009. Prior to that she had served as the Prime Minister from June 1996 to July 2001.
With her combined tenure as Prime Minister, she has made a record of being the longest serving female elected head of government in the world.
Hasina is the daughter of founding father and first president of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. She tried to fashion the country’s policy keeping in mind the principles of Liberation War.
She wrote that she felt compelled to confront and overcome the obstacles thrown at her and her family.
“In confronting these many difficult issues, I followed a simple methodology. I asked myself, 'What would my father Sheikh Mujib do if he had remained alive?' The answer was always to remain steadfast to the ideals of Bangladesh that had inspired him and the entire nation. We needed to remain faithful to the ideals of the Liberation War of 1971, for which three million Bangladeshi people had sacrificed their lives,” Hasina wrote.
The nation had made the resolution to meet the basic needs of the people first. “We began our effort to develop agriculture by prioritising increased production and food security,” she said.
The largest part of Bangladesh’s workforce, around 43 per cent, are engaged in the agriculture sector. Bangladesh government educated their farmers to do farming scientifically and provided them with ways to diversify production of grains, vegetables, fish, meat, eggs, and fruits.
The overall goal is increased food security and improved nutrition. New varieties of maize, wheat, vegetables, and fruit have been introduced.
“We continue to educate farmers about crop diversification, modern farming methods, soil-testing to identify fertilizer needs, product marketing, constructing silos for food storage, building warehouses, and good ways of storing food. We also advise them on various other issues. As a result, even though Bangladesh is comparable in size only to the US state of Wisconsin, in terms of actual annual production, Bangladesh ranks third in the world in inland fish, second in rice, and third in vegetables. Our country has achieved this productive capacity by wisely using the space left over after accommodating a population that is half that of the United States,” stated Hasina.
Once in a situation of chronic food deficit, the country is now one of the world’s top three producers of rice, inland fish, and vegetables; it is still rapidly diversifying its crop production.
The country is the fifth largest producer of vegetables in the world and the fourth largest in production of freshwater fish. Marine fish output from the Bay of Bengal has also increased in recent years. We are self-sufficient in livestock and poultry.
Along with agriculture the country paid a lot of attention improve the health facilities.
“To improve the health of our people, we have worked on a wide range of activities—building hospitals and clinics, providing healthcare services to people of all ages, and disseminating knowledge about prevention of diseases and maintenance of health. Our facilities may not meet Western standards, but our reach and effort are quite significant; given the country’s rising income level, we are increasingly able to do more,” said Hasina.
Modern equipment has been provided to every hospital and skilled technicians have been appointed to operate them. Similar opportunities have been provided in the health sector as in the industrial sector to attract domestic and foreign investment.
“Soon after forming my government in 1996, we undertook initiatives to massively expand universal education. Since people are our focus and our only resource, their education is the best means of upgrading the economy and managing many of the country’s problem,” she informed.
“We started a project to make every district literate, which led to a rise in the literacy rate from 45 per cent to 75.6 per cent. Unfortunately, that rate faltered while we were not in power from 2001 through 2008. However, since 2009, when we formed our government for the second time, the literacy rate has been rising again; it is now at 74.3 per cent, another consequence of our consistent focus during the three consecutive terms,” she wrote.
Thirteen million primary school students are supported by stipends, which eases the financial burden on parents. Stipends reach the mothers or legitimate guardians directly through their mobile phones.
Four academic institutions have been built exclusively for women. In general schools and universities, the number of female students is greater than the number of male students, and the percentage of female students continues to increase.
Our extensive efforts on this matter, after being re-elected in 2009, are bearing fruit in the form of increasing female student enrollment and decreasing dropout rates at all levels. These efforts have helped raise female enrollment for secondary, higher secondary, and university levels to 55.07 per cent, 50.27 per cent and 35.21 percent respectively.
