‘Bangladesh can manage without foreign aid’

Bangladesh can do without foreign aid now, says bdnews24.com Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi.

“Bangladesh can do without aid in many ways, but if available with favourable conditions, international assistance can be used to build economic, political, and regulatory infrastructure,” Khalidi said in a lecture titled 'The Politics of Foreign Aid' at the Dhaka University’s Sociology Department on Saturday.

“In some cases, it is technical assistance or technology transfer that Bangladesh needs,” he said. “In others such as Dhaka's much-needed mass transit system, the Japanese support is a fantastic option.”

Khalidi said: “Gone are the days when we needed foreign aid to fund our entire annual development programme. Gone are the days when we would quietly accept conditions from the World Bank.”

He said Bangladesh should have straightaway gone for Chinese support for the Padma bridge project when negotiations with the World Bank fell through.

“We don't need any aid if the condition is to stop farm subsidies,” Khalidi said.

He said the aid agency-NGO nexus has ‘polluted’ the atmosphere and created a culture of complete lack of accountability on both sides.

“There's corruption no less than in the government departments in these NGOs.”

Khalidi pitched for modernisation of Bangladesh’s public service and regulatory institutions.

“We need help to reform our police, train our civil servants and improve performance appraisals of public officials,” he said.

Khalidi pointed to a specific situation to make a point for critical professional training without which governance cannot improve.

“For example, the police are not trained how to treat a woman at two o’ clock in the morning when she is in trouble and has gone to a police station.”

But Khalidi said foreign assistance could surely impact positively on raising standards of education and improving its infrastructure.

He suggested close monitoring of foreign aid received for madrasah education, which he described as ‘unproductive’.

“Look at the madrasah system in India's West Bengal, they have modernised it to the extent that non-Muslim students are opting for these schools for higher education in sciences.”

A study has shown that more than 20 percent of students in madrasahs in West Bengal are Hindus because some of these institutions are providing better education than government schools, where teachers are more involved in politics rather than teaching.

The courses they provide include physical and natural sciences and information technology.

The talk was a part of a course titled “Issues and problems of development in South Asia” taught by Professor Dr Sadeka Halim.