Bangladesh achieved steady gross domestic product growth with manageable inflation, and improved social indicators, owing to prudent macroeconomic management and a renewal of structural reform. The proposed Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility-supported program builds on this record of policy implementation. Fiscal reform should be centered on a sustained revenue effort and investments in infrastructure and human capital. The government has been commended for the flexible management of the exchange rate. Executive Directors consider the proposed policy program to be comprehensive and realistic for achieving the objectives.
This volume contributes to understanding Bangladesh's growth story, as it celebrates 50 years of independence. The fastest growing South Asian state is being recognised as an important partner and model case study with increasing global relevance by world powers. Sreeradha Datta reviews many of its critical bilateral relationships, as well as its expanding influence in the region and world beyond, enabling an understanding of how Bangladesh's growth trajectory complements and informs its foreign policy aims. The volume has a mixture of thematic and bilateral chapters, and includes the active Bangladeshi diaspora population and its influence on the country's unfolding narrative. Datta features the viewpoints of key Bangladeshi policy makers; expert takes on how the world is engaging with Bangladesh; and covers the growing salience of Bangladesh's foreign policy, reflecting its new acquired economic status.
This book brings together a collection of essays about the untenable political status quo in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina. Since democratization in the 1990s, Bangladeshi political life has been characterized by fierce battles over the role of religion in society, corruption, and the obstacles to constructing a society with freedom of expression and rule of law, independent from the influence of powerful neighboring countries. Academic freedom and other human rights issues have hindered the study of Bangladesh heretofore, and corruption, police abuses, and election rigging are common as well as widely documented. In this passionate, sometimes personal exploration of the issues of social justice, rule of law, and the democratic process in Bangladesh, the book offers a valuable case study of how an Asian developmental state is otherwise regressing backwards morally, socially, and politically. The Bangladeshi struggle for sovereignty, prosperity and democracy documented in this book will be of interest to political scientists, scholars of South Asia, and those of Islam.
Bangladesh is the world's eighth most populous country. It has more inhabitants than either Russia or Japan, and its national language, Bengali, ranks sixth in the world in terms of native speakers. Founded in 1971, Bangladesh is a relatively young nation, but the Bengal Delta region has been a major part of international life for more than 2,000 years, whether as an important location for trade or through its influence on Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim life. Yet the country rarely figures in global affairs or media, except in stories about floods, poverty, or political turmoil. The Bangladesh Reader does what those portrayals do not: It illuminates the rich historical, cultural, and political permutations that have created contemporary Bangladesh, and it conveys a sense of the aspirations and daily lives of Bangladeshis. Intended for travelers, students, and scholars, the Reader encompasses first-person accounts, short stories, historical documents, speeches, treaties, essays, poems, songs, photographs, cartoons, paintings, posters, advertisements, maps, and a recipe. Classic selections familiar to many Bangladeshis—and essential reading for those who want to know the country—are juxtaposed with less-known pieces. The selections are translated from a dozen languages; many have not been available in English until now. Featuring eighty-three images, including seventeen in color, The Bangladesh Reader is an unprecedented, comprehensive introduction to the South Asian country's turbulent past and dynamic present.
An easily accessible source of information on the history, politics, economics, society, geography and culture of Bangladesh. Contains an exhaustive bibliography for further study.
Eloquence in Trouble captures the articulation of several troubled lives in Bangladesh as well as the threats to the very genres of their expression, lament in particular. The first ethnography of one of the most spoken mother tongues on earth, Bangla, this study represents a new approach to troubles talk, combining the rigor of discourse analysis with the interpretive depth of psychological anthropology. Its careful transcriptions of Bangladeshi troubles talk will disturb some readers and move others--beyond past academic discussion of personhood in South Asia.
This volume analyses Bangladesh’s human-nature/environment relationships in terms of development victimhood, environmental injustices, and resistance of the marginalized. It demonstrates how the popular GDP-based economic growth model helps governments undertake “development” projects, threatening the environment and livelihood of the poor while benefiting the affluent. It represents the extant environmentalism in the literary works in Bangla, and tales of pollution, depletion; and human-nature/environment symbiosis that shows ways to resist victimhood. Against current environmental challenges and other environmental issues, this volume presents the epitome of how politics, biodiversity, and technology meet in many cross-cutting pathways.
