In the eyes of global media, Bangladesh is now moving fast on the development highway. The development trajectory of Bangladesh is on the right way and very much inclusive. Tourism development is an important issue of this development trajectory of Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is at the helms of this development. She is also an inspiration of tourism development in Bangladesh.
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,"
William Shakespeare.
The whole world revolves and evolves with the mountains of problems as well as solution since the time immemorial. Every society that has a successful history could only reach the zenith of the development by virtue of their hard work and quality. However, behind all the hard work, there is a leader who steers all the development wheels. Those leaders could lead and show the way, and inspire the people to work for betterment. At present, Bangladesh is lucky to get such a leader who is striving hard to take Bangladesh to the zenith of development in all aspects. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina - the proud daughter of the greatest-ever Bengali of thousand years and the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman - a born leader and a living legend who has already achieved greatness by virtue of her quality and firm characteristics. She did not compromise nor concede defeat to any unscrupulous quarters or critics or conspirators, local or foreign. The character of Sheikh Hasina reminds us the great quotes of Lord Alfred Tennyson- "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".
Sheikh Hasina who lost her father and beloved family members in 1975 had to undergo a great torment for a long time by the then rulers. She was not even allowed to come back to her motherland. But, Sheikh Hasina rose like a Phoenix bird and came to the helm of Bengali nation for the welfare of people and for the country. Since then, she has been putting in an unflagging diligence for salvaging the country from the quagmire of multiple problems set by the military rulers.
Sheikh Hasina realises very well that the freedom is hard to defend. That is why, Sheikh Hasina emphasises building a poverty-free, welfare-oriented and prosperous Bangladesh. She has shown zero tolerance to drugs and corruption. She wages a war against fanaticism and achieves the success. She rightly believes that to build Bangladesh as a developed country its people should shun fanaticism and its present and future generations should be secular and educated with scientific knowledge.
While carrying out the Herculean jobs to make Bangladesh a developed nation by 2041, many mega projects have already been undertaken and that are under implementation thanks to her personal initiatives. Sheikh Hasina also realises that to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030, Bangladesh needs skilled people. Therefore, creating skilled work force is already underway in Bangladesh. She has already set a 100-year plan for Bangladesh i.e. Delta Plan that is to ensure peace, prosperity and happiness for our future generation.
The young-folk is the driving force for development of any country. Realizing this truth, Sheikh Hasina is putting in her best effort to involve this young force in putting the development wheel of Bangladesh in motion by offering skill trainings, soft loans and other kinds of incentives. Sheikh Hasina is trying to focus on all the areas of development such as agriculture, industrialization, education, tourism and hospitality, health and rural development, etc.
The incentives, now being offered to the peasants in Bangladesh, have been possible because of the kind initiative of Sheikh Hasina herself. Bangabandhu realized Bangladesh being predominantly an agricultural country, priority should be given to agriculture development. Therefore, he created an agriculture-oriented policy and simultaneously industrialization programmes.
Bangabandhu was very vocal against the corruption and bureaucratic attitude of the public servants, which was reflected in his several speeches. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is also ardently following the ethics of her father.
Sheikh Hasina always upholds the spirit of liberation, secularism, people's welfare and prosperous Bangladesh. Father of the nation Bangabandhu has liberated the country and Sheikh Hasina - the Daughter-is striving hard to keep the liberty atop and make Bangladesh stand high in the world map.
Sheikh Hasina with her diligence and intelligence leads the country towards development that has already earned many accolades across the globe. She was conferred on the award 'Mother of Humanity' because of her great contribution to humanitarian cause and social safety programmes.
She also received the UN's highest environmental accolade 'Champion of the Earth' for her great contribution to the environment protection and addressing the climate change issue. Every sector of Bangladesh is at her fingertip, she is well-verse about all the aspects of development. That's why the whole world gets amazed and terms Shiekh Hasina as a living legend. Many business people from the whole world visit Bangladesh to see such a charismatic figure.
Sheikh Hasina is the champion of change who stresses the need of developing IT for quick development of Bangladesh. She is a visionary leader, that's why she knows this is an era of fourth industrial revolution. Being a daughter of revolutionary, she has just turned around the bottomless basket case into a basket full of skilled workforce and human capital. Under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh achieves a stunning success in attaining Millennium Development Goals, and now the country is on the right track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Under her guidance and with her right directives, Bangladesh could cut the poverty rate to 21.8 per cent and extreme poverty rate to 11.3 per cent (BBS 2018). The GDP growth is rising vertically that indicates the massive development of Bangladesh during the period of Sheikh Hasina. Recently she has received two awards of the UNICEF - 'Champion for Skills Development for Young People' and 'Vaccine Hero'. These awards were conferred on her in recognition of her outstanding contributions to skill development of the youth as well as outstanding success of Bangladesh in immunization programme.
For her immense great contribution to expanding information technology and technology-based education, ensuring healthcare everywhere from urban to rural areas, support for distressed people through social safety net programmes and success in poverty alleviation, she has been conferred on the 'South-South Cooperation Visionary' Award of the United Nations.
Sheikh Hasina loves peace; she rears peace and works for spreading peace in this region as well as in the whole world. She wants peace to prevail on earth with hunger-and-poverty-free society. With all her enormous qualities, she secures a berth in the list of top 100 women in the world.
All the tourism development-related policy and laws have been enacted during her regime. The Prime Minister is the head of the National Tourism Council (NTC) of Bangladesh. Some important meetings have already been held with her in the chair. She gave many important directives for tourism development, which are under implementation.
Sheikh Hasina is a rarely born leader for development, for the humanity and secularism. She has already created a development philosophy that how to make an underdeveloped country a developing one within a short span of time. How many leaders across the globe could demonstrate such charisma? Definitely, the number will be a few. Time has come to carry out research on this charismatic leadership and development vision of Sheikh Hasina. Let's join our hands on the development trajectory of Sheikh Hasina. Let's invite tourists from all over the world to see the beautiful Bangladesh and listen to the development story of this living legend. Sheikh Hasina herself is an inspiration for development of tourism in Bangladesh.
Md. Ziaul Haque Howlader is Manager (PR and FL), Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation
