SCOPUS
'Graduation' makes us look better. Countries prefer being dubbed 'developed' over 'undeveloped' or 'developing'. Many dictators legitimise their authoritarian rule by wanting to make the country look 'better'. Yet, without looking great, would Least Developed Country or LDC 'graduation' be denied?
Of course, the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNECOSOC), which decides on 'graduation' through its Committee for Development Policy, pays unusual attention to the final subjects of 'graduation': human beings. Complying with human assets and economic vulnerability indices satisfies two of the three 'graduation' requirements. Even the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) give the human component a similar premium. Whether by choice or compulsion, or both, the average human being now appears behind just about every steering-wheel in this SDG-embraced 'Decade of Action' (2020-30). The pandemic, forest-fires, floods, climate-change irregularities, and other natural forces thrust humans to the forefront. Dastardly cleansing ethnic groups, persecuting minorities, waging meaningless wars, and flaunting a survival-for-the-fittest mindset reinforce that push. As both secular and deliberate forces punish humans, ingenuity of a few humans reaffirms collective civilian control of their surroundings. As a sinking feeling of the 'worst' circumstances inching closer to their front-door grows, these takeaways matter.
Bangladesh's case can be thrown against this. 'Graduation' gives its people what they have always wanted: to climb the 'economic' or 'social' ladder. They did that fifty-years ago from a 'bottomless pit'. Today they seek a 'developing'/'developed' upgrade. Whereas 'graduation' tasks serve as instruments to climb, the SDG 'decade of action' supplies as conducive an arena as any.
Certain SDG imperatives advance ECOSOC 'graduation'. Except for SDG 4, on 'education', all the others up to SDG 6 ('clean water'), SDG 7 ('sanitation', 'clean energy'), and SDG 8 ('decent work'), merely echo what many citizens habitually do. This could be a key point: representing largely what we do in our personal life through habits and instincts, SDGs as policy regulations may not cut the ice as well. Though they stem best when from the heart, mind, and soul of each person, somehow we lose the vibe or drive as we get wealthier.
SDG 6-8 show the many reasons why. They also open up ample opportunities for us to engage. When 'clean water' is the subject, for instance, drinking water, going swimming in it, cultivating fish, or boating in it instantly come to mind. As our wealth grows, 'hazards' dot the horizon, some from self-constructed arrogance, others from defiance. Whatever it is, how our own unwitting personal negligence coagulates matters, since how it boomerangs back upon a 'collective' us hurts. We dare not dip into Dhanmandi or Gulshan Lake, for example, because of the sewage we see in it, or because we know garbage flows into it. Similarly, we do not push the adventurous side inside us any more by boating since toxic rivers smell or look turns us away. Fishing dies as a recreation for the same reason. Once popular, these are impossible today.
We took the right decision to nip the root of one set of problems by shifting leather tanneries out of Hazaribagh, but the incomplete the Savar effluent treatment-plant after ten years shows how we have constructed the plant so inefficiently. Civil voices quieten up. So too the sincere/conscious part inside us. Have we sincerely stopped throwing garbage into the rivers? Or even throwing something out of the car window these days, or while walking on the streets? We now vomit from bus windows, something unthinkable before. When habits and instincts wither, policy regulations cannot but take over, bringing diminishing returns.
Sanitation treatment in the country still exposes 'bottomless pit' behaviour. From urinating on the streets to not consciously covering up the sewage-filled drains, we just don't seem to know what a 'panic button' for health or disease is anymore, even as a deadly pandemic exposed how deadly diseases slide in through any window at any time. With some control here not go a long way there, we only invite increasingly stringent regulations. Whatever happened to our kindergarten and primary school training on these? Still there? Should we campaign they return?
If not the pandemic, then clearly the current war-driven inflation should have pushed us into exploring and exploiting cleaner energy. Although only less than 10 per cent of the country's total electricity needs, two-thirds of our renewable energy stem from solar sources. Why can't Bangladeshis press the renewable accelerator further, instead of showing off more popular and glitzy gas-guzzling automobiles. Converting electric rickshaws into comfortable, safer, faster, and more dignified public transportation vehicle begs attention.
Though seriously lacking, innovative works carry the seeds of 'decency'. The more of them converted into profitable enterprises, the more the best and brightest minds will be attracted to displace the increasingly lethargic and unreliable pay-check-minded working population.
'Decent work' carries both spillover and spillback effects: once started, it can grow if the right circumstances prevail (organsational cognisance, conscientiousness, and leadership), but it can otherwise be overwhelmed by unruly, even ruthless minded behaviour/beliefs, like successful RMG factories refusing to share the profits with workers through wage-raises. When the country was born, there were not many places to work and the background to build 'decent work' was limited. Today we have too many kinds of work. In some, 'decent work' does show: we learn how to make both ends meet, pay greater respect for professional outcomes over personal gains, and so forth. Since we are even culturally inclined to be 'decent' (from how we respect our elders, for example), why policies must regulate these remains perplexing. When our culture was denigrated by outsiders, 1947 and 1971 events resulted; but our own neglect or disdain today remains baffling.
In an ambience of 'decent work', other SDG hurdles also melt: SDG 1 on 'poverty' should not be as acute for a 'middle-income country', but we are just not showing how it can be eliminated in a way that pulled us up from the 'bottomless pit' bootless era. We have shown we can do it, but today prefer to let the income-gap widen. Do we go back to feudal order, or 'develop'?
SDG 2, on 'no hunger', holds a similar story: we have more than twice the population of famine-stricken 1970s and proudly boast self-sufficiency, yet hunger lingers, mostly for artificial reasons. It is similar for SDG 3, on 'good health and well-being': though a summation of SDG 1 and SDG 2, the average Bangalee born today being taller than in the 1970s depicts we crossed some 'good health and well-being' humps somewhere; but along the way overdrove it into overindulgence. The consequences: spiraling pot-bellies, diabetes and coronary ailments confirm.
Even an area of comparative advantage, SDG 5, on 'gender equality', seems to be slipping unnecessarily. We boast so many women leaders (in politics, for mountain-climbing, entering business, even winning the Pulitzer Prize), yet fall short of winning the gold-medal of making the gender issue a non-issue. Here too the habitual and instinctual respect Bangalees had for women now has to be buttressed by policy prescriptions and regulations as our behavior dives in the wrong direction.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall: kick us until we heed the SDG call." The day we rise to do so, Bangladesh's journey to 'graduate' would become irretrievable.
Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, Department of Global Studies & Governance, Independent University, Bangladesh
