Thanking Bangladesh

NEW DELHI This month, Indias parliament took the first step toward a potentially
momentous decision: to settle a boundary dispute with Bangladesh that dates back
to the 1947 partition of the subcontinent. An agreement in this area would provide a
major boost to the already warm bilateral relationship, not least by bolstering
Bangladeshs position in the region.
The demarcation of the India-Pakistan border by the British was a slapdash affair,
concocted by a collapsing empire in headlong retreat from its responsibilities. The
border itself was hastily drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a lawyer who had never visited
India before receiving the assignment, and caused numerous practical problems.
In the eastern part of Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, Radcliffes
frontier created two sets of anomalies. In some cases, one country refused to
relinquish territory to the other, resulting in so-called adverse possessions; in
others, Radcliffe left small areas of one country completely surrounded by the
others territory.
With 111 Indian enclaves spread over 17,000 acres in Bangladesh, and 51
Bangladeshi enclaves spread over 7,110 acres in India, a settlement would involve a
net transfer of some 40 square kilometers (15.4 square miles) of territory from India
to its eastern neighbor. That is not a huge area. Yet it has taken nearly seven
decades to make real progress toward resolving the anomalies.
At first, the hostility between India and Pakistan that arose soon after partition
thwarted any discussion of the issue. In 1971, though, Bangladeshs independence
from Pakistan, facilitated by India, allowed for the possibility of a solution, and a
land-boundary agreement was concluded in 1974. But a military coup in Bangladesh
strained the bilateral relationship and stymied the deal.
Despite improved ties in the 1990s, successive Indian governments were unable
or unwilling to risk their political capital by legitimizing the territorial transfer and
settling the dispute. Indeed, the one prime minister who did press for an agreement,
Manmohan Singh, was met with strong domestic resistance, including from a
coalition ally, making it impossible to gain enough votes to adopt the required
constitutional amendment. The then-opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went so
far as to block the bill in parliament, with the upper houses then-opposition leader,
the lawyer Arun Jaitley, arguing that Indias territory is integral to its constitution
and thus cannot be reduced or altered by an amendment.

Now, three years after thwarting Singhs efforts, the BJP has taken over Indias
government, following its resounding electoral victory in May. And it has reversed
many of its policy positions, including on the boundary with Bangladesh.
During her first trip abroad after becoming foreign minister, the BJPs Sushma
Swaraj traveled to Dhaka, Bangladeshs capital, where she pledged to follow
through on the land-boundary agreement, referring it to the Parliamentary Standing
Committee on External Affairs for review. The committee, which I head, deliberated
over three weeks of hearings, summoning senior representatives from the foreign
and home ministries, as well as the government of the most affected state, West
Bengal. On December 7, we unanimously recommended that the parliament ratify
the constitutional amendment.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi subsequently announced his support for the deal.
Even Jaitley, now Indias finance minister and a prominent cabinet member, has not
expressed any opposition. And, given that Bangladesh gains the most from the
settlement, both officially expanding its territory and enhancing its position relative
to India, the deal should face no resistance there.
In short, the deals implementation seems all but assured. The only potential
sticking point in India is the perception that it is surrendering its territory. To prevent
such a misperception from hampering the bills passage through Indias parliament,
the countrys leaders must explain to the public that neither India nor Bangladesh
will be relinquishing territory that it actually controls at the moment. The territory
being exchanged comprises lawless enclaves, where the nominal sovereign lacks
real authority.
In fact, India has no access to the enclaves within Bangladesh that it supposedly
rules; there are no customs posts, border markings, post offices, or police to reflect
Indias control. The people inhabiting these enclaves are theoretically Indian
citizens, but they lack the rights and privileges that their counterparts elsewhere in
India enjoy. Eliminating the anomalies will merely regularize the reality; the loss of
territory will occur purely on paper.
The only potential change is that some residents of the Indian enclaves may
migrate to India after the settlement, if they so choose. Otherwise, they will become
citizens of Bangladesh. Given that the enclaves residents have presumably lost
much of their cultural or personal ties with India since 1947, most are expected to
remain where they are.
A land-boundary agreements impact would thus be most apparent in the two
countries diplomatic relationship. Already, Bangladeshs Awami League
government, which returned to power this year after a controversial election that
was boycotted by the principal opposition party, has embraced an unprecedented
level of cooperation with India on security and counter-terrorism issues.

Under less friendly regimes, Bangladesh had been a haven for terrorist and militant
groups that wreaked havoc in India. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas government has
not just denied these groups shelter; it has actively intercepted them, arrested
some of their leaders, and even handed wanted terrorists over to the Indian
government.
If terrorist bombs are no longer going off in the Indian state of Assam, it is thanks to
the government in Dhaka. Giving Bangladesh legal rights to territory within its own
borders is the least India can do to express its gratitude.

Imploding Bangladesh
DHAKA Is Bangladesh once again on the verge of a political meltdown? With bomb
explosions almost taking the life of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, opposition leader
Khaleda Zia charged with murder, and violent protests and arson sweeping the
capital, the country seems poised at the edge of a terrifying abyss.
Of course, Bangladesh has long been plagued by volatility. When the country
became independent in the early 1970s, following a bloody war of liberation against
the Pakistani Army, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger famously predicted that
the new country's economy would be its Achilles heel. But Bangladesh has proved
him wrong: the country is being undone not by its economy, but by its dysfunctional
politics.
After a difficult start, Bangladesh's economy has developed rapidly, with annual
GDP growth averaging roughly 6% over the last two decades. The country's social
indicators have improved significantly as well exceeding even those of its
neighbor, India, in IMPORTANT areas. Given a prolonged period of political calm,
Bangladesh would likely be on its way to joining the ranks of middle-income
countries.
Instead, political instability is jeopardizing social and economic progress. The two
major political parties, the ruling Awami League and the opposition Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP), are engaged in a deadly duel over the very legitimacy of the
government.
Over the last eight weeks, about 100 people have died in political violence.
Thousands have been wounded. Millions of dollars' worth of property has been
damaged or destroyed. Business activity, including agricultural production, has
been disrupted. New investments, both foreign and local, have been largely put on
hold. EXPORTS of manpower and garments, the lifelines of the Bangladeshi
economy, have suffered serious blows.

Death and destruction surrounding elections and political succession are, sadly,
nothing new in Bangladesh. Political violence has been a recurring plague since the
country's birth. During more than four decades of independence, Bangladesh has
made little progress in establishing a workable democratic polity.
There seems little reason for such fractiousness in a country that prides itself on its
ethnic and linguistic homogeneity indeed, that emerged from a political struggle
to establish the democratic rights of the people of East Pakistan within Pakistan.
Bangladesh's original sin may have been its hurried constitution of 1972, which
assigned extravagant powers, with few checks and balances, to the prime minister,
a position to be assumed by the country's revered founding father, Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the country endured tumultuous experiments with
presidential-style government, which was usually a fig leaf for civilian or military
authoritarianism. In the 1990s, a parliamentary form of government was reestablished, and the pinnacle of power shifted from the president to the prime
minister; but the political environment did not improve.
Since 1991, the position of prime minister has rotated between two high-ranking
Muslim women, who inherited the mantle of leadership when a male relative was
assassinated. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur, who was killed during a
1975 coup. Her rival, Zia, was the wife of Ziaur Rahman, a military dictator who met
a similar fate in 1981.
Though there is little love lost between the two women, they differ little in terms of
economic and social policies or in the way that they run their parties: as a family
business. Their governments curtailed civil, political, and human rights. Arbitrary
arrests, unlawful killings, clampdowns on free speech, and abusive working
conditions became increasingly prevalent. As checks and balances were eliminated,
what emerged was a shrunken democracy in which an authoritarian prime minister
assumed the autocratic presidency's overweening power.
Both women's parties have proved to be inept in governance and corrupt in
administration. Bangladesh sits near the top of rankings of the world's most corrupt
countries. In 2012, international donors under the leadership of the World Bank,
citing concerns about corruption, canceled a large loan to finance construction of
the country's longest bridge.
When in power, each party does its best to manipulate elections and exclude the
other. The current crisis dates to June 2011, when Hasina amended the constitution
to overturn the 15-year-old practice of allowing a neutral, interim administration to
oversee the country's parliamentary elections. Fearing vote-rigging, the BNP and its
allies boycotted the 2014 general election. As a result, 154 of 300 seats were
uncontested.

The government's harassment of opposition leaders, capped by the banning of the

BNP's principal political ally, Jamaat-e-Islami, for its purported religious extremism,
has done nothing to cool the fires. Zia has vowed that her party and its alliance will
continue boycotting the ballot box until free and fair elections are held.
Whatever the outcome of the current crisis, the situation is unlikely to improve. If
the government succeeds in crushing its opponents, the wounds will fester for
years, if not decades. Even a compromise between the Awami League and the BNP
would bring only temporary relief, unless it addressed the country's yawning
governance problems.
Achieving long-term political stability will require deep reforms of Bangladesh's
democratic institutions an effort that cannot be undertaken without sincere
collaboration between government and the opposition. The first step must be an
agreement by both sides to engage in serious dialogue, before the current crisis
spins into violent anarchy. Beyond that, unless the Awami League and the BNP
begin to professionalize their organizations and stamp out corruption, economic and
social progress is unlikely to be sustained.

Bangladesh at a Crossroads
BRUSSELS In the course of just a few weeks, Bangladeshs fragile democracy
which had made substantial social and economic progress in recent years has
deteriorated dramatically. The general election on January 5, which Bangladeshs
Western partners had hoped would consolidate its democratic credentials, was
marred by violent protest and the refusal by the European Union and the United
States to send observers, following the decision by the Bangladesh National Party
(BNP), the countrys main opposition party, not to participate.
Unrest in South Asias dynastic democracies is nothing new. But the international
community thought that Bangladesh though still desperately poor, prone to
frequent flooding, and having experienced a recent series of tragedies, including
fires and a major building collapse in its garments FACTORY had matured
sufficiently for a peaceful transition of power. Under the Awami League government,
which was peacefully elected with a huge majority in December 2008, and whose
secular/socialist traditions are rooted in the Bengali national movement (which led
to independence from Pakistan in 1971), Bangladesh had enjoyed a period of
relative stability and rapid economic growth.

But painful divisions persisted beneath the surface. In particular, the split between
democratic secularism and sharia-based Islamist governance has defined
Bangladeshs identity since independence, when the rift between competing
political models took its most extreme form in horrendous massacres of Bengali
nationalists. That legacy remains a flashpoint for violence today.
One controversial issue stoking tensions has been the workings of the International
Crimes Tribunal (ICT) established by the current government after receiving a clear
mandate to try those accused of mass killings and other atrocities 43 years ago.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina defended the decision by insisting that
there can be no impunity for war crimes on the scale perpetrated in 1971, when an
estimated two million people died, with many civilians executed in cold blood.
This quest for justice is no different from efforts to hold war criminals accountable
elsewhere, such as in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. There is clearly a need for
emotional closure to allow the country to move on from its bloody birth. But
Hasinas opponents rejected the ICT as a political act aimed at silencing another
opposition party, Jamaat-e-Islami, the countrys most prominent Islamist
organization, whose leaders sided with Pakistani forces during the civil war.
But Hasinas desire for justice and closure is understandable, given that her father,
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the countrys founding father), and most of her family were
brutally murdered in 1975. There were also sound political motivations for
establishing the court: a portion of the Awami Leagues support comes from the
Bengali intelligentsia, in particular the Hindu minority, which suffered terribly in the
1971 war.
Jamaat-e-Islami and its ally, the BNP, responded to the war-crimes trials with violent
disruption and obstruction aimed at paralyzing the economy. Roughly 300 people
many of them members of religious minorities, who are often scapegoated for
supporting the Awami League and the ICT died last year as a result of the protests.
Hindus comprised most of the prosecutions witnesses for the ICT.
Jamaat-e-Islami and its even more radical ally, Hefazat-e-Islam, a fundamentalist
madrasa-based group that has campaigned to ban womens right to work,
attempted to block the ICTs work physically and even to destroy its international
credibility on the grounds that the court reserved the right to impose the death
penalty. Hefazat-e-Islam, which supports execution for so-called atheist bloggers,
apparently thinks that blogging causes greater harm than mass murder.
Hasinas government rightly pointed out that all criminal courts in Bangladesh can
impose the death penalty, so it would be odd that a murderer could be executed but
a mass murderer could not. On December 12, Abdul Quader Molla, a prominent
member of Jamaat-e-Islam, was the first to be hanged for war crimes, with six more
sentenced to death.

In fairness, international jurists have criticized the ICT on procedural grounds, while
the EU opposes capital punishment in all circumstances. But no one outside the
country contests the legitimacy of the ICT per se.
In fact, the war-crimes trials were only one of several irritants to the opposition,
which was also determined to reinstate the model of a technocratic civil-service-led
caretaker government in the run-up to the election. This model, unique to
Bangladesh and Pakistan in South Asia, was introduced to eliminate abuse of
administrative resources by the incumbent government during election campaigns
but was abolished by a constitutional change that the Supreme Court upheld in
2011. Indeed, the Awami League rightly pointed out that the caretaker government
that took power in 2006, backed by the military, clung to power for two years,
instead of the constitutionally mandated maximum of 90 days, and even tried to
prevent Hasina from returning to the country from abroad.
The BNP claimed that there could be no fair elections without a caretaker
government, even though they had recently won local municipal elections. This
stance led to a boycott, despite Hasinas offer to create an all-party government
with three cabinet portfolios for the BNP, including the interior ministry, which has
substantial oversight over both the police and the conduct of elections. The
government had no choice but to hold the election, as mandated by the
constitution.
So, what can be done now that the election is over and a new Awami League
government has been sworn in?
Above all, the Awami League must make a greater effort to build bridges for
example, by either charging BNP leaders accused of committing crimes, or releasing
them from prison. It must also deliver on its promise to hold a fresh election,
provided the BNP ceases its deliberate use of violence, and it should seek an
agreement with the EU to send a strong election-observer mission.
The BNP should also distance itself from Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist
fundamentalists, and commit itself to secular governance. Indeed, the BNP has not
always been close to those who want a sharia-based state. On the contrary, the BNP
has traditionally been pro-business, and Bangladesh badly needs foreign direct
investment, which has dried up with the unrest. The BNP also needs to make peace
with India, the regional economic giant.
Bangladesh is at a crossroads. Neither the West, nor South Asia, can afford to see
the country take a wrong turn.

Bangladeshs Fundamentalist Challenge

NEW DELHI In February, while returning from a book fair at Dhaka University, Avijit
Roy, a Bangladeshi-American blogger known for his atheism, and his wife were
dragged from their rickshaw and hacked with machetes. The book fair, held
annually to commemorate the 1952 protests that culminated in the Pakistani
military opening fire on students at the university, is a typically Bengali response to
violence. To turn the Nazi leader Hermann Grings notorious barb on its head, when
Bengalis hear the word gun, they reach for their culture.
But Roys brutal murder (his wife was maimed, but survived) together with the
fatal stabbing of another atheist blogger, Washiqur Rahman, barely a month later
exposes another force at work in Bangladesh, one that is subverting the countrys
tradition of secularism and intellectual discourse. That force is Salafist Islamic
fundamentalism.
The change in Bangladesh is stark. The irreverent secularism and thoughtful inquiry
reflected in the works of Roy and Washiqur have long been a hallmark of Bengali
writing. A generation ago, their views would have been considered perfectly
acceptable, if not mainstream, in the vibrant intellectual culture of Bengal (the
Western portion of which is the Indian state of West Bengal).
That is no longer true. Backed by lavish financing from abroad, Salafist
fundamentalism an intolerant version of Islam at odds with the more moderate
Sufi-influenced variant that prevailed in India for centuries has been spreading
across Bangladesh in recent years. While Bengals long secular tradition, which
drove its efforts to break away from Pakistan, is still alive and well, the corrosive
impact of the radical Islamists who use force to silence those with whom they
disagree is undeniable.
Roy and Washiqur are far from the first Bengali intellectuals to face the Islamists
particular brand of censorship. The writer Humayun Azad was severely injured in an
attack at the annual book fair in 2004. (He survived, but died later that year in
Germany.) Last year, the atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was, like Roy, hacked
to death in Dhaka. Why engage in theoretical debates with your ideological
opponents, the Islamists are saying, when one can simply shut them up for good?
Many Bangladeshi intellectuals have seen the writing on the wall and fled the
country, sacrificing daily contact with their rich cultural heritage for the sake of selfpreservation. The novelist Taslima Nasrin went into exile in 1994 to escape death
threats from Islamist radicals; she now lives in Delhi. Daud Haider, a journalist and
poet, languishes in Berlin.
Public intellectuals are not the only people in danger. Ordinary secular Muslims who
turn to atheism are more vulnerable to charges of apostasy and, worse, blasphemy.
In the old days, such charges might have attracted a fatwa or two and, at worst,
social ostracism. Today, the threats say, being murdered in cold blood on a
crowded street are more viscerally compelling.

For Muslim-majority Bangladesh, this struggle within Islam amounts to a battle for
the soul of the country. But it is not an entirely new battle. Bangladesh has long
faced the claim that, in accordance with the logic of the 1947 Partition of India,
which produced what was then East Pakistan, it should be more Islamic. Others,
opposing this claim, insist that the country must live up to the legacy of its 1971
secession from Pakistan, in a revolution that proclaimed Islam insufficient grounds
for nationhood and asserted the primacy of Bangladeshs secular culture and
Bengali language over its allegiance to Islamabad.
This conflict is also reflected in the countrys often bitterly divisive politics. Each
camp has taken its turn controlling the government, under two formidable female
leaders: the Awami Leagues Sheikh Hasina Wazed, the current prime minister, and
her two-term predecessor, the Bangladesh Nationalist Partys Begum Khaleda Zia.
Though the secularists are currently in power, Zia retains wide support, including
among the Islamists. Her party boycotted the last election, and has provoked
political violence that has claimed more than 100 lives this year and left hundreds
more injured.
The recent killings have inflamed public opinion, sparking mass demonstrations to
demand justice for the victims and more effective government protection of
secularist writers. HT Imam, a senior adviser to Hasina, squarely challenged the
police for their inaction on Roys murder, telling top police officers to identify the
black sheep among the force and bring them under law and justice to uphold your
image.
Bangladesh is a democracy that upholds freedom of expression, but within limits.
Though the government is seen as sympathetic to liberal intellectuals, it is also
anxious to maintain law and order and avoid provoking the extremists. As a result,
the government has not hesitated to try to curry favor with the Islamists by using
legislation that prohibits hurting religious sentiments to harass and arrest atheists
and liberals. The Islamists, however, want the government to pass a blasphemy law
like that in Pakistan, which decrees death for religious dissent. Though the
government has so far stoutly resisted this, its weak-kneed defense of secularism
has raised fears that its resistance to theocratic pressure could collapse under
sustained pressure.
It must continue to do so. Hasina the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the
father of independent Bangladesh who was assassinated in 1975 knows that
compromising with the Islamists will get her nowhere; she will never be acceptable
to them. Her government must not succumb to the temptation to accommodate the
extremists in the name of good governance (or in the cause of political survival).
The principles for which Bangladesh bled when it won its independence from
Pakistan must not be compromised. If Hasina gives in to the machete-wielding
Islamists, she will sacrifice the Bangladesh that her father fought to free.

Bangladeshs Quest for Justice

NEW DELHI The sea of humanity besieging the Shahbag area in the Bangladeshi
capital, Dhaka, for the last two months, has had an unusual demand unusual, at
least, for the Indian subcontinent. The demonstrators have been clamoring for
justice for the victims of the genocidal massacres of 1971 that led to the former
East Pakistans secession from Pakistan.
The demonstrations have been spontaneous, disorganized, and chaotic, but also
impassioned and remarkably peaceful. Many of the several thousand demonstrators
at Shahbag are too young to have had personal experience of the killings that
marked the Pakistani Armys brutal, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to
suppress the fledgling independence movement. But they are animated by an ideal
the profound conviction that complicity in mass murder should not go unpunished,
and that justice is essential for Bangladeshi societys four-decade-old wounds to
heal fully.
What is curious about this development is that the subcontinent has preferred to
forget the monstrous injustices that have scarred its recent history. A million people
lost their lives in the savagery of the subcontinents partition into India and
Pakistan, and 13 million more were displaced, most forcibly. But not one person was
ever charged with a crime, much less tried and punished.
An estimated million more were massacred in Bangladesh in 1971, and only this
year have some of the perpetrators local allies been tried. Almost every year,
somewhere on the subcontinent, riots, often politically instigated, claim dozens
sometimes hundreds and occasionally thousands of lives in the name of religion,
sect, or ethnicity. Again, investigations are conducted and reports are written, but
no one is ever brought before the bar of justice.
To paraphrase Stalin: The intentional killing of one person is murder, but that of a
hundred, a thousand, or a million is merely a grim statistic.
The idealism of Bangladeshs young demonstrators, however, points to a new
development. The outpouring of emotion evident at Shahbag was provoked by a
decision of an international criminal tribunal convened by the government. The
tribunal, which tries cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity, found a
prominent member of Bangladeshs largest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami,
guilty of complicity in the killings of 300 people, but gave him a relatively light
sentence of 15 years in prison (prosecutors had sought the death penalty).
By demanding severe punishment for those guilty of war crimes not the Pakistani
Army, long gone, but their local collaborators in groups like Jamaat-e-Islami, Al
Badar, Al Shams, and the Razakar irregulars the protesters are also implicitly
describing the society in which they wish to live: secular, pluralist, and democratic.

These words are enshrined in Bangladeshs constitution, which simultaneously

declares the Republic to be an Islamic State. While some see no contradiction, the
fact that many of the collaborators who killed secular and pro-democracy Bengalis
in 1971 claimed to be doing so in the name of Islam points to an evident tension.
If any proof of this clash of values were needed, it came in the form of a hugely
impressive counter-demonstration against the Shahbag movement led by activists
of the fundamentalist Islamic movement Hifazat-e-Islam, which occupied the
capitals Motijheel area. Unlike the Shahbag events, the counter-demonstration was
well-planned and organized, and conveyed the stark message that there was an
alternative point of view in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.
The male, bearded, skull-cap-wearing protesters shouted in unison their agreement
with speakers who denounced the International Crimes Tribunal. Their supporters
include activists of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami-Bangladesh, which has fought
alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The debate between religious fundamentalism and secular democracy is not a new
one on the subcontinent. But the issue of justice for the crimes of 1971 has brought
the divide into sharp relief. The Shahbag protesters reject Islamic extremists
influence in Bangladesh, and even call for organizations like Jamaat-e-Islami to be
banned, while Hifazat-e-Islam and its supporters want the countrys liberal forces
repressed, secularist bloggers arrested, and strict Islamism imposed on Bangladeshi
society.
The young people at Shahbag are mainly urban, educated, and middle class; Hifazat
derives its support mainly from the rural poor. Traditional versus modern, urban
versus rural, intellectuals versus the peasantry: these divisions are the stuff of
political clich. But, all too often, clichs become established because they are true.
The Bangladeshi governments sympathies are closer to the Shahbag protesters
than to the Hifazat counter-demonstrators. But it must navigate a difficult path,
because both points of view have significant public support. The authorities have
even taken steps to appease the Islamists by arresting four bloggers for their posts.
But the government remains resolute in its support for the international tribunal.
The irony is that true religion is never incompatible with justice. But when justice is
sought for the crimes of those who claim to be acting in the name of religion, the
terms of the debate change. The issue then becomes one that has been avoided in
Bangladesh for too long: whether claiming to act according to the requirements of
piety provides an exemption for murder. The outcome of the standoff in Dhaka
should provide an answer in Bangladesh, and its implications could reverberate far
and wide.

The Promise of E-Procurement

COPENHAGEN Corruption is a huge problem across the globe. In Africa, it is
estimated that one-quarter of the continents GDP is lost to corruption each year.
In Latin America, the Inter-American Development Bank believes that corruption
may cost 10% of GDP every year. In the only comprehensive overview based on
surveys of businesses and households, the World Bank puts the total direct cost of
corruption at $1 trillion annually.
The international community has time and again reaffirmed its intent to stamp out
corruption, most recently last year, when the United Nations adopted the
Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, as the Copenhagen Consensus, the think tank I
head, has documented, for all the well-intentioned policies, there have been few
successes.
One study examined the 145 countries that introduced institutional reforms with the
support of the World Bank or other donor agencies from 1998 to 2008. Comfortingly,
government effectiveness improved in half the countries. Unfortunately,
effectiveness actually worsened in the other half, suggesting no overall effect.
But now we may have some unambiguously good news in tackling corruption: an
intervention that can make a large impact for a surprisingly low cost.
In Bangladesh, the worlds eighth-most populous country, the Copenhagen
Consensus worked with the worlds biggest NGO, the renowned BRAC, and dozens
of Bangladeshi and international expert economists to analyze the most effective
solutions to the countrys many challenges. These include better brick kilns to
tackle air pollution in Dhaka, micronutrients to combat pervasive stunting, planting
mangrove to protect against flooding, more effective tuberculosis treatment, and
improved services for the half-million people migrating overseas every year.
Our economists estimate the costs of each policy, along with their social,
environmental, and economic benefits, in order to show which investments deliver
the highest return. International development organizations spend $3 billion each
year in Bangladesh, so knowing how much good each investment does is essential
to prioritizing projects.
Moreover, though Bangladesh has made spectacular progress in recent years, with
the economy growing by about 6% per year, on average, and poverty reduced by
half since 2000, its target of achieving lower-middle-income status by 2021 is highly
ambitious. To meet it, Bangladesh will have to fix the problems that continue to
frustrate development, and that requires a razor-sharp focus on the most effective
solutions.

Each year, Bangladesh spends $9 billion (6% of GDP) on government procurement

everything from highways and bridges to desks and pencils which amounts to
about one-third of the entire public budget. And procurement is notoriously
vulnerable to corruption. Burdensome procedures exclude most competitors. As one
contractor, Ashraful Alam, put it: Purchasing reams of tender documents and
physically submitting them to government procurement entities was difficult for me,
let alone winning any contracts. I lost interest in bidding after such a lengthy
exercise. And sometimes contractors political connections enable them to win bids
or block others. The result is higher costs for taxpayers and donors.
But new research by Wahid Abdallah, a research fellow at the BRAC Institute of
Governance and Development in Dhaka, shows that electronic government
procurement holds enormous potential. An ongoing project started in 2008 by the
national government and the World Bank documents the promise.
By 2011, four Bangladeshi agencies that represent about 10% of all public
procurement had implemented e-procurement. Online submissions would drive up
the number of bids and thus drive down prices. With the new process, Alam is now
bidding again: Now I can submit tenders online, even from home without any
hassle and undue influence or obstruction. Who won, and at what price, is also
placed online, reducing favoritism.
Analyzing data from one of the four agencies that have implemented e-procurement
reveals that prices have indeed gone down, typically by 11.9%. The effects of
expanding e-procurement across the rest of the government would be enormous.
The costs would include a one-time investment of about $13 million to purchase
computers and software, $4 million to train 114,000 more staff across Bangladesh,
and expenses for operations and maintenance. Total costs in the coming years are
estimated at about $18 million.
The benefits, however, would dwarf these outlays. Online procurement in all
government sectors would produce annual benefits cheaper goods and services
worth $700-900 million. Given that the costs are paid once, but the benefits are
annual, the total cost of $18 million should be compared to a total present value of
all future benefits of at least $12 billion, with each dollar producing $663 of social
benefits.
E-procurement turns out to be a phenomenally good way to tackle corruption. Many
other smart solutions will be needed to eliminate the problem, and many other
solutions are needed for the myriad challenges that still confront Bangladesh. But
when economic research can help highlight the smartest solutions, it can help
everyone spend better.

Which Policies Should Have Priority?

COLORADO SPRINGS Every day, policymakers around the world face a dizzying
array of choices. The more they spend on, say, education, the less there is to run
hospitals, fight pollution, or boost agricultural productivity. Lobby groups, activists,
and the media promote certain causes solar panels, the Zika virus, closing tax
loopholes immediately while less fashionable issues, like nutrition or noncommunicable diseases, can slip beneath the radar. And most countries politics
have proverbial third rail issues policies or programs (say, state pensions) that
are so sacrosanct that any policymaker who touches them faces instant political
death.
Part of the problem is that when governments invest in economic analysis, they
tend to do so for one policy at a time, asking simply: would this be cost-effective?
Yes? Lets do it.
But what if policymakers looked at a range of options simultaneously comparing
bridge-building with spending on school textbooks to figure out where first to
direct any additional money?
This approach was used for the first time at a national level last month in
Bangladesh, where my think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, collaborated
with BRAC, the worlds largest development organization, on the Bangladesh
Priorities project. The idea was to provide constructive input to the Bangladeshi
government and donors by determining where extra resources would do the most
good.
Bangladesh has been making immense strides. Economic growth has averaged
nearly 6% over the last decade, and the poverty rate has declined rapidly since the
1990s. Gains in average life expectancy have been astounding, steadily rising from
around 48 years in 1980 to more than 70 years in 2014.
The country has many compelling policy options, making our initiative even timelier.
Beginning in early 2015, the Bangladesh Priorities project commissioned dozens of
teams of specialist economists from Bangladesh and around the world to study 76
concrete solutions to improve the countrys future. Education economists, for
example, analyzed the best education solutions for Bangladesh, estimating the
costs and benefits of each.
Last month, an eminent panel of four top economists three leading Bangladeshi
scholars and a Nobel laureate in economics met in Dhaka to examine the results.
Having read all the research, the panel spent three days discussing and challenging
the findings with the specialist economists. So, when the education economists
provided an analysis on putting children into classes according to ability, the

eminent panel would question the assumptions and probe the outcomes to see if
the finding stood up.
The panel identified some remarkable investments. At the top of their list of
priorities was treatment of tuberculosis, which kills about 80,000 Bangladeshis
annually one in every 11 deaths in the country. The main cost comes from getting
almost 60 million more people screened, but it is indeed a cheap disease to treat:
Spending just about $100 per patient on standard drugs and community clinic
follow-up can avert TB transmission. The total benefit is at least 21 times higher
than the total cost. When one considers the impact on families of not losing their
breadwinner, and on communities of not losing their experienced workforce, the
real benefit could be even higher.
In second place was e-procurement, a digital solution implying improved oversight
of the 720 billion takas ($9.1 billion) the government spends each year to pay for
everything from new bridges to pencils. Creating something similar to an online
bidding system can boost competition and reduce corruption, lowering government
costs by an estimated 12%. And the relatively low cost of implementing eprocurement implies low risk. Each taka of spending stands to do more than 600
takas of good.
Early nutritional interventions, which are vital in determining long-term outcomes,
were ranked third. Nearly one in four children in Bangladesh under the age of five
are malnourished to the point of being stunted, which hinders mental development,
lowers school performance, and leads to lower productivity, worse health outcomes,
and more disease later in life. The benefits of nutrition-focused improvements are
estimated to be 19 times higher than the costs, which are low.
When we say what should come first, we also need to say what should not come
first. This may seem uncaring. But if we do not prioritize explicitly, we end up
spreading resources thinly, or allow opaque bureaucratic processes and the
vagaries of media attention and the pressure of lobby groups to prioritize for us.
For Bangladesh, the panel pointed out that cervical cancer, for example, should not
come first. This is hard. It kills about 10,000 Bangladeshi women each year; but it is
very costly to treat. More than twice as many women die from TB, which also kills
many men and children.
Obviously, the goal is for Bangladesh to be able to respond effectively to both
challenges. But if it needs to start somewhere, the analysis shows that money that
could save one person from dying of cervical cancer would save nearly 50 from
dying from TB.

What works best for Bangladesh will not necessarily work best for, say, Colombia,
Finland, Haiti, or Canada. But the same analytical approach can be used and
extended to cities, states, and regions. Economics should never be the sole
decision-maker. But without evidence about costs and benefits, decisions are made
in the dark. Providing a price list helps elevate the conversation about priorities.
Bangladeshis and people everywhere deserve the most efficient allocation of
scarce development resources that can be achieved.

The Forgotten Genocide

NEW DELHI It is exactly 40 years since the Pakistani military regime of Yahya Khan
initiated Operation Searchlight in March 1971. That military expedition was but
the latest in a series of pogroms carried out to intimidate the restive population of
what was then called East Pakistan todays independent Bangladesh. What
followed was one of the worst massacres in human history, now all but forgotten by
the international community.
Pakistan was created by the partition of British India in 1947, but its territory was
divided into two enclaves separated by hundreds of miles. While they shared a
religion, Islam, there were major cultural and linguistic differences between East
and West Pakistan.
In the east, there was a strong sense of being Bengali, and a sizeable Hindu
minority continued to live in the province. There was, moreover, strong resentment
that political power lay in the hands of western-based politicians and generals who
were blatantly insensitive to Bengali demands. It seemed to many that, with the
creation of Pakistan, East Pakistan had merely exchanged one form of colonialism
for another. And, as Bengali demands for autonomy gained momentum, the
response became more repressive.
In November 1970, tropical cyclone Bhola struck East Pakistan, killing between
300,000 and 500,000 people. Bhola is still considered one of the worst natural
disasters on record, and the military dictatorships lukewarm relief efforts incensed
the Bengali population.
So, when Pakistans military leaders finally allowed elections in late December 1970,
East Pakistan voted overwhelmingly for the Bengali-nationalist Awami League,
which won 167 of 169 seats in the province. Since East Pakistan was more populous
than West Pakistan, the elections outcome raised the prospect that the Bengalis
would now rule the country as whole. This was not palatable to the Punjabidominated military brass or to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the leader of West Pakistans
largest political party. The elections were canceled, and East Pakistan erupted in
open revolt.

Yahya Khan responded by sending in the troops. The result was a genocide in which
as many as three million people, particularly minorities and intellectuals, were
killed. Dhaka Universitys residential halls were particularly targeted. Up to 700
students were killed in a single attack on Jagannath Hall. Several well-known
professors, both Hindu and Muslim, were murdered. Hundreds of thousands of
women were systematically raped in the countryside. By September 1971, ten
million refugees had poured into eastern India.
The world knew what was happening. Time magazines August 2, 1971, issue
quoted a United States official saying, This is the most incredible, calculated thing
since the days of the Nazis in Poland. The article goes on to describe the streams
of refugees:
Over the rivers and down the highways and along countless jungle paths, the
population of East Pakistan continues to hemorrhage into India: an endless
unorganized flow of refugees with a few tin kettles, cardboard boxes, and ragged
clothes piled on their heads, carrying their sick children and their old. They pad
along barefooted, with the mud sucking at their heels in the wet parts. They are
silent, except for a child whimpering now and then, but their faces tell the story.
Many are sick and covered with sores. Others have cholera, and when they die by
the roadside there is no one to bury them.
The international communitys response to the massacres was shameful. We now
have copies of desperate cables sent by diplomat Archer Blood and his colleagues
at the US consulate in Dacca (now Dhaka) pleading with the US government to stop
supporting a military regime that was carrying out genocide. Instead, President
Richard Nixon concentrated on intimidating Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi into
staying out. He would even send the US Seventh Fleet to cow her. Fortunately,
Gandhi held her nerve and began to prepare for war.
Strengthened by promises of support from the US and China, Pakistans military
commanders ordered pre-emptive air strikes against India on December 3, 1971.
The Indian response was swift and sharp. With support from the civilian population,
as well as from the Mukti Bahini, an irregular army of Bengali rebels, the Indian
army swept into East Pakistan. Nixon was too bogged down in Vietnam to do more
than issue threats. On December 16, the Pakistanis signed the instrument of
surrender in Dacca. Bangladesh was born.
Having acquiesced in the genocide, the international community has conveniently
forgotten it, and no Pakistani official has ever been brought to justice. On the
contrary, many of the perpetrators later held senior government positions. It is as if
the Nuremberg trials never happened after WWII.
As the world watches Libyas Muammar el-Qaddafi slaughter his own people, we
should remember the human cost of international indifference.

The Strategic Logic of the Islamic

State
LONDON The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) continues to pose a serious challenge
not just to the Middle East, but to the entire world. While the efforts of a US-led
coalition have weakened ISIS, destroying the group has proved difficult and it has
continued to inspire attacks in faraway places, from Brussels to Bangladesh.
To understand how to defeat ISIS once and for all, we first need to comprehend its
strategy. And make no mistake: even if the ISIS-associated international attacks
seem random, the groups global crusade does have a strategic logic.
ISIS is fighting for its survival. It has neither the money nor the manpower to fight
anything like a traditional war against the US-led coalition and its local allies at
least not for long. What it does have is a message that resonates with certain
groups typically marginalized, disenchanted, and tormented young men within a
broad range of countries, in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere. And it has
become very good at tapping these sources of manpower.
The groups spokespeople have repeatedly called on followers and supporters
worldwide to strike its enemies, particularly in the West. Inspiring lone wolves and
stay-at-home groupies or tight-knit local cells to launch attacks in distant,
unpredictable locations is the ultimate weapon of the weak in asymmetric conflicts.
It enables ISIS to reap all of the benefits of an attack, while incurring none of the
costs.
The benefits are substantial. Such attacks divert attention from ISISs losses in Syria
and Iraq, and can even make it seem that the group is getting stronger. This not
only enhances ISISs capacity to recruit and inspire more terrorists; it also
penetrates the thinking of citizens in coalition countries. ISIS hopes that, as the
human and economic costs of the fight against ISIS accumulate in those countries,
particularly in Europe, public opinion may turn against military involvement in Iraq
and Syria.
As pressure on ISIS builds particularly in Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, and
Raqqa, the Syrian city that has become the self-proclaimed caliphates de facto
capital its calls for attacks will intensify. Given a widespread willingness from San
Bernardino to Nice to heed those calls, the results could be devastating.
Of course, ISIS does not rely entirely on inspiration. It also recruits skilled
combatants from just about anywhere including Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Jordan,
Turkey, France, Belgium, and Britain whom it then sends to launch spectacular

operations, such as those in Istanbul, Brussels, and Paris. There are credible reports
that ISIS has even established an external branch responsible for plotting terrorist
operations abroad.
If Mosul and Raqqa fall in the coming year, as seems likely, thousands of surviving
ISIS combatants will return to their home countries, where they are likely to
continue waging their war with terror attacks. As a result, the coming year is bound
to be at least as bloody as the last one.
Who will bear the brunt of ISISs desperation? The US tops the list of ISISs enemies.
But dispatching fighters there from the Middle East poses a logistical challenge. And
there are only about 100 Americans fighting with ISIS, meaning that, in the US,
inspiration is ISISs main tactic.
European and Muslim countries are much more convenient targets, and not only in
geographic terms. Most ISIS fighters are from the Arab world, and 4,000 European
men and women have joined the group.
Of the European countries, France, which has assumed a leadership role in the fight
against ISIS, is the most vulnerable. It has already suffered more casualties than all
of its neighbors together, with 235 people killed in the last 18 months.
One reason for this is that the sense of exclusion and alienation felt by a large
segment of Frances Muslim community has made it easier for ISIS to recruit in the
country. Some 1,200 French nationals have joined as fighters the largest
contingent of Westerners in the group. Add to that serious gaps in Frances domestic
security arrangements, and the odds of further attacks appear high.
But as much as ISIS wants to hurt the West, the countries of the Middle East
especially the Shia regimes of Iraq and Syria, plus their Iranian ally remain its
prime target. After all, ISISs effort to build a caliphate requires it to control territory.
The struggle against America, Europe, and even Israel must be deferred until a
Sunni Islamic state is built in the heart of Arabia.
Given this, it is crucial that the security threat posed by terror attacks does not
overshadow, particularly for Western leaders, the imperative of dismantling ISISs
pseudo-state in Iraq and Syria. But even when that task is finished, ISIS will still
wield its ideology as a weapon to attract fighters to engage in guerrilla warfare in
Iraq and Syria, and in terrorism abroad.
That is why it is also necessary to cut off the social and ideological oxygen that has
nourished ISISs spectacular rise. This means addressing the Middle Easts broken
politics, including both its causes (such as the geostrategic rivalry between Sunniruled Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran) and its symptoms (including the civil wars
spreading through the Arabian heartland). Only then can the Arab-Islamic world and
the international community defeat ISIS and others like them.

Global Capital Heads for the Frontier

PRINCETON So-called frontier market economies" are the latest fad in investment
circles. Though these low-income countries including Bangladesh and Vietnam in
Asia, Honduras and Bolivia in Latin America, and Kenya and Ghana in Africa have
small, undeveloped financial markets, they are growing rapidly and are expected to
become the emerging economies of the future. In the last four years, inflows of
private capital into frontier economies have been nearly 50% higher (relative to
GDP) than flows into emerging market economies. Whether that should be cheered
or lamented is a question that has become a kind of Rorschach test for economic
analysts and policymakers.
We now know that the promise of free capital mobility has not been redeemed. By
and large, the surge in capital inflows has boosted consumption rather than
investment in recipient countries, exacerbating economic volatility and making
painful financial crises more frequent. Rather than exerting discipline, global
financial markets have increased the availability of debt, thereby weakening
profligate governments' budget constraints and over-extended banks' balance
sheets.
The best argument for free capital mobility remains the one made nearly two
decades ago by Stanley Fischer, then the International Monetary Fund's number two
official and now Vice Chair of the US Federal Reserve. Though Fischer recognized the
perils of free-flowing capital, he argued that the solution was not to maintain capital
controls, but to undertake the reforms required to mitigate the dangers.
Fischer made this argument at a time when the IMF was actively seeking to
enshrine capital-account liberalization in its charter. But then the world witnessed
financial crises in Asia, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Turkey, and eventually Europe and
America. To its credit, the Fund has since softened its line on capital controls. In
2010, it issued a note that recognized capital controls as part of the arsenal of
policy tools used to combat financial instability.
Nonetheless, at the IMF and in advanced countries, the prevailing view remains that
capital controls are a last resort to be used only after conventional macroeconomic
and financial policies have been exhausted. Free capital mobility continues to be the
ultimate goal, even if some countries may have to take their time getting there.
There are two problems with this view. First, as advocates of capital mobility
tirelessly point out, countries must fulfill a long list of prerequisites before they can
benefit from financial globalization. These include the protection of property rights,
effective contract enforcement, eradication of corruption, enhanced transparency
and financial information, sound corporate governance, monetary and fiscal
stability, debt sustainability, market-determined exchange rates, high-quality
financial regulation, and prudential supervision. In other words, a policy aimed at

enabling growth in developing countries requires first-world institutions before it can

work.
Worse, the list is not only long; it is also open ended. As the advanced countries'
experience with the global financial crisis has demonstrated, even the most
sophisticated regulatory and supervisory systems are far from being failsafe. Thus,
demanding that developing countries build the kind of institutions that will render
capital flows safe not only puts the cart before the horse; it is also a fool's errand.
Caution dictates a more pragmatic approach, one that recognizes a permanent role
for capital controls alongside other regulatory and prudential tools.
The second problem concerns the possibility that capital inflows may be harmful to
growth, even if we leave aside concerns about financial fragility. Advocates of
capital mobility assume that poor economies have lots of profitable investment
opportunities that are not being exploited because of a shortage of investible funds.
Let capital come in, they argue, and investment and growth will take off.
But many developing countries are constrained by a lack of investment demand,
not a shortage of domestic saving. The social return on investment may be high, but
private returns are low, owing to externalities, high taxes, poor institutions, or any
of a wide array of other factors.
Capital inflows in economies that suffer from low investment demand fuel
consumption, not capital accumulation. They also fuel exchange-rate appreciation,
which aggravates the investment shortage. The profitability of tradable industries
those most likely to suffer from appropriability problems takes a hit, and
investment demand falls further. In these economies, capital inflows may well retard
growth rather than stimulate it.
Such concerns have led emerging economies to experiment with a variety of capital
controls. In principle, frontier market economies can learn much from this
experience. As the Johns Hopkins University economist Olivier Jeanne pointed out at
a recent IMF conference organized to spur such learning, the capital-flow measures
that have become fashionable of late do not work very well.
That is not because they fail to affect the quantity or composition of flows, but
because such effects are quite small. As Brazil, Colombia, South Korea, and others
have learned, limited controls that target specific markets such as bonds or shortterm bank lending do not have a significant impact on key outcomes the exchange
rate, monetary independence, or domestic financial stability. The implication is that
capital controls may need to be blunt and comprehensive, rather than surgical and
targeted, to be truly effective.
Capital controls by themselves are no panacea, and they often create worse
problems, such as corruption or a delay in needed reforms, than they solve. But this
is no different from any other area of government action. We live in a second-best

world where policy action is almost always partial (and partially effective), and wellintentioned reforms in one area may backfire in the presence of distortions
elsewhere in the system.
In such a world, treating capital controls as the last resort, always and everywhere,
has little rationale; indeed, it merely fetishizes financial globalization. The world
needs case-by-case, hardheaded pragmatism, recognizing that capital controls
sometimes deserve a prominent place.

The chief problem with trying to do everything

at once is that we end up doing very little at
all.
Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, the President of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, a top ranked
think tank and one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people, shares with
Amitava Kar the ideas behind and the goal of the Bangladesh Priorities project-prioritising development solutions through a cost benefit analysis
Please give us a background of the Bangladesh Priorities Project which you launched
during your visit to Dhaka earlier this year. What are the objectives?
We will engage Bangladeshis across the country to discover their views about the
biggest challenges facing the country. Through this process, which will include
readers of The Daily Star, along with NGOs, decision makers and businesses, we will
collate a list of the top challenges for Bangladesh.
For each of the challenges, we will engage with some of the world's and region's top
specialist economists, who will establish the smartest solutions along with their
costs and benefits.
Using cost and benefit analysis is an innovative approach in terms of prioritising
development solutions in Bangladesh, where this has not been used before.
With the new economic evidence, we can engage the country in talking about how
Bangladesh and donors could best approach each of the challenges, whether
healthcare or education or pollution.
We will ask Bangladeshi thought leaders, youth forums, and decision makers, to use
the research to identify their priorities for investment.

With knowledge of what we can achieve with every taka, the project will focus
attention on some of the smartest solutions for Bangladesh.
You commissioned research and cost-benefit analyses on 22 diverse topics of
development, and were trying to redefine some of the SDGs for effectiveness and
efficiency, whittling them down to a couple of dozen, down from the 169 goals set
by the UN. Has that come about?
The SDGs will replace the Millennium Development Goals and influence the flow of
more than USD 2.5 trillion over the next 15 years, so it's vital that we get them
right.
The United Nations' process has so far created an unmanageably long list of 169
very broad global development targets. All 169 targets are well-intentioned, but
setting out to balance 169 competing objectives is wrongheaded. Some achieve a
lot more than others. The chief problem with trying to do everything at once is that
we end up doing very little at all.
More than 80 economists at the Copenhagen Consensus Center analysed the United
Nations' plans and identified the targets' costs and benefits to society. This showed
that focusing on the 19 most effective targets would achieve four-times more good.
The United Nations is still debating its priorities, and will set the final list in
September. We continue to engage with ambassadors and governments to share
the results of our research and promote the idea of sharpening the SDG targets to a
much smarter, more effective list.
Would you share with us some solutions for Bangladesh?
Identifying solutions is a process where we will be working with many different
Bangladeshis, through our partner BRAC, as well as with academics, donors and
NGOs and politicians. We will of course share the solutions and all of our new
research with Bangladesh and the entire world during Bangladesh Priorities.
What kind of partnerships have you been able to build in Bangladesh? What do you
need to make this project a success?
We are engaging with a really wide range of Bangladeshi stakeholders, which we
think is vital. I'm really excited by the level of local interest in the project, and the
new research that will create smart solutions to the biggest challenges facing the
country. Our partner is BRAC, not only a Bangladeshi development success story but
also a global leader and pioneer in creating opportunities for the world's poor. We
will be working very closely with BRAC - and the rest of the development and policy
community - to ensure that this research informs and improves the Bangladeshi
conversation about priorities - and to make sure as many voices as possible are part
of this vital discussion.

We would be excited to consider other partners across government, development

and civil society, so I encourage those interested to get in touch via our website.
What was your motivation behind founding the Copenhagen Consensus?
I founded the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark more than a decade ago
because I believe that some of the world's biggest decisions made how to improve
the lives of the most needy and destitute must be much better informed. Too often
today, these decisions are made based on irrelevant things like media attention.
What I set out to do with Copenhagen Consensus is to provide an answer to the
question: how can we do the most good with our spending?
The Center has worked with more than 100 expert economists, including seven
Nobel Laureates, to look at smarter ways of spending money on everything from
climate change to healthcare. We first establish the costs and benefits of different
ways of spending money if you imagine development priorities as a menu, what
we do is make sure that each item on that menu has a price-tag and description
attached. Then we go the next step and explore which investments should be
prioritised and which ones should not.
Today, the Center is internationally recognised for using economic science to
identify the full range of social, environmental and economic benefits of competing
investment choices, and for injecting rational facts into heated policy debates.

24 more Biranganas recognised as freedom

fighters
Twenty four more Biranganas (war heroines) have been recognised as freedom
fighters for their sacrifice in the country's Liberation War in 1971.
The government issued a gazette in this regard on November 17.
With these 24, a total of 170 women have been honoured as freedom fighters in
phases by the government.
The government for the first time in October last year recognised 41 Biranganas as
freedom fighters.
Once recognised, the Biranganas will receive the same benefits as the freedom
fighters do -- a monthly allowance, special quotas in the government jobs and many
more benefits for their children and grandchildren.
At least 1.62 lakh women were raped, and another 1.31 lakh Hindu women went
missing during the Liberation War, according to the War Crimes Facts and Findings

Committee led by Dr M Hassan. The Hindu women are believed to have been raped
and killed in the Pakistani army camps.
The newly recognised freedom fighters are -- Anawara Begum and Ayshea Begum of
Rangpur, Aleya begum and Nurjahan Begum of Barisal, Kalima Begum and Aleya
Begum of Sylhet, Fulzan Begum, Hanufa Begum and Momtaj Begum of Dhaka, Afiya
Khatun of Comilla, Sona Bala, Jamela Khatun and Maya Rani of Pabna, Delo Bewa,
Saleha Bewa, Bosiron Begum, Taru Bala, Fatema Begum, Koteja Begum, Khuki
Begum, Mojida Begum, Gendi Bewa and Rahima Khatun of Kurigram and Momena
Begum of Chudanga.

Chinas Slowdown and Asias Economy

After three decades of double-digit growth, the weakening performance of China,
now the worlds second-largest economy, is a major source of concern and not just
for the Chinese. But, while the slowdown will have negative consequences for some
countries in the region, it is also creating opportunities for others.
MANILA Chinas economic slowdown in 2015 will have IMPORTANT consequences
for countries in the region and beyond. For most countries, the sub-7% GDP growth
expected this year and in the coming years would be a cause for celebration.
After three decades of double-digit growth, however, the weakening performance of
what is now the worlds second-largest economy is a significant source of concern
and not just for the Chinese.
But, while Chinas slowdown will have negative consequences for some countries, it
is also creating opportunities for others. The fate of countries in the region depends
on the structure of their economies and, crucially, how they can adapt to their
giant neighbors ongoing economic transformation.
Countries that produce raw materials, such as copper, oil, and minerals, for
manufacturing in China are already seeing the biggest changes. Chinas industrial
slowdown means a corresponding reduction in world demand for these
commodities. Countries such as Kazakhstan and Chile, whose economies are heavily
concentrated in such sectors, are finding the contraction a serious challenge.
Countries that produce intermediate goods are also feeling the pinch. Japan, for
example, manufactures parts and components that are exported to China for the
production of consumer electronics. In other words, its value-added exports to the
world often pass through China. As a result, Chinas slowdown has had a noticeable
effect on Japans EXPORTperformance.
But the fate of commodity and intermediate-goods exporters is not set in stone.
Consumers are not buying fewer smart phones, electronic toys, or computers; the

production of these goods will simply move FROM CHINA to lower-cost producers.
Vietnam, for example, has greatly increased its production and exports of
smartphones and consumer electronics an area where China used to enjoy
absolute dominance partly by attracting more foreign direct investment.
Other countries such as India and Indonesia could in principle emerge as the new
EXPORTgiants. For this to happen, though, these countries will have to invest
heavily in infrastructure and policy reforms that make their logistics and investment
climate globally competitive.
Another set of countries that have felt the impact of Chinas rebalancing sell
products and services to Chinese consumers. Despite slower growth, Chinas
household consumption has been rising and the countrys market remains one of
the worlds most promising. Firms that can take advantage of higher consumer
spending will do well.
Thus far, countries outside Asia such as Germany with its auto industry and the
United States with its high-tech innovation have been the primary beneficiaries of
rising incomes in China. But Asia-Pacific countries have also gained ground.
Singapore and Australia are taking advantage of the rising demand for high-quality
education in China by expanding EXPORTS OF college services. Japan is benefiting
from Chinese tourists aggressive spending habits, so much so that the
phenomenon known as bakugai has been termed the buzzword of the year in
Japan.
A third set of countries that stand to benefit comprises those that primarily compete
with China. These economies can increase their global market share as China
retreats from certain sectors. Precisely because of its own success, Chinas labor
cost has risen by more than 100% in the last ten years, leaving many other
countries not just Vietnam or India, but also other populous countries like
Bangladesh and Myanmar with much lower relative labor costs.
This means that many industries in China have lost competitiveness, and that the
Chinese economys future growth has to come from innovation and productivity
gains, rather than low-wage labor. Bangladesh, for example, has already begun to
take advantage of Chinas withdrawal from the low-end segment of the garment
market. Its production and EXPORTS have been rising rapidly, and today Bangladesh
is the worlds second-largest garment exporter (after China). So its not surprising
that Bangladesh and Vietnam are now two of the regions fastest-growing
economies.
But the gains to be had from Chinas slowdown are not automatic. Because so many
other countries are vying to pick up global market share that China is shedding, the
regions developing economies need to pursue a host of reforms and to invest in
power, transport, and urban infrastructure to make their overall investment climate
competitive.

As Chinas slowdown is being driven largely by fundamental factors (especially a

shrinking labor force and rising labor costs), it should be understood as part of a
new normal for the world economy. Because the Chinese economy is so much larger
now, even 6% growth today would contribute more to world output than 10%
growth before the global financial crisis.
For other countries, the best way to cope with a slowing China is to embrace the
domestic reforms needed to reposition themselves within the global economy.

Beyond Universal Education

DHAKA As the World Education Forum meets in Incheon, South Korea, it is time to
confront some unsettling facts about the state of education in the world today. More
than 91% of children of primary school age are now enrolled in school, but progress
on educating the remaining 9% has slowed to a near standstill. The numbers have
barely moved since 2005, and girls are still disproportionately left behind.
Worse, the headline figures do not describe the true depth of the problem. In poorer
countries, even children privileged enough to have access to a classroom often do
not receive a good education. According to UNESCO, of some 650 million primaryschool-age boys and girls, an estimated 250 million will not learn to read or count,
regardless of whether they have gone to school.
Moreover, in many parts of the developing world, state school systems are leaving
tens of millions of children behind because of poverty and discrimination. These
childrens true education will be that of the soil or the streets. They will grow up
working as smallholder farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers, and will struggle
to send their own children to school.
It is time for the United Nations and other international bodies to move beyond a
singular focus on enrollment numbers and grapple with the problem of quality in
education. In September, my organization, BRAC, joined a collaborative effort, led
by Hillary Clinton and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, that puts more
girls in school while addressing the problem of quality for both genders.
As part of that effort, BRAC, which is already the worlds largest private secular
education provider, plans to invest at least $280 million to reach 2.7 million
additional girls and train 75,000 teachers by 2019. We call on others to make similar
investments.
All too often, poor countries approach to education remains stuck in the colonial
era, favoring rote memorization over true learning. Schools do little to impart the
life and work skills needed to prepare young people for the twenty-first-century

knowledge economy. Children are awarded higher grades for writing sentences
exactly like the ones they see in textbooks than for coming up with ideas of their
own.
This is an approach that fails to foster curiosity, self-confidence, and independent
thinking. It is also especially ill-suited for children from poor backgrounds, who find
much of what they are taught in the classroom to be irrelevant to their daily lives.
I was pleased when, in May, a panel tasked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
came up with a post-2015 development agenda that included quality education, not
just universal access, as one of its recommendations. Setting targets based on
quality rather than quantity will be difficult but not impossible.
Basic outcomes of literacy and numeracy are imperative. But so are standards for
social and emotional learning, which stresses the importance of recognizing our
emotions, learning how to deal with them, and fostering empathy for others. These
skills, known as emotional intelligence, are just as important for children in poor
countries as they are for children in rich countries.
In conflict and post-conflict environments like Afghanistan or South Sudan, a safe
and peaceful future will depend on a new generation being able to heal its
emotional and psychological wounds, just as it did in my native Bangladesh after
our Liberation War in 1971. Even in countries not scarred by war, navigating ones
way out poverty requires emotional intelligence, in addition to problem-solving skills
and critical thinking.
Given recent cuts in aid for education, some might object that focusing on quality
and emotional intelligence are luxuries that we cannot afford. This is not the case.
In Bangladesh, we have found a way to bring quality education to the poor, with
schools that cost just $36 per student per year. With community support, local
women are trained to teach children to think for themselves. One-room schools
operate out of rented and borrowed spaces to save costs. A majority of the students
in every classroom are girls.
We need to promote universal standards for education, not just universal access, for
both girls and boys. A childs potential is truly unleashed only when he or she learns
to spot and seize the opportunities that his or her parents never had. This is the
standard we should set, and it will be a great moment indeed when it is universally
adopted.