Outlook Now Upbeat : Bangladesh No Longer a ‘Basket Case’

It will probably never again be the breadbasket of South Asia. There will never be quite enough to go around.

There will always be a disaster lurking in the shadows--a flood, a drought, a tidal wave, an epidemic, a war--to knock it down again.

It is one of the poorest countries in the world, a place where a wealthy family is one that has a house with a tin roof, and where a common greeting is, “Have you eaten?”

It is plagued by overpopulation. If all the people in the world were crowded into the United States, the population density would be about what it is here.

Nevertheless, international economists and aid specialists contend, Bangladesh has a certain resilience, a fiber as strong as the jute that grows so abundantly here. And they give it a better chance to survive than some other Third World countries, notably in Africa.

Lately, in fact, a trend has developed in Western diplomatic circles to be upbeat about Bangladesh and its 100 million people.

Rich Agricultural Base

“This is not really a poor country,” one Western official here said recently. “We are not talking about Chad or someplace like that. Bangladesh has a rich agricultural base. Here you have a country with resources, and this leads one to the conclusion that there is hope for the future.

“It is not a hopeless case. It will be close, but this place could sustain 150 million people if it needed to, with known technology.”

Yet hope is not a word that is heard often here. An aide to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger once called Bangladesh an “international basket case.” But many Bangladeshis feel that Allah will allow their country to endure, to persist, perhaps even to shine a bit in the coming years.

Now ‘Viable Nation’

“Bangladesh is now a viable nation, with a future ahead of it,” President Hussain Mohammed Ershad said in a recent interview. “We are no longer a basket case.”

In the 17th Century, Bangladesh was a breadbasket. Blessed with soil that may be the richest in Asia, soil replenished constantly by the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, the area then known as Bengal stretched from the Himalayas in the north to the great mangrove forests of the south.

Even under feudal landlords, Bengal flourished, producing far more food than it could use and the world’s finest muslin, as well. It was only after Bengal came under the control of the British East India Co., in 1757, and later the British Empire, that it began to decline.

For competitive trade reasons, the British halted production of fine muslin and silk here, and only recently have these skills been revived. For political reasons, in 1905, the British divided Bengal east and west, with what is now Bangladesh encompassing most of East Bengal.

The 1905 division also had religious significance, and this would keep East Bengal, mostly Muslim, from joining the rest of India when India achieved independence from Britain in 1947. Instead it was linked with West Pakistan, 1,600 miles away across the subcontinent, and became the eastern half of the new Muslim state of Pakistan.

The partition of Pakistan and India devastated Bengal. The rich farm lands of East Bengal were instantly cut off from their market in Calcutta, in the Indian state of West Bengal. Jute producers had no processing mills, because these, too, were in Calcutta. Moreover, the dominant landowning and business class in East Bengal were Hindus who had been forced to flee in the religious bloodbath that followed partition. This left a void at the center of East Bengal’s (then East Pakistan’s) commercial life.

East Pakistan struggled back after partition, only to be economically exploited by the politically and militarily dominant West Pakistanis, mainly from Pakistan’s Punjab. In 1970, the country was struck by a terrible storm and 100-foot tidal waves, with more than half a million people killed and 3 million left homeless.

Independence, Disarray

The following year, there was the war for independence, and with the help of the Indian army, East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh. Again, the economy was in disarray. Again, the commercial class, mostly West Pakistanis, had to be replaced and a new order established.

This was Bangladesh’s bleakest moment. Few then could have disputed the country’s designation as a basket case.

The years since have been characterized by political uncertainty and occasional turmoil. The assassination of President Mujibur Rahman in 1975 was followed by a series of military coups. The current military ruler, Gen. Ershad, took over after a bloodless coup in 1982.

Last week, after promising and canceling elections four times, Ershad held a sparsely attended referendum on his rule, and was given what he called a vote of confidence. Western political observers said afterward that the only real victory was that the voting was accompanied by only limited violence.

Government Stability

Despite the record of assassinations and coups in Bangladesh’s 14 years of independence, many Western analysts now believe that Bangladesh has a stable government.

The tolerant attitude toward Ershad’s moderate martial-law regime reflects what some see as a growing willingness, particularly on the part of the U.S. government, to accept military governments if they can be portrayed as temporary, a way point en route to something like democracy.

“Political instability is a myth in Bangladesh,” a senior Western diplomat here said. “Bangladesh is a reasonably stable country trying to evolve to elected civilian rule. This is not a situation where there is no exit, not one of a group of leaders seeking exclusive power.”

Leaders of the country’s stifled opposition parties strongly disagree. Moudud Ahmed, a Dhaka lawyer, political activist and former deputy prime minister, who has twice been jailed for his political activity, said, “As long as martial law continues, we will not be able to make much headway in economic progress.”

Culturally Homogenous

However, even Ahmed, who is one of the most caustic critics of the Ershad regime, admits that things could be much worse.

“Of course there are military regimes that are more repressive than this one,” Ahmed said, “particularly if you look at it in the context of other Third World countries. But then he (Ershad) cannot be any other way. He cannot use his soldiers against the people.”

(In all South Asia, Bangladesh is the most culturally homogenous country. Nearly everyone speaks Bengali, 90% are Muslim, and the relatively small army of 100,000 reflects the same ethnic-religious pattern as the general populace.)

Ahmed, a leader in the Bangladesh National Party founded by President Ziaur Rahman (who was assassinated in May, 1981) cited what he said are several positive trends that contribute to the cautious optimism found here.

Agricultural production, despite a cycle of flood and drought, is up 20%, and “because of the increased agricultural production, all the mouths are being fed,” he said.

Natural Gas Abundant

Bangladesh is not known to have any crude oil, but it does have large reserves of natural gas (estimated at 47 billion cubic feet), some of which it is using to make fertilizer.

According to Ershad, the high point in the economy is the $400 million in foreign reserves, most of which has been supplied by Bangladeshi workers who send money home from Arab states in the Persian Gulf.

Nonetheless, the World Bank is expected to issue a report soon that will be critical of Bangladesh’s foreign debt.

“Bangladesh is a heavy user of the ‘soft loan window’ at the Asian Development Bank,” an economist in Dhaka said. “The country’s development budget is 80% funded by donor countries, about $1.8 billion a year.”

When severe floods hit last summer--large sections of the country were waist-deep in water--the government was forced to use almost a third of its foreign currency reserves to buy 3 million tons of grain to feed its people.

‘A Terrible Flood’

K.M. Hossain, joint secretary for relief in the Ministry of Food, said: “It was a terrible flood. Of our 66,000 villages, more than 60,000 were affected.”

Drought and flood, typhoon and tidal wave--all are as much a part of the terrain here as jackfruit and the palm tree. Yet, most of the government’s positive projections are based on good weather the country seldom sees.

“What they call normal weather is actually ideal weather,” a Western foreign aid specialist said.

Beneath all the other problems lies that of population growth. Bangladesh has crammed its 100 million people into an area the size of Wisconsin. And at the present rate of growth, that population figure will double in 27 years.

Birth Control Pushed

Family planning experts from the United States, which runs its largest program here, report some positive trends. The goal is zero growth--the present growth rate is 2.6%--and there is an intensive campaign, with billboards advertising condoms and radio spots extolling the virtues of the pill.

The results have been impressive, but the effort may be too little, too late.

“If we dropped to zero population growth right now,” an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development said, “nothing would change for 16 years because of all the children already in the system.”

Still, that there is any optimism at all in this country is something of a miracle.

The intensity of that optimism varies with one’s perspective. To the businessman in the luxurious Sonargaon Hotel, with its imported New Zealand beef and daily room rates that rival the yearly income of Bangladeshis, the picture seems a little rosier than it does to a woman hunched on the ground making gravel with a Stone Age tool.

Bangladesh is in a race with time, and “there is little margin for error,” the economist said.