Bangladesh’s economic progress has been remarkable lately, and is the result of correct policy-making and the hard work of each and every citizen who calls this nation home.
But this progress was not achieved overnight: We have gone from being a nation on the throes of a major famine to a country on the verge of prosperity.
Needless to say, we have come far.
However, little of that progress can be seen reflected in the state those living in the lowest levels of poverty; while a new UNDP report does show that considerable progress has been made on that front, there is still a lot that we have to do to eliminate poverty in the country.
According to the report -- the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2019 -- poverty in both the rural and urban areas in Bangladesh has decreased at a steady pace.
The MPI is a tool that specifically measures the progress of SDG-1, which seeks to end all form of poverty globally; it compares poverty and observes changes based on 10 indicators including health, education, quality of work, and standard of living.
While it is good to know that all the work our nation has put into achieving the SDGs (as we did with the MDGs in the past) is yielding results, chasing goals will not end our nation’s problems with poverty.
One of the problems we have to address is that many of our approaches to dealing with poverty have been largely based on charity as opposed to rights and governance. Each and every individual under the poverty line is a citizen of this country, and thus deserves the same rights as anyone else.
It is good to know that we are on our way to meeting the SDGs, but that alone will not help the poor.