A decade ago, Transparency International declared that -- along with Chad -- Bangladesh was the most perceivably corrupt nation on the planet. Years have gone by and Bangladesh has slowly moved down in these rankings.
This is partially because we've improved, but there is unfortunately some credit due to the combination of a change in methodology and the existence of more hellish nations. Do we know what a good position is for us on that list? Do we know what “good” looks like?
Corruption in Bangladesh was a topic I was questioned about frequently during my university years, and unknowingly channelling Louis Farrakhan during his interview with Mike Wallace, my response always was: “We’re a young country,” still learning and finding ourselves. With a population of over 150 million, we can be forgiven for having a bit of an existential crisis, right?
In the UK, Bangladesh, or rather, Bangladeshis, have an image problem. The mayor of Tower Hamlets, a Bangladeshi-majority constituency, hails from back home and he is consistently accused of corruption and “cronyism.”
There are Bangladeshis settled in mainland Europe who have engineered their families to maximise the receipt of British state benefits, when they moved here in droves. Naturally, foreign benefit thieves are looked down upon with more venom.
This certainly isn’t on the same scale as joking about how all the mediocre “Indian” restaurants are owned by us, but even that says something. I am more than happy to defend any inadequacies and missteps back home, but when our poorer behaviours are exported wholesale for the world to see, it is embarrassing.
On the matter of international trade, what have we imported from abroad, as far as culture is concerned? Nothing particularly good. Once, I met a banker back home who boasted about how they had managed to poach a Bangladeshi expatriate with years of experience at a Western investment bank. He exclaimed: “He’s really showing us how things are done!” I'm pretty sure he is ably showing us how rich people can become even richer without a care for the greater good. And don’t we already have enough of those?
Why haven’t we yet imported the concept of a secular welfare state, with an emphasis on appropriate levels of access to basic amenities like healthcare and housing aid? The ability to actually rely on our judicial system? The ability to look to the law when the grubby middlemen starts shuffling in?
I understand that such things aren't particularly exciting and provide little in the way of hedonistic satisfaction, but they can bring stability and harmony to a modern country.
And it’s not like Western nations have stumbled upon these answers. This is the result of hundreds of years of learning, failing, and finding themselves. Most importantly, such knowledge is there for our taking but we need to reach out for it with determination, pushing past the smoke and glamour.
Even if we look more provincially, there are peer nations which have advanced dramatically, leaving in their wake, lessons more applicable and relevant to our situation.
And yet, we are left clutching red herrings from the West. Potentially misleading sources for motivation on how to progress our nation. It’s about time we decided what good looks like for us.
You see, good is not about the number of clubs we have for people to boast about how many nights they’ve spent at them. Good is not about declaring how many more people can now travel abroad for their holidays. And good certainly is not about the number of international chain restaurants setting up to take advantage of our disposable income.
We have so much going for us. We have access to knowledge and experts that those in the not-so-distant past would envy. We have a smart, motivated, youthful population who want to wield it, but are at loggerheads with a confused, frightened old guard who are satisfied with inertia. We are trying our best to build a resilient national infrastructure to help us move forward. So what does good look like for us, as we hurtle towards the future?
That's for us to discover, to define and to deliver. We will make mistakes and we will fail. And like all the great nations before us, we will learn to get up and keep moving. And we will show the world, on our own terms, that we know what good looks like. Here’s to Bangladesh as it approaches its 44th anniversary. Here’s to Bangladesh eternal.