Bangladesh is a small developing country inhabited by a population of 174,638,449 (Worldometre January 3, 2025). During the last one and a half decades, the economy of the country has been growing at an annual rate of over six percentage points. The country’s GDP growth rate reached over seven percentage points during the last several years (Bangladesh Economic Review 2017).
But for the last three years, the pace has been on the decline again, and its figures are 5.82% (2023), 5.42% (2024), and in the current new year it has come down to 5.2% (FY2025), respectively. For this reason, the ongoing development process of the country, however, has failed to generate outcomes that are compatible with the desires of an equitable and democratic society.
Admittedly, the existing system has created a pernicious cycle permeated by abuse and misuse of power and public institutions, along with serious violations of people’s rights that perpetuate the various forms of inequality in subtle and not-so-obvious ways. This realization necessitates a multidimensional perspective to explore the overlooked aspects of inequality and its underlying processes for a more nuanced and context-specific understanding in the case of Bangladesh.
Contemporary research is very important in finding the causes of social inequality and discrimination and determining the right way to overcome them.
Historically, literature on inequality concentrated on the inequality in income and wealth in cross-sectional studies. However, new works of literature are assessing inequality in upward social mobility or inequality in intergenerational social mobility. Inequality in intergenerational social mobility emits from the lack of access to basic opportunities like education, water, electricity, or healthcare.
Inequality in an outcome such as inequality in income and wealth may or may not be a fault of the person, as many argue. Because inequality exists in accessing the basic needs, it precludes a part of the population from upward social mobility. So, the richest people of the society always remain rich, and the poorest group remains in poor condition no matter how much they try.
There are many debates among theorists globally about the functioning of discrimination. From these emerge new dimensions of inequality, inequality of opportunity, and aspects of intergenerational mobility. Professor Amartya Sen's approach to affordability, which essentially analyzes poverty, is used to explore levels of inequality that extend beyond narrow income-based measures. In addition, research was also done to show how education helps to perpetuate inequality, contrary to the popular belief that education reduces inequality.
Moreover, in addition to exploring the multidimensional aspects of inequality, rights-based approaches to inequality globally have attracted much attention in recent years that go beyond traditional measures of inequality based on income or wealth. But it is evident that such studies and their results are not given such importance in our country. As a result, there is relatively little discussion of how access to justice should be focused in this context in Bangladesh and how it can help create a positive attitude and environment to address various forms of discrimination.
Some issues are considered to be of major concern due to involvement in development activities, viz, how institutions and power create new forms of discrimination and perpetuate existing inequalities in the society. Generally, institutions are formal rules and regulations along with informal norms and conventions that constrain people's behaviors or actions and expectations. It is well established that institutions matter for development or lack thereof. Malfunctioning institutions, ie, a corrupted legal system or low-performing schools in poor neighborhoods, tend to create conditions for systematic discrimination for peoples of disadvantaged backgrounds with a lack of income, socially marginalized status, remote and rural locations, politically suppressed identities, and similar characterizations.
For example, justice may not be served or may be delayed for low-income or politically less-powerful peoples since the legal and judicial systems often do not treat all citizens equally and thus give rise to discriminatory practices and unequal outcomes.
Inextricably linked to institutionalized inequality is the dynamics of power -- political power, to be more specific. Inequality is created through power by influencing policies, which can be called policy-driven inequality. Unequal power relations, in all their forms, contribute to widening inequalities and perpetuating injustice in societies.
Undue privileges to the powerful few and political patronage to those who are well connected to the ruling party are definitely rampant in fragile democracies in many developing countries like Bangladesh. As a result of unchecked power and lack of accountability of both public institutions and private corporations, there are certain select groups that always reap the benefits at the expense of the masses.
The current situation of the financial sector in Bangladesh aptly illustrates this argument, where access to bank loans is highly politicized, resulting in an excessive rate of defaults and a lack of funds for more productive investments necessary for creating an egalitarian society.
Considerable inequity exists in the financial sector, which has to do with power and political settlement. While government agencies responsible for the provisioning of public services deviate from their mandated roles due to corruption or political/personal gains of the officials, it is the poorest majority and politically less powerful who suffer.
This considered, it is time to discuss a number of cases to explain how institutions and politics and how political actors’ seizing of state power and control over the distribution of critical resources condition and influence unequal outcomes in contemporary Bangladesh.
The motto of the July-August revolution of the students and mass people in the past year was to eliminate the existing inequality in the society. To that end, the current interim government also believes that Bangladesh is graduating to a middle-income country from a least developed country with a desire to become a high-income country by 2041. They too want to take strong steps to advance the country's economic growth at a continuous pace.
Recommendations:
To help address the issue of inequality in Bangladesh, the following recommendations are being proposed based on the practical findings:
To reduce inequality, policies should be universal in principle, paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized people.
Improving participation, transparency, and inclusion in policy-making in the mentioned areas of inequality.
The respective department of the government must take immediate policy interventions and programmatic measures that prevent elites from capturing the policy and governance space and redistribute resources to the people and protect the lives of the common people.
Governments must ensure full employment with at least minimum wages for the workforce. Attempts should be made to formalize the informal sector. End precarious contractual employment with discriminatory wages and benefits.
Implement access to basic services, viz, electricity, water, sanitation, health and education, housing, and affordable transport.
Ensure social protection for all. Implement social security policies that take care of the needs of the population. Increase transparency regarding social security systems and rights.
Scrap commercialization and privatization of essential public services like health and education and embrace universal services and benefits that ensure everyone’s rights are met.
Recognize unpaid care work and women’s contribution to the national economy.
The governments of Bangladesh must make immediate efforts to revisit their tax regime and make it progressive in order to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio, mobilize tax revenue through progressive direct taxes, and reduce the burden of indirect taxes.
Strictly implement policies to ensure gender equality and strengthen enforcement and monitoring of it. Special efforts must be made to educate girls and improve equity and quality of education at all levels.
Young people, especially young women, should be able to access services to build their skills and participate in the decision-making process.
People’s campaigns, grassroots organizations, and mass-based organizations in the country and neighboring countries have to commit themselves to taking a firm step on strengthening the struggle for challenging inequality and have to continue engagement with governments and people's movements for creating a fair and just economic order at national, regional, and global levels.
Aminul Arifeen, Senior Researcher, and Monjur Rashid, Social Analyst, Social Protection of Bangladesh and Beyond.
