It is no big secret that the youth of a country tend to have something to do with driving it forward. Unencumbered by the ways of their parents and grandparents, young people not only have the fresh ideas needed to revitalise a country, they are also the most physically capable members of the workforce.
Imagine a country without a young population – progress would come to a halt in a stagnating, ultra-conservative business culture. Luckily, certain demographic realities threaten change. Even a country like Saudi Arabia, known for being oppressively traditional, backwards even, is bracing itself for change – about three quarters of its population is under the age of 30, and these young people are keen to open up the kingdom to the modern world.
Bangladesh is now at an interesting time in its history, demographically speaking. Even though our rear-view (43 years) is not as long as that of most countries, there is much in it to foster pessimism. Our rampant population growth has adversely affected every aspect of our development, taken a toll on public health, spurred desperate migration, and turned Dhaka city into one of the most unliveable cities on God’s green Earth. Let’s face it – Bangladesh has more problems than we can possibly count.
But in the midst of innumerable problems, perhaps there is some hope. Bangladesh, like Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, stands on the verge of experiencing a demographic dividend. The statistics are mindboggling. Geographically, Bangladesh ranks 94th in the world in terms of size – we’re smaller than Tunisia and just a little bit bigger than Nepal.
But with a population of about 160 million (the number varies depending on who you ask) we’re the world’s number eight. We have more mouths to feed than Russia. Is there a good side to all of this? Could some of those teeming millions contribute in turning Bangladesh into a force to be reckoned with in the global arena in the near future?
The theoretical basis behind expecting a demographic dividend from Bangladesh is sound. The idea is that we will experience a great boost in our growth and productivity as we experience a drop in our infant mortality rate and birth rate. Right after independence, our birth rate was over 6 babies per woman, a rate which has dropped to 2.2 babies in the present day. This should mean a huge chunk of our population, now all grown up, is ready, willing, and able to work, but has fewer children to support. Lots of people working and a low number of dependents ought to be the road to prosperity.
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A poor country can work its way out of the dumps. It has been done before. The growth in East Asian economies in the 90s has been described as nothing short of a miracle by some reports. However, if we don’t use our chance wisely, there is every possibility that once again we will mess it up.
We need to get our heads straight and start thinking in new ways if we want to emerge as the sort of global player the world’s eighth largest nation should be. There is a need for turning away from the dusty ideologies of the past which held back our business potential while we found a hollow sense of pride in lofty nationalistic rhetoric.
Business on the world stage is a game that Bangladesh needs to play wisely. We must realise that free trade is a good thing. Not just goods and services, but knowledge and technologies must flow across our borders. The fresh and sometimes dangerous ideas of young people must be respected. It is their restless minds that will build the infrastructure to contain the future.
One look at the number of Bangladeshis who have achieved great things in tech or creative fields abroad shows that there is no shortage of good brains in the country, even within our borders. The wrong policies, policies based on a closed-up, antediluvian way of thinking, will fail to do justice to their bright ideas, and simply breed a generation of angry and resentful young people who want nothing more than to simply migrate out of Bangladesh and never come back.
Our system needs to be able to absorb their ideas. We need to encourage and embrace new models, and try things a bit differently from how we tried them yesterday. If we fail our youngsters, demographic dividend will remain just another meaningless term in economics tomes, and we will continue hurling towards mass destruction.
