So.  This piece might not make much sense or be all that interesting to people who aren’t relatively into international development in one sense or another, but my recent experience in the small agricultural village in Bangladesh, as well as a number of my experiences in the country in general, have caused me, yet again, to reassess what I think of as “development.”

It is a fashionable debate for sure, pretty much any global development course would start off with a discussion of “what is development?  What is underdevelopment?  What does it mean to be poor?” and the really good ones might even include “What does it mean to be rich/privileged?”  I’ve had a lot of what I like to call leftish instruction.  I don’t like to label things, and I think calling my views or instructors “leftist” is too strong a term, as part of what makes them valuable is the ability to get beyond a certain black and white perspective, and move outside of narrowly defined ideology.  But at the same time, I am constantly aware of the fact that, in pretty much any given setting, Africa, Bangladesh, even much of Latin America, the lens through which I look at the world is quite frequently left of center.  A big part of that is, quite controversially, the idea that a system such as we have in the United States does not represent development, but rather a quite inefficient, greedy system which, while keeping most (but not all) of its citizens from starving to death or freezing in their sleep, is designed to support the local elite and maintain the position of US denizens in general as a sort of exploitative “super elite” global class.  Capitalist development economists such as Paul Collier characterize those who hold this opinion as “a bunch of lefties holding the developing world back from the most successful system of government ever to exist.”  Which may or may not be true for some.  But I am not holding anyone back from anything, cause I don’t run a development agency.  So whatever.

Agree or disagree, that isn’t the point.  The point is that considering all of the “open/radical-mindedness” that a philosophy like that necessitates, it is pretty bizarre that every time I am in a place like Bangladesh or Sub-Saharan Africa I look at things from a perspective of “getting out” and speed-bumps to that system.  I have found myself doing this a few times while I was in Bangladesh.  The one that comes to mind was while someone was showing me their university level math book.  It was a workbook, the kind that, at least in my university, came quite often with foreign language books, where one can complete exercises and such.  But, I guess what was alarming was the fact that most of it, while not stuff I could do now (math was never my strong point) was stuff that I could do in 9th grade.  How can these people compete when even top shelf or near top shelf education here isn’t on the same level as a “typical” university education in North America or Europe?  I just couldn’t help but think that, for someone in a country where there is no such thing as free or subsidized education, whether on a primary, secondary, or university level, who has had to pay the whole way through, this is just really fucked up.  Not that it wouldn’t be bad if it was free.  But at least then it’s free.  Bangladesh is, in some ways, “the new India,” with a flood of lower level outsourcing jobs that used to be in India or China ending up in the much lower wage world of Bangladeshi business as the IT infrastructure around urban areas slowly improves to the point that this is viableized.  As such, even middle class kids have very international ambitions, many want to study overseas, either for graduate or undergraduate work, and some would even be happy to work overseas, at least for a time (though family remains very important in Bangladeshi society).  But integration into the (albeit decreasingly, thanks to efforts in the Middle East, Brazil, and Asia) European/US centered “global marketplace” demands a competitive starting-point if the dreams of these students and young people are to come true.

Whether they should come true, that is, whether these dreams are viable, sustainable, or good for a society in the long run, is another discussion, but I am more than a little bit uncomfortable with anyone in the West, who has grown up with this privilege and then spent time, even if it is years, in the “under-developed” world, claiming the right to decide (as opposed to speculate about) what is good or bad for other people.

Bangladesh is on the move.  Despite some of the most severe corruption problems in the world, it is still incomparably more stable than cultural and geographical neighbors Pakistan (of which Bangladesh was once a part, let’s not forget) and Burma (currently renamed Myanmar by the ruling military Junta).  Modernity, in the form of transport and business, is creeping in, which isn’t surprising, considering that Bangladesh has inherited many of the infrastructural advantages that have helped India to make it big, like a relatively comprehensive railroad system, in spite of the government’s best efforts.  But it seems like it will be a long time before the people of Bangladesh are really ready to integrate into the business centers of the world, be they Dubai, Frankfurt, New York, or Sao Paulo.

Whether that day of parity will be seen as a good or a bad thing further down the road is anyone’s guess.

Andrew