As Bangladesh turns 50, the secret to its progress: Educate girls

Commentary

Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon was silent about the genocide of unarmed Bengali people at the hands of the Pakistani army. In the end, Bangladesh declared its independence. But the country was born into flood and famine, corruption and coups. Echoing another’s comment, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s security adviser, called the country a “basket case.”

The situation was dire for decades. Twenty years ago, a pregnant woman from my village, struggling to reach the hospital, died in the middle of the journey because there were no vehicles or paved roads.

Today, it takes me only two minutes to get in an auto rickshaw and go to the nearby town from that same village. Apart from paved roads and motorized auto vans, we now have electricity and satellite connections. Residents can access the internet, schoolchildren have smartphones for taking online classes, and the community has a health care center right here in the village. 

Brushing aside all the odds and criticism, Bangladesh has emerged as an economic power in South Asia. Education has brought blessings to hundreds of thousands of people here. An emphasis on girls’ education has played an especially vital role.

As in developing countries around the world, so in Bangladesh, girls’ education has had a ripple effect, improving families, communities, and national economies.

Shahana, who completed 10th grade, works in a garment factory. Her father is ill and unable to work much, so she is helping her family. In addition to sending money home, she’s building a brick house and plans to buy a piece of farmland in her village.

A reliable lever of progress

Bangladesh is not alone in reaping the rewards of educating girls, especially in secondary school (grades 6-12). Among the universal benefits, UNICEF notes lower child marriage and maternal mortality rates, healthier children, and “dramatically” increased lifetime earnings.

Measuring lost potential, the World Bank estimates that the “limited educational opportunities for girls and barriers to completing 12 years of education cost countries between [U.S.]$15 trillion and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings.”

On average, among the world’s least developed countries, the number of years girls spend in school has tripled over the last half-century, from 2.8 years in 1970 to 8.9 in 2017. The region making the most progress is South Asia, where girls went from spending 3.8 years in school to 12. Bangladesh is a big contributor to that progress.

In 1994, the country introduced the Female Secondary Stipend and Assistance Program to boost girls’ school attendance in rural areas. To receive the stipend and tuition subsidy, which supports more than 2 million girls a year, recipients must meet attendance and performance requirements and cannot marry before they finish secondary school. With the help of FSSAP, more girls than boys are now enrolled in secondary school. A next step is to increase girls’ grade-12 completion rate – which was only 59% in 2017 – so that higher education becomes an option for more of them.

“I want to go to Canada for my master’s degree,” Jhorna told me recently. (Both Shahana and Jhorna asked that their last names not be used for cultural reasons.) I taught Jhorna when she was in 10th grade. Now, she is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English at Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur, with hopes of later studying abroad. There are thousands of other Jhornas, eager to receive higher education from foreign universities and then get respected work positions back home.

Other signs of advancement

Bangladesh’s economy also shows a strong upward trajectory. Per capita gross domestic product increased from $293 in 1991 to $1,968 in 2020, surpassing both India’s and Pakistan’s, according to World Bank data. That increase in GDP has significantly decreased the number of people living in poverty (based on the international poverty line), from 43.5% in 1991 to 18% in 2020.

That sharp decline in the poverty rate helped Bangladesh become a “lower middle-income” country in 2015, up from a “low-income” one. And the United Nations announced last month that Bangladesh will graduate from being a “least developed” country to a “developing” one in 2026.

I see evidence of that progress in my family and community. My father sold his labor for 10 hours a day, returning home with only 25 taka, which was less than 40 cents. Today, my brother sells the same amount of labor for about 500 taka, which is more than $5.

I know personally about a dozen families in northern Bangladesh who now have small farms and fisheries after receiving one of the millions of microcredit loans that Grameen Bank, a nongovernmental organization, has made to help lift people out of poverty.

“I have two cows now,” Rahim Badsha told me on an afternoon walk. Mr. Badsha is a peasant who once could not afford food for his family even twice a day. Now one of his cows is milking, after giving birth to a pretty little calf.

Bangladesh has plenty of work ahead to provide opportunity to people at all levels of society, but the country has made great progress in its 50 years of independence. We are not a basket case. We have much to celebrate on Dec. 16, Victory Day.

Rezaul Karim Reza is a substitute English teacher in Bangladesh and a freelance writer.