Our political elite set to miss the bus
Sadeq Khan
In the seventeenth century, European maritime powers fought naval battles in the Bay of Bengal for dominance and access to Suba Bangla, the richest province of Mughal India turned virtually independent nazamat tributary under the Nawabs of Murshidabad. The riches of these parts came not from gems and precious stones or metals, but from abundant agro-industrial production of tradable commodities, notably rice, milk, and cotton or silk muslin.
The foundation of such domestic production capacity was laid by three centuries, 13th to 16th, of deltaic expansion of settlement and cultivation under Sufi leadership through the independent Bengal Sultanate period and the succeeding Bhuiyans until Akbar’s conquest. After the British conquest in the eighteenth century, through progressively impoverished by colonial exploitation, Bengal continued to be the richest hub of production, trade and industry in South Asia.
Focus on Bay of Bengal trade
After decolonisation and during the Cold War, Bay of Bengal trade was left far behind by shift of financial and political power towards the other side of the Indian Ocean close to the strategic sea-routes extending from the oil-hub of Arabian sea to the East Asian focus of growth. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, as USA, the sole superpower leading the globalisation process and the attrition of global war on terror began to come to terms with the realities of multipolarity of new world order.
Under the impetus of Asian growth and between two sub-regions of fast growth, eastern South Asia and western China plus north western belt of ASEAN, Bay of Bengal trade is coming into focus again, and so is independent Bangladesh, resource-poor but with abundance of manpower, at the apex of the Bay and along the footsteps of the Himalayas. American Professor Gus Papanek noted in a speech in Dhaka in 2010 that: “Bangladesh has a unique opportunity within the next year and a half or two years because it has the possibility of taking over part of the world market that China is going to abandon.”
Former World Bank Chief Economist, Justin Li-fu Lin noted in several articles and speeches that “industrial upgrading has increased wages and is causing China to graduate from labour-intensive to more capital and technology-intensive industries. These industries will shed labour and create huge opportunities for lower wage countries to start a phase of labour-intensive industrialisation. This process, called the Leading Dragon Phenomenon, offers an unprecedented opportunity to … (developing countries) … where the industrial sector is underdeveloped and investment capital and entrepreneurial skills are leading constraints to manufacturing.”
Roadmap for APEC
Analyst Ifty Islam explained in an article published in Dhaka Tribune on 10 December, 2014 that the China relocation trade will not be driven by China alone. Indeed, counter-intuitively, China may play a lesser role than countries such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The reason for this is that companies from these three countries, and to a lesser extent those from the US and EU, have established lower cost factories in China in the past two decades. Their re-appraisal of the attractiveness of those destinations as a result of higher wages will drive both the movement of existing facilities from China as well as the re-direction of future FDI.
China itself under the leadership of President Xi Jinping is vigorously pursuing a global connectivity and inclusive growth objective for its “peaceful rise”, under its “One Belt and One Road” formula to rebuild a network of ancient Silk routes and the Maritime Silk Road through Pacific and Indian Ocean trade routes and connecting the Bay of Bengal.
In the last Asia-Pacific Economic Summit in Beijing on 10 November, 2014, Asia-Pacific Leaders “approved the roadmap for APEC to promote and realize the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific,” which was promised to be kept open for the more exclusive (and secretive in terms) Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) under process led by USA along with eleven other select countries of Australasia, South America, Southeast Asia and East Asia, to join in when the latter is ready.
Bangladesh has been brought under the orbit of the “One Belt and One Road” vision by Yunnan China’s perseverance in pursuing since 1999 the revival of the ancient Southern Silk Road by way of sub-regional connectivity and Trade Cooperation between China, Myanmar, India and Bangladesh.
BCIM-EC agreement by four
It has now got fruition in the signing of the BCIM-EC agreement by all the four governments. Japan is also focusing attention on the Bay of Bengal region by its concept and overseas aid allocation for its Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt or “The Big-B” initiative. For Bangladesh, the most significant development design Japan’s Prime Minister Abe has offered in May 2014, along with other possible projects and $5 billion loan commitment over the years, is the Chittagong-Cox’s Bazar Area Development Comprehensive Support under Private-Public Partnership (PPP) to materialise an energy hub concept and a Further “Deep Sea Port Study in Matarbari Expansion and Sonadia Environment, around the proposed Coal Transhipment Terminal at Matarbari, connectivity of which could fit into the Maritime Silk Road initiative led by China.
Likewise in New Delhi, a Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting on Sub-Regional Cooperation between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) agreed on the need for power trade and inter-grid connectivity between the four countries. It further agreed for joint efforts to explore harnessing of water resources including hydropower and also power from other sources available in the sub-region. It was also agreed to exchange lists of potential future hydropower and power projects to be undertaken jointly involving at least three countries on equitable basis, Bangladesh qualifying as a common factor.
Then on 10 March, 2015 at the “building Pan-Asian Connectivity Conference” in Kolkata, India, Neil Kromash, deputy director, Office of South Asian Regional Affairs, US State Department pointed out: “Close to Kolkata, Bangladesh – the world’s seventh most populous country – is sometimes overlooked in the discussion about regional connectivity but it shouldn’t be. Rich in natural resources and strategically situated at the intersection of China, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean, Bangladesh enjoys advantageous geography that makes it an ideal hub for connectivity. Despite ongoing political turmoil there, we continue to seek areas where we can strengthen our bilateral relationship with Bangladesh, and regional economic cooperation remains high on the list.”
Are we ready?
But in the 44 years of independence, despite the fruits of hard labour, mute suffering, adaptability and enterprise of our common fold, have our privileged leadership in the driving seat of the nation-state at all prepared the country grounds for taking advantage of such strategic and economic opportunities as charted above? No. Under the hangover of internally and externally fomented twentieth century prejudices and rivalries, our people have been tricked and coerced to allow the privileged few of the elite class to abandon the rule of law and revert to the regimentation of affectively a one-party authoritarian rule, a police state in which the common man has no security of life, the law-enforcers freely indulge in extortion, trigger-happiness and contract-killings, and power mania of the entrenched coterie in government has led to continuous transport blockade of the opposition parties rendering the idea of transnational connectivity redundant.
Examples of the state of disorder and criminality of the corrupt administration and political mafia are aplenty, the abduction of seven by RAB men in Narayanganj, the abduction and killing of a nine year old boy for ransom by police and ruling party cleric in Sylhet, and the latest alleged abduction by unknown men passing as Detective Branch police officers of Salahuddin Ahmed, BNP Joint Secretary General and Spokesman the agitating 20-party alliance. One wonders of the political elite is set to miss the bus of Bay of Bengal “node and hub” prospects for Bangladesh.
Source: Weekly Holiday