The Hindu Business Line : Education — a new dimension to India-Bangladesh relations

The emergence of Bangladesh as a free nation in 1971 was considered a matter of pride for its people as well as for India. But despite exciting prospects, that country has been facing enormous challenges both at home and in relations with its neighbours.

While a combination of wrong policies and self-serving policymakers practically ruined the immense prospects of the country, its manufacturing sector did come up with some significant performance over the last decade. But the full potential is yet to be reached and the performance-potential gap is largely due to partisan politics.

The immense potential of its manufacturing sector that can attract foreign investments — also explained by its demographic dividends — lies unexploited partly due to wrong education policies.

Pragmatic policies needed

India sees the Bangladesh relationship with myopic eyes. Its most serious concern has been the security threat and the cross-border tensions. But, then, certain countries have also been working hard to exploit the situation. "Anti-Indian" propaganda has found takers in Bangladesh. There have been no effective policy response from India.

Take the case of manpower. Training may have an immediate impact in improving the relationship. There is a strong link between investments in human capital and economic growth. The need to improve the quality of human resource is particularly important for Bangladesh, given the key role talent plays in attracting foreign direct investment.

Human capital

Though the developing nations account for a steadily rising share of world manufacturing (partly driven by lower wages and costs), competitive advantage based on low wages is inherently a transitory phenomenon; sooner or later, countries such as Bangladesh will face the need to improve their skillsets as other lower-cost producers emerge (for example, in garments).

Many argue about the importance of the level of education in a country in relation to the performance required to integrate entrants to the labour force. A well-educated work force, according to them, is the key determinant of development in the emerging economies; this is particularly true for Bangladesh. According to them, the low productivity levels are partly explained by ineffective education. A large part of the population remains at the highest risk of low academic achievement.

Lack of education

The fact that the poor have little access to good schooling in Bangladesh highlights the need to address educational issues. There is indeed a strong connection between the key human development achievements, in the form of basic education and vocational training, and the investments made on them by the developing economies. Studies have found that the real expenditure on education and health has fallen in many countries over the past decade. As a consequence, physical structures have deteriorated, equipment is inadequate, and teaching aids are non-existent in most schools in developing economies. This is also true of Bangladesh.

Changing labour market

Though different types of public and private training programmes in Bangladesh try to address the issues of low skills and high unemployment rates among youth, ineffective training schemes impede the emergence of an effective labour market.

This is due to limited labour market information systems and weak dialogue between public educational institutions and employers. Government programmes, in particular, have found it difficult to respond to the changing needs of the labour market, or provide the latest equipment because of bureaucratic and fiscal pressures.

Technical training

The non-development of BPOs and call-centres may be cited in this respect. In recent time, tens of thousands of jobs are being transferred to India and China from developed economies.

Unfortunately, Bangladesh has not been able to take advantage of this phenomenon, because it has few computer-literate English-speaking graduates.

India can help Bangladesh in many ways such as by teaching its people English language skills, and raising the number of technical and skilled people.

There is a dearth of vocational institutes that can train people in, say, repairing cell-phones and scooters.

India's technical institutions can workat different levels of the education system (universities, polytechnics and schools) and skill-development institutions (ITI and other industry-specific training institutes) to ensure the supply of workers with the desired level of skills for industry requirements.

They can even think of building independent institutions of this type. Even the private sector may find it beneficial to expand operations in Bangladesh and impart education and training in various fields such as software, media and financial services.

Scholarships offer scope

The initiative shown by a top Indian industry group in proposing a series of massive investments may only be a precursor to many more similar commercial ventures. India can even offer scholarships (say, 100 every year) to Bangladeshi scholars to pursue post-graduate studies and research at elite Indian academic institutions.

The above may be considered as powerful ingredients to develop a strong long-term relationship.

Needless to mention that prevalence of educated youth with low level of employability may create more problems for both India and Bangladesh.

In fact, these segments are being used to propagate anti-Indian sentiments by some political parties in Bangladesh.

Pragmatic approach

The pragmatic approach of India's relations with Myanmar is well known. A healthy multi-dimensional relationship with all its neighbours will be in the long-term interest of India.

(The authors are Professors at International Management Institute, New Delhi.)

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