Celebrating Fulbright Program on the golden jubilee of US-Bangla partnership

Recently, Bangladesh and the United States have celebrated half a century of their multifaceted partnership. It would be quite opportune to point out that the Fulbright Program, the flagship academic exchange program of the US government, played a significant role in providing critical substance to this partnership. It has boosted technical knowledge and intercultural skills of Bangladeshi academics and other professionals, and prepared a couple of generations for nation-building pursuits. Concurrently, a large group of experts from the US have acquired positive changes in their professional interactive approaches and contextual sensitivities by being in Bangladesh under the program.

Over the 75 years of its existence, the Fulbright program granted awards annually to nearly 8,000 students and scholars from 160 countries of the world as well as the US. Since its inception, more than 400,000 Fulbright alumni have studied, taught and conducted research in each other's countries. The program is well-known for merit-based selection and academic prestige; its alumni include 60 Nobel Prize winners, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 40 current or former state or government heads. Over the five decades, hundreds of members of Bangladesh's knowledge system, including this author, have had taken full advantage of this window of opportunity.

My association with the Fulbright program had been a family affair. I was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), Washington, D.C., during 2004-05. In the recent past, CGD has elected me as one of its Non-Resident Fellows. On the other hand, my younger brother, Dr Debadarshi (Dipen) Bhattacharya, a professor of astrophysics who has worked for NASA and is a science-fiction writer, was a Fulbright Fellow from the US at BRAC University during 2006-07.

The program was created in 1946, in the context of the post-World War II, through legislation moved by Senator J William Fulbright. He was an influential statesman and the longest-serving chair (1959-1974) of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate. Democrat Fulbright's visionary leadership on international relations greatly contributed to the creation of the United Nations as well as its peacekeeping initiatives. His efforts and contributions towards enhancing mutual understanding and partnership were recognised through the setting up of the prestigious Fulbright program. He passed away in 1995 at the age of 89.

Senator Fulbright's influence on me predates my participation in the program. I was struck by his basic philosophy, which in many ways defines the ethos of the program, and this is best expressed in his own words: "In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine". On another occasion, he pointed out that "as a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations". What is interesting is that he related the rule of law in international relations to domestic democratic polity. No wonder he asserted that "to be a statesman, you must first get elected".

But, as a civil society person engaged in policy activism, my favourite quote from the writings of Senator Fulbright was the following: "In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith." In the era of diminishing democratic space, particularly for civil society, this saying remains of enduring relevance for our leaders. I wish our leaders took on board the senator's observation that "the citizen who criticises his country is paying it an implied tribute".Indeed, it is time to do a fresh reading of not only the apostles of democratic dispensation, such as Benjamin Franklin, but also of modern thinkers like J William Fulbright, who articulated some of the fundamental values of a rule-based liberal economy and society.  

Over the last 50 years, the US-Bangla partnership has reorganised itself not only on strong footings but has also been energised by new momentum. Over the last two decades, the US has consistently been the number one export destination for Bangladesh. Bangladesh enjoys an annual trade surplus with the US to the tune of USD 5.9 billion (2021). This is despite the fact that since 2013, after the Rana Plaza incident, Bangladesh is not a beneficiary of the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) which provides for preferential market access to export products from developing countries.

The US is among the top three sources of remittance for Bangladesh. Over the last decade, it has also remained as one of the top five sources of foreign direct investment (FDI) for Bangladesh. The net annual official development assistance (ODA) from the US to Bangladesh increased to almost USD 310 million annually by 2020. The partnership reached a new height during the pandemic, which included supply of vaccines by the US and Bangladesh exporting personal protection equipment (PPE) to the American market. The US remains a steadfast supporter of Bangladesh's efforts to host the Rohingya refugees and send them back to Myanmar. It has already provided more than USD 1.7 billion to this end.

The bilateral partnership is evolving within the institutional framework provided by the Bangladesh-US Partnership Dialogue (since 2012), the Bangladesh-US Security Dialogue (since 2012), and the Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement or TICFA (since 2014).

However, the significance of the Fulbright program for US-Bangla partnership needs to be explored within the mentioned dimensions and framework of the bilateral relationship and, more specifically, in the area of education. The US is one of the top four bilateral providers in terms of ODA commitments to education, accounting for about 5 percent of the total commitment. From 2011-2020, the average annual commitment of the US to Bangladesh's education sector was USD 7.17 million.

In the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the contribution of the US is quite pronounced in the delivery of SDG 4 (Quality Education). Specifically, US support had been focused on target 4.4.b, which is to increase the number of scholarships to developing countries for enrolment in higher education. Bangladesh is the fastest-growing country in terms of sending international students to the US. In the 2019-2020 academic year, over 8,800 Bangladeshi students studied in the US, with more than 75 percent of them studying in STEM fields (41 percent in engineering, over 19 percent in mathematics/computer science, and 14 percent in on-the-job training). Moreover, to improve early-grade reading and expand schooling to dropout children, USAID works with the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education of Bangladesh to invest in teacher training and production of teaching and learning materials.

To conclude, the Fulbright program has not only evolved over the five decades as a mainstay of the US-Bangla partnership but has also emerged as a strong lever in Bangladesh's quests, inter alia, to leave the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), mitigate the adverse impact of climate change, and prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya is a non-resident fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), Washington, DC, and distinguished fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Dhaka.