Let this day remind us of our ambitions
Today, as we mark our 51st year as a sovereign nation, we celebrate our triumph over the Pakistani occupation forces and the end of the genocide of 1971, and we pay tribute to the brave people whose sacrifices led to this glorious day. With a deep sense of gratitude, we also remember the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the four national leaders in steering us towards this chapter in our history.
There is no better occasion to examine what we have done with our hard-earned independence than the Victory Day. In terms of establishing ourselves as a sovereign nation, with a functional government and all the institutions of a modern state, we have been quite successful. In the last 51 years, Bangladesh has become an important player in regional affairs and established itself as a climate leader, bringing the voices of climate-vulnerable nations to the international stage. However, in terms of certain economic, social and human development indicators, we must acknowledge that our victory has remained incomplete.
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Our economic indicators are perhaps where we have fared best comparatively. Despite the global shock of the pandemic, Bangladesh displayed great resilience and managed to recover faster than many other more developed countries. The World Bank's GDP growth forecast, while it has been revised downwards, is still 6.1 percent for the current fiscal year, and we continue to be on track for graduation from the LDC status.
But these achievements are diluted by how unequally their fruits have been distributed. Although so much of our success is built on the labour of workers in export-oriented industries and the remittances of migrant workers, the gap between the rich and poor continues to rise. According to the World Inequality Report 2022, just one percent of Bangladesh's population held 16.3 percent of total national income in 2021, and in recent months, media reports have exposed how the super-rich are becoming even richer through corruption, money laundering and loan defaults, even as the most marginalised households struggle with a crippling cost-of-living crisis.
We see the same inequality pervading almost every social indicator, from sanitation and housing to education and healthcare – although, in the latter, we have made considerable progress in terms of nutrition, maternal and child mortality, etc. However, it is in education where our greatest frustration lies, since we have turned it into a sector that values quantity over quality. For years, experts have been warning how our rote memorisation and exam-based system is failing to teach students real skills even as the number of GPAs has risen. Learning loss from the pandemic has only made things worse.
As we go forward into the next half-century of a liberated Bangladesh, we must focus on further strengthening our achievements, and look especially to the development of the education sector, since on it rests our future. We must vow to make quality education our first priority, so that our next generations, who will take the spirit of '71 forward, can turn Bangladesh into the country we dreamt of during the Liberation War.
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