Bangladesh in The Eyes of Three Generations

Bangladesh in the eyes of three generations
--Ziauddin Choudhury
The three generations I am about to talk about are set apart by a gap of more than
fifty years, from the youngest to the oldest. The youngest just turned thirty, the
oldest eighty-six, and the one in the middle is in his forties. They all belong to
Bangladesh, the youngest was born and raised abroad, the mid forties man was
born and raised in Bangladesh but educated abroad, and the oldest had spent his
entire life in Bangladesh and its earlier incarnation. I met them all during the course
of my most recent trip to Bangladesh; all of the meetings were accidental.
The young man I met was on my way to Bangladesh; he had just returned after a
month of stay there. The man in his forties I met was when he was returning to the
US after a two-week professional visit there. The man in his eighties I met on my
way to the US in the air plane. The three had one thing in common, a vision of
Bangladesh that is uncommon among most Bangladeshis I had met during my visit
to the country. A vision that is built upon their interaction with other Bangladeshis, a
vision based on their own assessment of the potential of the country and its people,
a vision of pragmatism and not on fanciful expectation or negative judgment.
The young man I met had left his lucrative job in the US with a reputed Global firm
to join a group of other young men like him who want to help set up venture
companies in developing countries that draw on human resources of the countries.
The young man had little exposure to Bangladesh as an adult, as he had mostly
spent his childhood and early adulthood in the US. He had expected substantial
obstacles particularly in gathering skilled human resources that were suitable to his
line of work. What surprised him most was not only he found the resources that he
was looking for, he found some of the young people he dealt with were highly
proficient in skills that were the cutting edge of information technology and
applications. He and his group are so satisfied with his new found resources that he
wanted to start his venture there without delay. When I queried him if he and his
group were not a bit hasty in getting involved in an economy that has yet to take
off, his answer was that the economy had already taken off. The young men he
would deal with are the future of Bangladesh, and they are proving to be no less
equipped with technology and technical knowledge than other neighboring
countries. On top, these people are not burdened by the baggage of their parents
who look to the past; they look to the future.
The second person is an educationist by profession, who taught in a renowned US
university, and then set up his own institution of online education. His path
breaking technology, web based learning, has been adopted by many universities in
the world and he has authored a number of text books and how-to manuals to teach
web based or e-learning to people all over the world. Some of his books have been
translated in several languages. Despite his global reputation as an expert on e-
learning, and his ability to draw a substantial number of following in many

countries, one deep passion of this innovator is his country Bangladesh and his
desire to make e-learning a day to day phenomenon for the people of the country
for both formal and non-formal education. He went to Bangladesh recently to
spread his passion and his tools to the Universities in Bangladesh. He told me after
years of endeavor his efforts have been received well and he is confident e-learning
for education would be a tool for every common man in the country. His version of
e-learning is not learning through computers only, but learning through all electronic
means, radio, TV, phone, and of course computer. He firmly believes just as micro
credit movement launched through Grameen Bank pioneered a revolution in rural
economy, e-learning or virtual education will also launch another revolution which is
education for all. He is confident young people in Bangladesh who have shown great
adaptability would be able to use this method to not only get formal education at
little cost, but will also be able to learn skills that would help them find jobs
domestically and internationally. He thinks the future is here right now.
My last interviewee was a business man who had spent over eight decades of his
life in Dhaka city. He had built his wealth from the farm lands that his father had
left him, founded an industry, and a real estate business. Himself a high school
dropout, he raised eight children two of whom are doctors, one a barrister, and
others college graduates. In 1971 he had joined the Mukti Bahini after leaving his
wife and small children because he could not stand by after witnessing the
rampant devastation and killing by Pakistan Army of his old Dhaka neighborhood.
For him the birth of Bangladesh had brought many promises, but most important of
all, it had rid Bangladeshis of its oppressors. To him, the glory is not what the last
forty years or so have brought us; the glory is what is yet to come. Politics has
become polluted, but people are not. He regrets that mistakes and machinations by
some politicians allowed enemies of our liberation to rear their head, but he
believes people of Bangladesh will know how to take care of them. Like the two
other younger men, this octogenarian also believes firmly in the future of the
country and its potential.
The three views of three persons spread across three generations on the future of
Bangladesh could be described as over optimistic or overly biased. But the abiding
theme of the three views is a confidence in the main resource of any countryits
people. None of these persons dwelt on politics (except by the oldest person on the
margin), nor did they expressly talked about the economy. Their confidence about
the future of the country came from their belief that the people of Bangladesh are
capable, hardworking, and have both the willingness and potential to pull the
country forward. In this day and age when politics has polluted our hopes and
machinations of politicians have put us all in a dooms day parade, the visions of the
people that I just talked about are like lights at the end of a tunnel. I only hope that
their visions are rightly founded, and these actually lead the country to a future yet
to come.
Zia Uddin Choudhury is a political analyst and a commentator

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Bangladesh in the eyes of three generations

learning, and his ability to draw a substantial number of following in many

Zia Uddin Choudhury is a political analyst and a commentator

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