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To celebrate the golden jubilee of the independence of Bangladesh, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) organised a virtual international conference, in collaboration with the South Asia Program of Cornell University, which explored the country’s developments in different sectors—politics, economy, society and culture. A number of national and international webinars have already been organised this year on Bangladesh. They have portrayed the remarkable story of Bangladesh’s development—how it has succeeded in rebuilding a war-ravaged economy and society and made steady progress in key indicators of human development and economic growth.
However, the story of Bangladesh’s progress is generally being told from a quantitative perspective, for example, the upward or downward trends in life expectancy, mortality, fertility, school enrolment, labour force participation, poverty reduction, export earnings, foreign exchange reserve, GDP, etc. The numbers do indicate significant gains in social and economic development, but they do not adequately capture the depth of the changes that have taken place in peoples’ lives in the economy, politics, society and culture of Bangladesh.
The conference organised by CPD aimed to deepen the understanding of Bangladesh’s multifaceted development over the last fifty years. The event drew upon specially commissioned papers, covering a broad spectrum of issues addressing the qualitative dimensions of development and change as well as explore the processes which have produced these changes. The papers and discussions of the conference will be published by a reputed publisher.
A total of eight (8) sessions were held during 6-9 December 2021. The conference was attended virtually by over a thousand participants.