Originally posted in The Prestige on 27 June 2022
Q. Let’s start the interview with a short glimpse of your childhood and your academic journey.
Most of my childhood was spent in Rankin Street in Wari. At that time, during the 60s, Wari was an elite neighborhood with a planned street, lovely houses and gardens. It was an affluent and vibrant area both economically, socially and culturally. People like Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s family, celebrated doctor Nandy, and zamindars of Balda used to live there then. The Balda garden with its rare botanical species was a major attraction.
I started my schooling at St. Francis Xavier’s, situated at Luxmibazar. I studied there up to class three. Due to communal violence back in 1964 in the then East Pakistan, I became a refugee (for the first time) and stayed in Kolkata for three years and continued my studies there. On return to Dhaka, I got admitted to St. Gregory High School, where I had the opportunity to receive English Medium schooling. I was supposed to sit for my secondary examination in 1972, but the war of independence (1971) intervened and I became a refugee again. I returned to independent Bangladesh and completed my school leaving exam, in November 1972.
Although I had the opportunity to attend Notre Dame College, I opted to go to Dhaka College. Besides my studies, I was also involved in student politics. In post-independence Bangladesh, I was also engaged in running night schools for daily labours, collecting foods for famine victims and many other volunteer activities. All these greatly helped me to deal with real life challenges later. In 1975, I took the higher secondary examination (in 1975 instead of 1974 due to session jam). Given my emerging world view, I wanted to observe how a new society is built. I opted to go to the Soviet Union in 1975 to study economics, while all of my school and college mates were leaving for USA and UK.
The Soviet Union was flourishing at that time. There was much to learn from its experience of collectivisation, industrialization and human development. I stayed there for nine years and completed my Master’s and Ph.D. in Economics from Plekhanov Institute of National Economy in Moscow. Indeed, I did my language course in Donetsk which is now centre of a violent war.
Coming back to Bangladesh in 1984, I joined the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) as a researcher. Later, I did my post-doctoral research at Queen Elizabeth House, the University of Oxford. I was also a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), Washington DC. My professional life, of course took me across the world and I held a number of visiting positions in a number of centres of excellence.
That was all for my institutional academic journey. But honestly, my learning doesn’t end here. I’m still trying to learn new things whenever I can. It’s a lifelong pursuit.
Q. You are recognized as one of the country’s remarkable macroeconomists and analysts. How did you acquire the expertise and found interest in the relevant field?
Frankly speaking, I never envisioned myself becoming an Economist or a researcher. It occurred by chance and not by choice. I always aspired to become a lawyer following my father Justice Debesh Bhattacharya and give immediate relief to people. We may recall that the famous Greek philosopher Plato said, in a perfect society, we would still need doctors and lawyers – but only good ones. I wanted to be one of these.
My parents were worried about my future given any different activities beyond studies, and encouraged me to go abroad. They felt that I would do better in other sectors rather than becoming a doctor or a lawyer. Since I felt that the world was going through an evolution, I thought of how I could contribute to the changes more inclusively. So, I decided to choose economics as my focus of study and expertise.
I never regretted a moment in my life as I pursued knowledge in the field of economics despite my aspiration to become a lawyer. I always wanted to make a positive impact in people’s lives, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to carry my ambition forward through my profession and knowledge; that’s what really matters.
Q. Share your career journey with us briefly and how your involvement grew over the years?
My career journey has been full of exciting opportunities and events that I’d cherish for a lifetime. I think my involvement grew as an Economist and a researcher in three phases. The first phase was, I had to establish my credentials which I did by joining BIDS. Although public universities shied away from giving me a chance at their institution, Professor Rehman Sobhan felt that I would excel at being his research associate. So, I started off with him, and he still remains my guru.
The second phase of my professional journey started from the moment I decided to move to policy analysis. I was prompted by the fact that numerous articles, peer-reviewed journals, and write-ups you find did little in changing the conditions of the left behind people. So, we, under the leadership of Professor Rehman Sobhan, established the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in 1993. The major purpose was to give voice to the unheard communities in national policy dialogue.
You see, being an Economist isn’t a smooth ride. To understand the essence of policy implications, you have to be involved at the grassroots level. You can’t deal with or solve economic issues sitting in the Himalayas. We the fortunate ones need to give back to the society. My forefathers who had been zamidars, worked for the development of our village in Tangail. So, I’m somewhat inspired by them and try to carry on their legacy. Besides my core professional work, I remain engaged in various social and philanthropic organisations. All these works inspired me to set up the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh, a network of 122 non-state actors. As you know, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) project the global development concerns.
This social activism goes in tandem with any engagements at international level. I had been Bangladesh’s Ambassador to WTO and UN Offices in Geneva and Vienna, Chair of the governing board of UNCTAD, special advisor to the secretary general of UNCTAD, coordinator of the least developed countries (LDCs) in the United Nations system in Geneva and Bangladesh delegation to a number of high-level international conferences. I undertook a number of consultancy assignments in three continents and in the Pacific Islands. I may also mention that I’m the founding Chair of Southern Voice, an international network of more than 50 think tanks from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Moreover, I am the convenor of an alliance of development organisations working to uphold the intents of the LDCs. South Asian regional cooperation had also been an area of my policy engagement. So, you can see I try to remain active at various levels – from grassroots to national to regional to international.
Q. Would you please share a bit more about CPD’s formulation and its current activities?
As I mentioned earlier, CPD was established to conduct in-depth research and policy dialogue to promote creation of a more inclusive and equitable society in Bangladesh. It was established at a time when Bangladesh was emerging into a period of a new democracy from 1990s onwards. At that time, we felt that there was a lack of public reasoning in society. We wanted to build a platform where marginalised people and their representatives can engage in policy debate with the national and international actors. Being convinced about this need, I joined CPD as its first Executive Director in 1993.
As I’ve mentioned before, CPD works at both national, regional and international levels addressing policy-changes through strategic partnerships. Undoubtedly, it’s main agenda is to enhance sustainable development of Bangladesh’s economy and society from the perspective of the disadvantaged population. In doing so, we do not forget that this economic development is to take place within a globalised world economy where regional cooperation plays an important role. Thus, CPD always seeks to reach out to different types of intellectual groups at various levels. The bottom line is that we do not do research for research’s sake. We do research and analysis to bring about changes for a fairer Bangladesh, fairer South-Asia and fairer world. Incidentally, the Covid pandemic and availability of internet services, have prompted us to more expressively reach out to the grassroots and project their voices more directly in these policy-rated activities.
Q. You have represented Bangladesh on the global stage. How do you perceive those experiences and share any fond memories from those days?
My stint within the government as an Ambassador in Geneva and, Vienna, as well as accredited to Holy See (Vatican) was an illuminating experience. I greatly benefitted from them. For example, within two weeks after arriving in Geneva, the then Director General of the WTO Mr Pascal Lamy invited me to be a member of the much talked about “Green Room”. In this Green Room meetings, a handful of powerful countries and groups negotiated consensual proposition before they are adopted by all the member states in the Global Council.
It was always interesting for me to negotiate on their behalf of the LDCs. To be the voice of 48 LDCs and negotiate on their behalf in the United Nations and other platforms was truly a matter of honor for me. One of the challenges was to keep the solidarity of the LDCs, keeping in view their diverse interests. For example, Bangladesh’s objective of setting duty-free and quota-free market access in countries like the United States, was at variance with that of African LDCs led by Lesotho as they already had that under different trading arrangements. Similarly, at an international development finance conference in Accra, it was fascinating to be part of the negotiating process which established the rights of the developing countries to various forms of finance beyond traditional foreign aid (e.g. foreign direct investment, remittance and blended finance).
Q. What are your thoughts and opinion on Bangladesh’s SDG Vision and underlying challenges on its implementation?
Bangladesh is one of the countries which remains highly committed to SDGs from a political perspective. It has completed two Voluntary National Reviews. It is one of the countries to set up the institutional structure for the implementation of SDGs. Along with that, it undertook data mapping to access the possibility of monitoring the SDGs. It has an administrative structure for policy coordination with its nodal point situated at the Prime Minister’s Office. So, if you look at the policy perspective and institutional advances, Bangladesh looks very good. However, our experience of last six to seven years indicates three major challenges in realising SDGs in the country. First, there is disparate success in different goals. For example, we might achieve significant success in poverty alleviation and tackling hunger and nutrition, but we still lack tremendously in ensuring quality education, universal healthcare and creating jobs. We have not improved in environmental areas such as deforestation, etc. and second, even if we excel on the average i.e. of appropriate level, we have not improved much on disaggregated level. This is high disparity in these national achievements. As you know that the per capita earning of more than 2,000 USD is not true for the low-income people of the country. We need to reflect and revise our practices on “no one is left behind” – the tagline of SDGs. We need to give more space to these citizens in the affairs of the state.
Bangladesh stands on a historical threshold after 50 years of it’s independence. Bangladesh is looking forward to exiting the LDC group. It is looking forward to becoming a high middle-income country and a “developed country” by 2041. Without delivering the SDGs effectively, these ambitions cannot be achieved. We cannot be a high middle-income country with LDC-level public and corporate institutions. We need better institutions, improved governance to effectively deliver public policy and ensure better corporate culture. During the Covid pandemic we witnessed the faultiness of our economy and society, how we struggled and reached out to the marginalised communities. On the other hand, we have succeeded in registering millions of people through a simple app and get them vaccinated. We could also distribute financial support digitally. So, in the near future, we would need to bridge the gap between reality and possibility through full and faithful delivery of the SDGs.
Q. Bangladesh’s GDP is dependent mainly on some particular sectors. How can we progress further to reduce dependency on these sectors?
As you know, relative contribution of the agriculture in our economy has diminished over the last decade. It is only 13 per cent of GDP currently down from 25 per cent. This includes livestock, fisheries and forestry along with crop reduction. Conversely over 60 per cent of our population still remains engaged in agriculture, implies that we have very low productivity in this sector. One of our significate challenges is to increase productivity in agricultural sector. On the other hand, if you look at the industry sector accounting for 29 per cent of GDP which is clearly good news for us. However, within that the share of manufacturing is relatively low. Most of it comes from the energy and construction sectors. Moreover, our manufacturing sector is dominated by the readymade garments sector. This single product dominates our export basket too. Then diversification of the industry sector is another major development challenge and diversification can happen within and beyond textile. Even in the agricultural sector by moving up the value chain. Finally, if you look at the structure of our service sector, it is based on petty training and other informal activities. The challenge is to make this sector higher valued. Digitization of the economy and emergence of e-commerce sector might provide us that opportunity.
Q. When it comes to diversity, there is quite a debate that diversification is quite expensive and challenging due to the lack of skilled labour and knowledge. How would you address to that?
I would both agree and disagree with this statement. There is indeed a serious skill mismatch in the market. We are producing through very expensive private universities and other institutions, a huge number of graduates – but they are having great difficulty in finding jobs. Therefore, if we want to peruse productivity growth, diversification and value addition, we need to ensure quality education for the young generation. Given the inter-generational inequality that we are currently experiencing can only be addressed through competent skill development – fit for purpose for the impending Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
Q. How do you like to see today’s youth carry forward the nation, and what skills they should acquire?
The role of the youth in the upcoming Bangladesh is yet to be adequately articulated – beyond rhetoric’s. We have not developed any mechanism or effective policy framework for them yet to channel their voices into the national processes. Therefore, they often post critical comments on social media – deprived of responsibility and not subjected to accountability. In my opinion, these critically thinking youth should be brought out from their comfort zone, put out on the hot seats and charged with socially motivated tasks. However, I get encouraged looking at the young kids fighting for road safety, the most of the internet warriors never came out to support them. One has all the right to criticise, but we should also take the responsibilities, take some risks and express solidarity with the ones fighting for realising our common rights.
The other point I want to make is that while talking about youth, we think of a group of smart, awkwardly moving anglophone community. But these young people constitute a very small portion of our population. A much larger section remains “disengaged” from the economic and societal processes. They are often unemployed or not in educational establishments. They are suffering from mental stress, indulging in dry addiction and getting attracted to militant ideologies. We need to urgently address the concerns of the disengaged youths.
Q. Any remarks on the growing startup community?
I think they need all the support. We, nationally and globally are undergoing transformative changes which are creating huge opportunities (along with some threats) for our new generation. These new entrepreneurs need to more actively voice their interests and concerns, abide the governments regulatory requirements including payment of taxes and share their experiences with other people.
Q. How does your typical day look like, and what keeps you busy besides work?
Spending quality time with my family is the sought-after luxury. My wife (who comes from Russia) is an Economist and looks after our family philanthropy. My daughter is a lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights and works at the WIPO in Geneva. Given the opportunity I like to spend weekends at my village in Tangail.