Podcast 1
[podcast]http://muktibangla.org/blog/podcast/MBPod1.mp3[/podcast]
MuktiBangla is basically an organization to work in Bangladesh to increase the literacy rate in the country. Ralph Waldo Emerson said “There is no knowledge that is not power,” and he is absolutely right. We believe education is power and to give the poor Bangladeshis power will help the country overall, especially when education is given to women.
Think about it, if we educate the poor then they can make decisions that will better their lives. During elections the poor’s good decisions will benefit them instead of being fooled by candidates and their one-time slogans of “I’ll pay for your tea if you vote for me”. Before elections these candidates promise this and that for the poor and then after elections they disappear and nothing changes for the poor. The economic status of poor Bangladeshis does not change weather it is candidate A or B or C. Also, if the poor are educated then they can make hygienic decisions such as, it is not ok to drink water from the same pond as where industrial wastes are dumped. And it is not ok to eat food from garbage sites.
So what we want to do basically is not to concentrate on Bangla medium, we want to work on English medium. Bangla is our mother language no doubt but Bangla will not put food on the table. Bangladesh cannot survive by itself, she needs products and services from other countries such petroleum, medicine, etc. in order to run. The international language is English and it will always be English and it will never be Bangla. In some parts of Bangladesh there is this disgusting obsession with the Bangla language. Some Bangladeshis think Bangla is so great that everything should be used in the Bangla medium such as medicine or engineering. Those fields are all mastered in the English medium and who has the time to translate all the concepts of medicine and engineering from English to Bangla. We need to work on deviating from that obsession and use the English medium to conduct businesses and promote English to be as equal to Bangla in Bangladesh.
The one of biggest issues when it comes to economic growth we see is the language barrier and it must be lifted in order for the poor class to raise themselves out of poverty and into the middle class to drive Bangladesh to be a middle-income country. Foreign businesses come to Bangladesh to invest and to manufacture products. However, if these foreign businesses don’t have workers who are not skilled or let alone don’t speak English, then they will move on to another country who has them. Therefore, English is mandatory to conduct good businesses with foreigners.
In my view, in an on-going process in economics, a country’s GDP is inversely proportional to the poverty rate. When the poverty rate decrease the GDP increases and vice-versa, because if you think about it’s a chain reaction of events that marks the economic growth from the reduction of poverty.
Let’s go step by step to get a firm idea of what I’m talking about:
Step 1. Educate the poor, and with education, train them in a certain technical field.
Step 2. Get them industrial jobs. Usually these are setup by foreign nationals.
Step 3. The poor earn enough money to raise their standard of living for themselves.
Step 4. Their skills and specialties help grow the companies they work for.
Step 5. The companies they work for increase the production of their products and services from their skilled workers.
Step 6. The companies invest in their growth and contribute to the country’s revenue. Hence, the country’s GDP grows and at the same time the poverty rate declines.
Our parents’ generation, the Bengali generation of East Pakistan have failed to lift Bangladesh out of misery. If you think about it what have we achieved by gaining independence from West Pakistan? What so different now in Bangladesh since Dhaka does not have to answer to Islamabad? Have the rapings stopped? No. Have the murders stopped? No. It has only increased. The victimizing of the poor will decrease significantly once they are educated because they will know how to use the law to protect themselves. The butchering and the rapings of Bengalis of Bangladesh are a lot worse from local Bengalis than it was from the Punjabis of West Pakistan. The poor people are venerable to be inflicted with crimes because of their lack of education. Education by itself is the greatest weapon an average poor Bangladeshi can have in order to protect him or herself from the corrupt atmosphere of the country.
Educating the poor is the main focus of MuktiBangla Development Group. We don’t care about earning money and we don’t care about gaining fame. Bangladesh is our mother country and we want to do all in our power to help her rise and to eradicate poverty, and that is our ultimate goal.
I’m going to end this podcast with a patriotic song sung by Habib Wahid and other singers, it’s called “Hridoy Bangladesh”.
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