I have found two positive things about the budget for 2020: government plans to allocate Tk 500 million to scientific research and to allow foreign teachers in Education sector. Sources of both information are press reports. I have not had the chance to look at the budget documents where these propositions are broached. Ministry of Finance website posted some documents , which are snippets of statistical information revealing where the money will stem from and where it will be spent.
Given that education spending as percentage of GDP hovers around 2 percent,government embarks on a project to create a "Digital Bangladesh". John Stuart Mill in his "On Liberty" wrote:
Diverting funds to scientific research is a bit late move but much appreciated one. But how and where this money will be spent demand some serious thought and discussion. The important thing is who will bear the onus of deciding where the fund should go. If part of this fund is meant for academic research then professional bodies, like Academy of Science, will decide the priority sectors. If part of it is meant for industry oriented research, then industry representatives, scientists, experts and public officials will decide which industries will be chosen. I had the chance to see the progress of many development projects as an NGO worker and journalist. Frankly speaking the experience was not pleasant. I saw first hand that non-technical staff cornered the technical staff and non-development spending ate up a big part of project spending. Unless it is absolutely needed, it is better to avoid recruiting non-technical staff. Or try to recruit undergrad or grad student of respective discipline. It will eradicate any communication gap , give the students an exposure and help checking spending. Often this kind of non-technical position creates poor jobs that lead to further corruption to obviate income vulnerabilities of the position holder.
I do not want to talk about here the academic research and want to discuss mostly on industrial research. In industry oriented research, I think it is better to spend the fund on areas that will give quick result in the short span of time. This success in short period will fetch more fund later. Two sectors that come to my mind are textiles and agro processing/ food processing. We have tertiary and technical institutions aimed to cater to the demand of these two industries. Our agriculture sector itself is a success story and bevy of research work is going on. Unfortunately, we do not pour enough fund to textile and RMG research. Expertise and foreign collaboration are also lacking here. We have formed so many strategic partnership with friendly countries but did not manage to get strategic partner in key research areas. For instance, Russians are implementing power and arms delivery projects with huge price tag. We could easily seek their assistance in research initiatives in other areas using thawing relations and as a condition to the ongoing projects. They would love to step in to explore new areas of cooperation that will have strategic values and will work as a good PR to improve their image, already marred by cost controversy. I would like to see Russian and Bangladeshi textile engineers come together to initiate research projects aiming to bring automation in RMG manufacturing( particularly in Knit items), to innovate machine to make high-end T-shirts, to make low-cost effluent treatment plant and to innovate sophisticated fabrics. The acquired knowledge could be jointly used, sharing the intellectual property.This kind of partnership will not only boost our capability but will give us an edge over our rivals for a significant period. Similarly, our agro processing/food processing industry can start research work to tap the markets of South and South East Asia. For instance, our biologist, fisheries experts and entrepreneurs could try to innovate alternate but cost effective environment for crab production, for eel production. Research activities can also be taken to increase dairy products and meat production. Bangladesh could easily export processed pork meat like ham, bacon etc to South East Asian countries and China. Part of this fund may be spent to discover a suitable pork species or develop the local varieties and to discover vaccines for them.
One of the good thing of industry based research is that once one makes some result venture capitalist and private investor come forward with funds. Projects that involve high market potential and high risks usually vie for this kind of fund. If this happens, most of the government fund for research may go to academic research.
Creation of research minds largely hinges on the education sector. A great part of your population have to be at the same wavelength to comprehend the gravity of a situation, to know what to do at a critical stage and to respond to changing situation. To create that stock, nurturing of minds at every stage of learning is a must . It is great to learn that government plans to recruit foreign teachers. In English medium schools and in private universities, foreign teachers are already working. But their number is not significant. Our educational centers have fallen victims to tribal politics. Even school management committee occupied by political stalwarts. Universities have fallen into the hands of anarchists.World class graduates churned out by public universities till Ershad regime still dominate the private and public sectors. That momentum is not maintained. We never try to search the answer behind it. As many of our graduates contribute to foreign economy and education sector, time has come to open up our education sector to foreigners. We have already seen the tremendous contribution they make to textile and cricket. Unfortunately, the old guards already voiced strong opposition to such plan. It is not objective criticism when many critics tried to seek privilege and lobbied for making their son a public university teacher. However I have not seen them criticizing the defense budget. Going after the defense services may cost one the privileges of being a public university teacher even if he was son of former registrar of the same public university or hailed from a cadet college. Foreign teachers and educators have less chance to become victims of tribalism and they can discharge their duties at ease during the tenures of different regimes. Moreover, they impart new ideas, vision , approach to see things and learning techniques among students who do not have chance to know about these stuffs and lost interest in learning. As a teacher of French as a foreign language I had the chance to attend training programs conducted by French pedagogy trainers. Those training programs were mind blowing sessions. Simple dictionary becomes a magical instrument of learning. At least dozen of funny ways are there to learn new things with the help of dictionary. It is a pity that many of us have reluctance to use dictionary. Back in February, host of a TV show on new books published at Ekushey Book Fair begrudged a book of poems after encountering too many unknown Bangla words. He said," I don't like reading books that need a dictionary by my bed side." It appalled me to see such people occupied the position due to their strong political connection.We do not see too many professors working as consultants to media outlets when we have nearly three dozens of private TV stations and radio stations. What lacks is air of professionalism and learning. It is prevalent even at the highest learning center. At a university, a teacher was justifying the claim of not subscribing to foreign journals by saying " they cost a lot and become irrelevant after a certain point of time".
Foreign educators will alter the current atmosphere of learning. I also found the claim that foreign teachers will launder money every year a bit asinine. One will find it hollow when he looks at the condition of our financial institutions. Who did run and operate those troubled banks? Who were at the management committee? I have no doubt in my mind that foreign teachers will add great value to our education and to society in general. Just make sure that there is a pool of foreign teachers registered with University Grants Commission at the tertiary level of education. This is the area where we do need their contribution to break the vicious cycle of the anarchists who are quite successful in bringing academic operations of public universities to a complete halt. Many of these leaders' sons or daughters are never admitted to public universities. They hold stakes at private universities.French way in dealing with the anarchists is quite exemplary. In the 90's French railway workers called general strikes frequently and crippled the whole railway network. One French administration decided to deal with these trouble makers by creating a reserve of foreign railway workers taking full advantage of EU common market.
The allocation to scientific research,a belated step but a welcoming one, is just a mere step toward the creation of knowledge based society. But additional laws and amendments are needed to make sure how the knowledge based output will be shared, protecting the intellectual right of researchers and institutions. Prerequisite to the illuminated knowledge based society is learning environment that shapes curious minds. Allowing foreign teachers in our education sector is a little step towards that goal. I hope government will trash the fictitious claims made by old guards and allow foreign teachers to play their role at every stage of our education.
Given that education spending as percentage of GDP hovers around 2 percent,government embarks on a project to create a "Digital Bangladesh". John Stuart Mill in his "On Liberty" wrote:
The worth of a state , in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a state which postpones the interest of their mental expansion and elevation to a little of mere administrative skill , or of that semblance of it which practice gives in details of business; a state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.So increasing the expenditure on education to facilitate human development initiatives as well as making a knowledge based society is an obligation. This novel objective is marred by swollen spending of Education as a result of inclusion of Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant cost, as revealed by a report. By coining two different sectors , education and technology, into one Education and Technology ministry simply concatenated spending of two sectors. And Rooppur Power Plant project is one of the costliest project, already costing $11.52 billion, Bangladesh has ever undertaken. Annual allocation to this power project simply increases the spending of Education ministry and gives a cosmetic swollen look. It does not mean any genuine commitment. Just take a look at the following two graphs: first one shows spending on Education(plus technology), Health and Defense as percentage of total spending. Inclusion of technology places the share of Education above the other two sectors as percentage of total public expenditure. The next graph shows gross allocation(development plus non development) on Education and Technology sector. Please note it includes non development expenses, which means salaries, operational expenses and other infrastructure related costs are included. It barely captures any genuine commitment from the government towards education sector. If we take a closer look at the allocation we see that this year Tk 32,101 crore has been proposed for Defense sector. Of which Tk 29285 crore will be spent on operational expenses and Tk 148 crore will be used for development expenses. Unfortunately, the wage employment we have created in the defense sector is not that good. We see that our agencies miserably failed to forewarn about drug invasion, about expulsion of Rohingyas from Myanmar, to maintain the existing inventory( we have lost more fighters in accidents in the last 10 years) and to foresee merger acquisition in the corporate world. Merger of Telenor and Axiata group came to the light when Telenor group divulged the news on its website. No agency managed to get prior information and told BTRC to take a precautionary step. More recently, Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation incurred Tk 6000 crore loss in LNG purchase in a year due to price fluctuation in the international market. No agency saw it coming. One of the LNG terminal owner is the brother of a former chairman of parliamentary standing committee(defense). What is going on? Let's cut it short and get back to the point.
Diverting funds to scientific research is a bit late move but much appreciated one. But how and where this money will be spent demand some serious thought and discussion. The important thing is who will bear the onus of deciding where the fund should go. If part of this fund is meant for academic research then professional bodies, like Academy of Science, will decide the priority sectors. If part of it is meant for industry oriented research, then industry representatives, scientists, experts and public officials will decide which industries will be chosen. I had the chance to see the progress of many development projects as an NGO worker and journalist. Frankly speaking the experience was not pleasant. I saw first hand that non-technical staff cornered the technical staff and non-development spending ate up a big part of project spending. Unless it is absolutely needed, it is better to avoid recruiting non-technical staff. Or try to recruit undergrad or grad student of respective discipline. It will eradicate any communication gap , give the students an exposure and help checking spending. Often this kind of non-technical position creates poor jobs that lead to further corruption to obviate income vulnerabilities of the position holder.
I do not want to talk about here the academic research and want to discuss mostly on industrial research. In industry oriented research, I think it is better to spend the fund on areas that will give quick result in the short span of time. This success in short period will fetch more fund later. Two sectors that come to my mind are textiles and agro processing/ food processing. We have tertiary and technical institutions aimed to cater to the demand of these two industries. Our agriculture sector itself is a success story and bevy of research work is going on. Unfortunately, we do not pour enough fund to textile and RMG research. Expertise and foreign collaboration are also lacking here. We have formed so many strategic partnership with friendly countries but did not manage to get strategic partner in key research areas. For instance, Russians are implementing power and arms delivery projects with huge price tag. We could easily seek their assistance in research initiatives in other areas using thawing relations and as a condition to the ongoing projects. They would love to step in to explore new areas of cooperation that will have strategic values and will work as a good PR to improve their image, already marred by cost controversy. I would like to see Russian and Bangladeshi textile engineers come together to initiate research projects aiming to bring automation in RMG manufacturing( particularly in Knit items), to innovate machine to make high-end T-shirts, to make low-cost effluent treatment plant and to innovate sophisticated fabrics. The acquired knowledge could be jointly used, sharing the intellectual property.This kind of partnership will not only boost our capability but will give us an edge over our rivals for a significant period. Similarly, our agro processing/food processing industry can start research work to tap the markets of South and South East Asia. For instance, our biologist, fisheries experts and entrepreneurs could try to innovate alternate but cost effective environment for crab production, for eel production. Research activities can also be taken to increase dairy products and meat production. Bangladesh could easily export processed pork meat like ham, bacon etc to South East Asian countries and China. Part of this fund may be spent to discover a suitable pork species or develop the local varieties and to discover vaccines for them.
One of the good thing of industry based research is that once one makes some result venture capitalist and private investor come forward with funds. Projects that involve high market potential and high risks usually vie for this kind of fund. If this happens, most of the government fund for research may go to academic research.
Creation of research minds largely hinges on the education sector. A great part of your population have to be at the same wavelength to comprehend the gravity of a situation, to know what to do at a critical stage and to respond to changing situation. To create that stock, nurturing of minds at every stage of learning is a must . It is great to learn that government plans to recruit foreign teachers. In English medium schools and in private universities, foreign teachers are already working. But their number is not significant. Our educational centers have fallen victims to tribal politics. Even school management committee occupied by political stalwarts. Universities have fallen into the hands of anarchists.World class graduates churned out by public universities till Ershad regime still dominate the private and public sectors. That momentum is not maintained. We never try to search the answer behind it. As many of our graduates contribute to foreign economy and education sector, time has come to open up our education sector to foreigners. We have already seen the tremendous contribution they make to textile and cricket. Unfortunately, the old guards already voiced strong opposition to such plan. It is not objective criticism when many critics tried to seek privilege and lobbied for making their son a public university teacher. However I have not seen them criticizing the defense budget. Going after the defense services may cost one the privileges of being a public university teacher even if he was son of former registrar of the same public university or hailed from a cadet college. Foreign teachers and educators have less chance to become victims of tribalism and they can discharge their duties at ease during the tenures of different regimes. Moreover, they impart new ideas, vision , approach to see things and learning techniques among students who do not have chance to know about these stuffs and lost interest in learning. As a teacher of French as a foreign language I had the chance to attend training programs conducted by French pedagogy trainers. Those training programs were mind blowing sessions. Simple dictionary becomes a magical instrument of learning. At least dozen of funny ways are there to learn new things with the help of dictionary. It is a pity that many of us have reluctance to use dictionary. Back in February, host of a TV show on new books published at Ekushey Book Fair begrudged a book of poems after encountering too many unknown Bangla words. He said," I don't like reading books that need a dictionary by my bed side." It appalled me to see such people occupied the position due to their strong political connection.We do not see too many professors working as consultants to media outlets when we have nearly three dozens of private TV stations and radio stations. What lacks is air of professionalism and learning. It is prevalent even at the highest learning center. At a university, a teacher was justifying the claim of not subscribing to foreign journals by saying " they cost a lot and become irrelevant after a certain point of time".
Foreign educators will alter the current atmosphere of learning. I also found the claim that foreign teachers will launder money every year a bit asinine. One will find it hollow when he looks at the condition of our financial institutions. Who did run and operate those troubled banks? Who were at the management committee? I have no doubt in my mind that foreign teachers will add great value to our education and to society in general. Just make sure that there is a pool of foreign teachers registered with University Grants Commission at the tertiary level of education. This is the area where we do need their contribution to break the vicious cycle of the anarchists who are quite successful in bringing academic operations of public universities to a complete halt. Many of these leaders' sons or daughters are never admitted to public universities. They hold stakes at private universities.French way in dealing with the anarchists is quite exemplary. In the 90's French railway workers called general strikes frequently and crippled the whole railway network. One French administration decided to deal with these trouble makers by creating a reserve of foreign railway workers taking full advantage of EU common market.
The allocation to scientific research,a belated step but a welcoming one, is just a mere step toward the creation of knowledge based society. But additional laws and amendments are needed to make sure how the knowledge based output will be shared, protecting the intellectual right of researchers and institutions. Prerequisite to the illuminated knowledge based society is learning environment that shapes curious minds. Allowing foreign teachers in our education sector is a little step towards that goal. I hope government will trash the fictitious claims made by old guards and allow foreign teachers to play their role at every stage of our education.
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