Government boasts its "Digital Bangladesh" campaign as one of its most successful projects. But when it comes to realize this dream, it has miles to go to call this campaign a complete success. A quick look at some of the projects under the banner reveals that people's right to information and as well as access to public information has been digitized to a great length. Spread of e-commerce and online payment system led the new entrepreneurs to embrace ICT to overcome major stumbling blocks of a new business.
However, there are still unexplored territories that call for urgent attention. Why these crucial and vital sectors have not yet brought under the clutches of this Digital Bangladesh campaign remains a mystery to many, including me.
Take for instance, the delay in launching the planned automated payment system of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation(BPC). BPC is undoubtedly the country's biggest company with annual turnover of TK 500 billion. The planned automation is supposed to cut the payment time to 4 days from 10 months. BPC faced stiff resistance from a certain quarter that does not want to see BPC receives revenues from its oil sales from state-run petroleum products marketing and distribution companies in such a short span of time.
If payments take as long as 10 months to reach BPC coffer, then it is pretty understandable that those who benefited from this delay will leave no stone unturned to strew the road to automation with all kinds of hurdles. Holding BPC's payments for 10 months , they can invest it to somewhere else and make lots of money. Frankly speaking, they can open 3-month or 6-month-long deposits at banks and earn huge interests. Or they can erect a whole new multi-storey building at any part of Bangladesh. In addition, such time lag also raises the possibility of leakages in the system. A news report divulged that a local company already developed the payment software, but it could not proceed with the scheduled launching due to the resistance from this vested quarter.
Another area that requires attention of staunchest advocates of Digital Bangladesh is the transport sector. Reckless driving and utter disregard of traffic rules everyday kills scores of people in Bangladesh. Even the issue was advanced to wage a popular movement to change the rules and ongoing practices. Little changes took place. In Dhaka, we had once a well installed transport policy that was literally thrown away because of political consideration.
A World Bank study revealed that politicians and corrupt bureaucrats involved in the transport business, which is merely a mean to whiten illicit money. Urge to start the change is not there. These public transports ply over from one end to the other end of Dhaka. So it is easy for a quarter to transport contraband from one entry point to other entry point using this transport system since it is not subject to police checking.
Despite an overwhelming number of casualties from road mishaps and drug invasion, we do not see any concrete step from the government to regulate the sector. For instance, in light of digital Bangladesh government can easily set up a database containing names and addresses of drivers and assistants of buses and taxis. Similarly vehicle tracking system, radio communications system can be introduced so that traffic department can monitor in real time the status of a vehicle in a busy working day. This will also help in check the plying of unfit vehicles.
Unfortunately government is not enthusiastic to digitize the transport sector.
We also witnessed from the part of government to launch a local social media platform. In this end, our neighbour surpassed us with the launch of MM Social. It all happened when Facebook took off several pages and accounts regarding Myanmar Armed Forces. Now Myanmar will have a leading advantage in operating this kind of platforms and problems they pose.
Ours still remains a dream. We have no short of talents at home, but we should not be shy taking assistance from outside. A country that can easily be made a strategic partner in our Digital Bangladesh endeavour is Russia, which is already implementing several energy and military procurement projects. Russia also has social media platform like Vkontakte. Bangladesh can invite Russian Social media platforms to launch joint initiatives in this country, opening up opportunities for local tech savvy population and small entrepreneurs.
Russia has also made great leap forward in innovative textiles, which have technical challenges in making them. According to a news report, Russian innovative and smart textiles market is estimated at $1.3 billion and is growing at pace faster than European countries. Using the thawed relations, Bangladesh can embark on collaborative projects with Russian textiles universities and manufacturers to speed up its ongoing automation, to manufacture smart textiles that will dominate the future clothes market, to initiate research on effluent plant to deal with hazardous textiles residue and to have a leading edge in computational textiles that will help both the countries.
It is indeed disappointing that government's "Digital Bangladesh" is trapped inside banal slogans and lofty ambition. No concrete plan has yet been unveiled in crucial strategic sectors. Noticeable is the politically biased implementation of some digital Bangladesh projects. To create continuous ripple of change, Digital Bangladesh campaign should focus on the crucial sectors.
No comments:
Post a Comment