Stop The Tie-in

Privileged sales and banks' money to in-laws Lead us to a market full of flaws.

In recent weeks, some mobile operators are offering mobile phones with new SIM connection. "Tie-in" sales are pretty common in consumer activity but we have to keep an wary eye on such sales as it has the potential to harm consumer interests in the long run. In addition, many leading operators are offering insurance to protect your cell phones from future damage. At first sight, it appears harmless and beneficial to consumers. But a deeper look may unravel some uncomfortable truth.

For instance, operators offering "tie-in" sales are also providers of high speed data. With high speed data, you will often notice that browsers auto add plugins or updates,often supplied by malicious providers with dubious intentions. Furthermore, YouTube streaming or other live streaming like in Facebook often makes your device vulnerable to hacking. Apart from that ,WiFi hotspots and free WiFi network also make your handsets and devices vulnerable to hacking. Maybe some deranged employee within an operator may engage in harmful activities, causing you lots of trouble financially. I experienced these things in the past and am often vocal against such consumer practices. I used the public operator for some time at ease ,experiencing higher pace of internet and no damage to my handset whatsoever. But for the last 11 months, I have stopped using it as services deteriorated. Switching to other operators only brought back those bad experiences back. Why are you offering insurance to handsets or new handsets with new connections if you are not acknowledging there are some faults in your side causing damages to consumers' handsets? Damages range from wiping out the operating software to key-logging the onscreen keyboard,from dark screen to dysfunctioning touch pad. Very few consumers have little knowledge about what happened. Moreover, lack of technical knowledge of the law enforcement agencies and consumers also fails to track the origin of the problem .

From the perspective of fair business, "tie-in" may cause unhealthy business competition. Say company A holds significant market share in industry A and another company B (say it is in the mobile phone business) holds significant market share in industry B. The companies decide to offer "tie-in" product for industry A(say the mobile SIM market). This "tie-in" will consolidate their market shares for both the industries by pushing up their sales. In this time of austerity, while consumers tighten their pockets, this kind of "tie-in" gives unreasonable privileges to the companies who consolidate their market shares to worrying level. This should be stopped.

At the same time, there should be no access to public banks' money for operators whose owners are politicians or in-laws of politicians. In the past, we witnessed how banks' money fallen into the hands of politically blessed in-laws became bad loans, only worrying the ordinary depositors and worsening banks' balance sheet. If they have better business ideas, they should go to the stock market, to IFC/MIGA or to the Dubai/Singapore based banks. They should not be given access to local banks' money.

From poultry ingredient market to the cellular networks ,we see how tie-in is adversely effecting the consumers, leaving a heavy blow to welfare and competition alike. For the sake of business and consumer's interest in this time of austerity, all kinds of privileged sales pitch should be stopped.

Dismal Job Market: Who Gets The Blame?

A recent study on unemployment reveals that 34% of the graduates are currently unemployed. The study in progress has found that the  performance of graduates in job is not as good as the employers anticipate and the education system is not compliant with the job market.

I have not got the chance to leaf through the study in question. So I am not going to comment on the study.

However, it is not clear how many of the graduates have lost their jobs due to stalled growth in private sector. Vibrant private sector is conspicuously absent in Bangladesh, a place dominated by crony infested businesses. At the same time, slowing down of growth in major economies also affects the private sector here. In recent months, many multinational companies have wound up their operations in this part of the world to expand their operations or to reduce cost significantly.
A recent news report says 64 RMG factories have been closed down in 10 months of this fiscal year as they are unable to cope with government's new salary decision and lack of bank support for this crucial sector in the wake of piling up of non performing loan. Lugubrious air prevailing in the financial sector is largely due to squandering of bank money and mismanagement.

So banks grow cautious to lend further and trust deficit stalls the growth of private sector. Sometimes policy decision also plays a role influencing the job market. We witnessed plenty of examples in telecom sector.
Citycell laid off thousands of workers after regulatory authority had shut it down over due payments. Angry workers descended into the streets and staged protest against the decision.

Two other major operators declared a merger and fought a legal battle with the government over contested tax. The operators lost the battle and were asked to pay the tax money to the government. One of the operators has launched a voluntary separation scheme for its employees in order to economize its labor force.

Their actions lend credence to the argument that consumers and workers bear full brunt of cost cutting measures.

Tension is also  brewing in media industry. In the beginning of this year, an association of broadcast journalist was formed to protect the interest of the journalist from the whims of the owners. Most of these outlets are set up with political blessings where professionalism has little role to play. Indiscriminate termination of journalist is pretty common. A TV channel drew ire of the journalist community after the TV authority had fired the whole reporting and editorial team of the news department.  More recently, fired journalist of a TV channel laid siege to TV premises. Many journalists have not been paid their dues. Even the experienced and senior ones face the music.

It is more or less pretty evident that experience and skill has no role in recent termination in the media. Business model may be wrong or the  outlets  were set up on different purposes. In the face of increasing cost, they simply scuttle the journalists.

Truth is there is no vibrant and free private sector, where ups and downs reflect rules of free market. Question remains on how one can blame performance and skill set of an employee in this crony infested and politically aligned private sector.

Drawing lessons from our RMG industry offers some objective explanation. When it all started back in late 70s, bureaucrats and people closer to power corridor managed to grab the permit to set up factories. RMG buyers from Hong Kong and South Korea trained the initial work force made them ready to deliver the desired product. This in-house training program prepared the skilled workforce. None back then envisaged that our RMG industry would reach such stage. Obviously we need more specialized institution to churn out more knowledgeable employee to deal with the challenges when the industry is on a firm footing.

When the industrial revolution was unfolding,  European countries did not target job market and did not churn out market desired workers.  Rather back then those countries produced finest quality of mathematicians and innovative minds. Instead of job market soothsaying , we need to take cue from those periods.

Look what happened to the Indian IT sector. New rules by the American government and trade war between US and China made a heavy dent in Indian IT job market. It does not mean that those who got fired do not have the skill . Rather, they fell victim of a bad patch in Indian IT industry.

What we are missing here is crux of the problem. Quality of education is the area where we should concentrate instead of making workers. We have to ensure quality education at all levels. If that happens then we will get good citizens who will be able to contribute tremendously to the society through their thoughtful duties and deeds. They will be able to meet the challenges of the future at the same time.


At the moment, we are pursuing an educational policy that is parallel to feeding a cub semi prepared food by a carnivore. There is always someone to crack the problem for a  student.  Omnipresence of these coaches seriously hampers the learning process of a student. A student does not stumble upon a problem more often and solves the problem by himself. The result is we are getting dependent generations who have no confidence in themselves. Appalling state of innovation, lack of quality books, lack of pioneer in every field are tell-tale signs.


Repository of knowledge, book, that helps a learner in his/her formative years is not easy to find. Libraries, where a learner gets a chance to find them, are drying up. Government and private donations that sustain them are rare.

Journalist Samanth Subramanian once wrote a feature about the public libraries in the state of Tamil Nadu, one of the Indian states that produces super IT professionals and  scientists. Central and local government allocated special funds to the libraries scattered across the state, according to him. The fund used to buy various genres of books and magazines, including foreign ones, to quench the thirst of the bibliophiles. Thanks to government patronage, these institutional buyers help flourish local publication industry and dawn a breed of readers.

Red=2015 & Green=2017. Num of Technical Institution. Source: BANBEIS

Meanwhile, to instill special kind of technical knowledge, we need technical schools and teachers' training college. We failed miserably to  groom our future teachers. Stat furnished by BANBEIS on the number of technical institution is pretty disappointing. I find the SSC and HSC vocational training institute number pretty erroneous. However, number of Technical School, Graphic Art Institute, Textile Institute, Survey Institute, Agricultural Training Institute,Marine Institute and Medical Training Institute stands pretty much same in 2015 and 2017. There have been slight increase in the number of Polytechnic Institute and Technical Training Center.

Similarly, we need to recruit good teachers for these technical schools. If we are really serious , the number of institutions and teachers should have gone up.

Quality text books also lack here. Unfortunately, we do not have enough good educational content writers or academic to write legible and good text books that explain things to a learner crystal clear. Another hint that our education system is really poor.
Instead of going after the indirect reasons, we should focus on the right target in order to get good citizens and world class workforce.

Quality education is not a privilege to few but a right for all that holds the key to augment the threshold quality of a typical learner. Attaining that goal obviates the need to do research on such trivial issues on our labor force and spares the fund for more pressing one.