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Bangladesh in the 2 1st Century

Bridging the gap

This piece is from the series of summaries of papers presented at the "Bangladesh in the 21st Century" conference held at Harvard University (June 13-14). The views expressed in the articles are expressly those of the authors.
Emdad Khan
WE live in a world of gaps. The key to minimising these gaps is global development through education, entrepreneurship and innovation. We mainly focus on bridging the gap due to the digital divide.
The real benefits of bridging the digital divide need to be exploited through education, with emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation to create valuable resources to drive economic, social and other developments.
In this world of over 6.5 billion people, over 4 billion people are poor- -40% live in poverty, and 16% live in extreme poverty [Stiglitz 2006]. Apart from inadequate income, two other issues are heavily associated with people living below the poverty line: insecurity and powerlessness.
One World Bank report published a nice statement from a young poor woman in Jamaica that captures the sense of powerlessness: "Poverty is like living in jail, living under bondage, waiting to be free."
In general, the poor have few opportunities to speak out. When they speak, no one listens; when someone does listen, the reply is that nothing can be done; when they are told something can be done, nothing is ever done.
On the oilier side of the coin, there are the rich people, much smaller in number, but they own over 80% of the world's wealth! They enjoy all the benefits of this civilisation, they control the world economy, they control world business and world laws -- they control almost everything except poverty. Well, not quite true though. They try to minimise poverty through donations, philanthropic works, foundations and the like. Obviously, that is not enough, as poverty has been increasing for a long time now. In order to minimise the rich-poor gap and other related gaps, we need to ask the following key questions:
What are the reasons for such huge gaps? What arc the types of gaps? Can these gaps be truly bridged, if so how?
In Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, many people face problems everyday. So, the answers to the above key questions would also be applicable for Bangladesh.
But before trying to answer these key questions and proposing some practical solutions to minimise the gaps and improve the economy, let's take a closer look at the key problems.
Broadly speaking, inequality is inherent in Mother Nature. The world's natural resources were not uniformly distributed, different races were born in different parts of the world getting different resources.
Not every human is born with the same capabilities, not every human develops the same level of intelligence even under the "same" environment, etc. In short, inequality is present from birth.
So, as the human race grows, more gaps and inequalities develop. Today, we have rich-poor gap, gap in natural resources, gap in ethnicity, gap in male-female capabilities, gap due to the computer revolution (th? so- called -digital divide), the gap due to disabilities, and so on. This implies that even if we do our best to minimise all the gaps some gaps will remain. That is why Darwin said: "Only the fittest will survive."
So, should we even try to reduce all these gaps, can we really make these gaps go away? If yes, how can we do so? If not, what gaps can we really try to minimise? These are the few key issues we will discuss here and propose a practical solution to "truly" bridge the digital divide which, in turn, will minimise the rich-poor gap and help improve social, cultural and other conditions.
Not all gaps can be eliminated or reduced to the same level. For example, in natural resources a country cannot just acquire the missing natural resources. We have some good control on some gaps and relatively less control on other gaps.
Digital divide, for example, is a gap that can be reduced substantially when we compare it with reducing the gap between rich and poor. Yes, bridging the digital divide will eventually help reduce the gap between rich and the poor, but there are many other factors that contribute to the rich-poor gap-
So, we would need to understand that there will be some gaps ■ as it is inherent in the system. However, lowering it to a tolerable
level, and keeping on lowering it, will continue to yield a better world and hence that should be our goal.
The theme of our proposed solution has four major components:
• Bridge the digital divide and language divide in a practical and effective way.
• Use the benefits of bridging the digital and language divide to provide useful, targeted and valuable education.
• Focus on sustainable growth through innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Ensure a good model to tie (a), (b) and (c).
The bottom (also known as base) of the pyramid people may be poor from financial standpoint, but not from intelligence standpoint. Their number is much larger and, hence, once we can make them contribute, they can become a huge resource, and contribute to their own economy and also to the local, regional and global economy.
Such a great resource would be very valuable to top of the pyramid people, many of whom are looking for investment with good return using low cost resources. Thus, it can be a good win-win situation for both rich and poor.
Gt. Emdad Khan. Internet Speech. Inc, CaSforua. USA He can be reached at” Emdad-3'nternetspeech com