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COLUMN

Population: Bomb or boon

Sarwar Ahmed
An evening MBA student, Kacsuzzaman, requested if I could take a session on strategic man agement for government officials at Bangladesh Public Administration TYainlng Centre (BPATC). Kaes is on deputation at the TYaining Centre. Yes why not, I agreed.
This was a new and interesting proposition and I drove to Savar, wondering how the session would go. In the wide green expanse of BPATC, 1 was pleasantly surprised at the well-kept complex. You could sense the pride in the employees as they hurried around to keep their training commitments and fulfill duties.
I joined the group of 35 participants for a cup of tea. As we settled down in the training room, I showed a population table -- a scenario expected in the year 2050.
During our independence in 1971, we were 75 million mouths. Our population will grow to 234 million, adding another 78 million in the next 40 years.
Strategy is about how we handle the future, be it a business or a nation. My question to the participants was, given this scenario, what do they expect of Bangladesh in 2050.
Working in groups, participants painted a dour and depressing picture of the likelihood of heightened unemployment leading to higher crime rates, burgeoning illiteracy and a nation struggling to feed itself. Exactly. If we do not think strategically now, this unhappy prophecy will come true.
The next question for the group was what we need to do to ensure this does not happen. We focused on five main areas for the convenience the five groups -- education, food, energy, manpower export and health.
What sort of a vision and objectives should we have in each of these sectors? Each group came up with creative and interesting objectives, given this scenario of
population growth.
The vision outlined by the group working on education came up with an ambitious education for all by 2050. As a strategic objective, they set out to achieve high school education for all eligible students.
This is where tilings got interesting. Remember the strategic vision is education for all. Assuming that a conservative five percent of the population will be at a high school age, this would translate to nearly 12 million students. For a teacher to student ratio of 1:30, we would need nearly four lakh teachers at the high school level, and that too, if one teacher is teaching all the subjects!
If there are five subjects, at least 20 lakh teachers will be required.
How many teachers training colleges do we have? Somebody interjected, fourteen, and for higher secondary teachers, only five. Assuming a pass rate of a thousand teachers a year from each of these institutions, the annual churn is 19,000 teachers. How many teachers do we have now? Nearly 4,00,000. So how many years do need to produce the 20 lakh?
Strategy is about asking the right questions to the objectives we set for the future. When we talked of Bangladesh's food security in 2050, it was abundantly clear that we have to double our agricultural productivity,- especially if we look at India's population growth. Why India? India has been a buffer for Bangladesh in
providing food grain. Not anymore. With the projected 8 million tonnes of rice shortage due to a failed monsoon this year, India has tightened its belt and is not allowing any export.
With climate change and its unpredictable effects on weather, what guarantee do we have of this benign buffer, or of imports from other countries? None, I can assure you.
What choice do we have other than ensuring our own food production? None.
What are we doing today to make sure we have that food security, 10,20 or 40 years from now? If Bangladesh wants food security, it needs to proride incentives to its agricultural scientists to stay and innovate for the future. Instead of
only subsiding agricultural inputs, we need to subsidise agricultural research. Any thought in this direction?
As we questioned each of the visionary objectives of the not too distant future, as future policy makers, the realisation sank in the participating government officials that we are running out oftime.
If we do not draw up do-abie strategies now, and not the drinking, eating and meeting strategies, it may well be too late to avoid the Malthusian prophesy of the future and certainly not the golden Bangladesh we dream and yearn of.
The writer is the managing director of Syngenta Bangladesh Ltd.