Bangladesh: a symbol of hope for world's poor

From:

Once in a while we hear about some good news that is happening in the world. I missed seeing any reports of the situation in Bangladesh. That is, until World Ark published by Heifer International, printed a report by Stephen Smith in the Summer 2009 issue.Considered an international basket case, it nearly starved to death in the 1974. Since then that little country teeming with overpopulation has transformed itself to become a symbol of hope with important lessons for the rest of the world seeking to end global poverty.

The poverty rate has fallen steadily since 1974 from 75 percent to 60 percent in 1992 to less than 40 percent today. Life expectancy has risen from 45 years to more than 63 years. The literacy rate has doubled, and gender parity has been achieved.The author lists five major reasons.

First, emphasis on a rice crop using modern seed and methods, irrigation and roads.
Second,the population growth rate has now fallen to less that 2 percent.
Third, NGOs, or nongovernmental organizations, have played a central role involving the citizens by the millions in education and leadership.
Fourth, the garment industry has provided jobs and income for hundreds of thousands of women.
And fifth, money sent home from workers from other countries now provides more that 8 percent of the gross domestic productThe author believes that Bangladesh is an example of foreign aid that allows and encourages people to help themselves. It is still a very poor country with many problems, but progress is being made.

Don Rea, Albany

Bangladesh’s global ranking

Well, we topped the TI’s corruption list for consecutive four years. But what about Bangladesh’s global ranking in other areas? See a handy list, courtesy of WolframAlfa, a new computational knowledge engine, being dubbed as a new threat to Google. It makes all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. One needs to enter question or calculation, and WolframAlpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer.

Here are some ranking for Bangladesh:

1. Area 94th
2. Population 7th
3. Population density 10th
4. Population growth 73th
5. Life expectancy 186th
6. Median age 145th
7. GDP 63th
8. GDP at parity 49th
9. GDP per capita 202th
10. GDP real growth 70th
11. Gini index 39th
12. Unemployment rate 177th

For details on Bangladesh data, visit here.

And this one puts Bangladesh's democracy at 119, corruption at 134 and press freedom at 112.

Joy hok ranking businesser!