What rules govern the world that we inhabit? Whether it is access to drinking water, schooling, better nourishment and incomes, the countries of the South have remained at the bottom of the heap despite much-repeated declarations of support and assistance to the poor. This is not to deny that there has been assistance. There has been significant help. But it is a fraction of what is needed.

Deprivation and inequality create huge disparities within regions and countries. The United Nations18 reels off a depressing set of figures with regard to the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world:

• Nearly 1.3 billion people do not have access to clean water.
• One in seven children of primary age school is out of school.
• About 840 million are malnourished.
• An estimated 1.3 billion people live on incomes of less than $1 per day.

There are some positive signs such as international migration and hard currency inflows as a result of workers’ remittances. Thus, although India tops the world with its huge diaspora which sends billions of dollars back to the homeland, Bangladesh is not far behind either. India tops the charts with $ 9.3 billion, or one-sixth of all foreign workers’ remittances, Bangladesh does not do too badly with $ 1.2 billion. Many of these workers are in the Middle East as also in South-East Asia and Europe. Yet, while India figures in the world’s top fifteen nations for direct foreign investment and portfolio flows, Bangladesh drops completely out of sight.

Take another barometer of expanding economies and opportunities. Migration. The undocumented number of migrants are several times those who are documented, who come on visas and passports. The United States itself is home to not less than four million illegal aliens. There are 700,000 of them in Malaysia of which not less than 70,000 are Bangladeshis.19

The number of illegal Indians and Bangladeshis in the United States and Britain are considerable. But the flow is not restricted to the rich West.

The Independent, a newspaper of Dhaka said that this situation was developing because Bangladesh found itself ‘more and more overwhelmed with the problem of overpopulation and unemployment.20

There is a growing acceptance and frankness about the outward movement of Bangladeshis to places such as the North East, West Bengal, New Delhi and other parts of India as well as to Pakistan. Indeed, the Bangladeshi migrant is moving illegally to new frontiers. With the tacit approval of host governments and communities, he is travelling to fast-developing countries such as Malaysia, as well as to one of the strongest economies in the world: Japan. These migrants include semi-skilled and unskilled workers as well as highly proficient specialists.21

These figures do not show up in Bangladeshi statistics. Nor do the remittances, or the movement to India. But there are ways of computing the number of people who have moved, with data from both countries.