Yet, despite these drawbacks, Bangladesh still scores hugely over India when it comes to access to health infrastructure. It is number 88 on the World Health Organisation’s country-wise list of health systems. India is way down at number 112, inviting an irritated reaction from Indian politicians.8

In the Human Development Report for 1999 which was released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Bangladesh is placed at the 150th position while India and Pakistan are at the 132nd and 138th spots, respectively!

The Bangladesh health survey estimated that the proportion of rural homes using electricity was a bare 8.2 per cent of the total.9

In the middle of all these statistics, several questions arise—how much are people in charge of their own lives? How secure are they in their present location, or how are they living? How do they respond to economic opportunities elsewhere? These are questions facing many underdeveloped countries, not least Bangladesh.

Over the years, the concept of human security has evolved beyond the physical safety of a person, community or country to that of exercising a range of choices in the development process.

The UNDP report outlines the two main aspects of human security:

‘Safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression.

‘Protection from hidden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life—whether in homes, in jobs or in communities. Such threats exist at all levels of national income and development.’10

For decades, it has been easy to characterize Bangladesh as the perennial poor man of Asia and especially of South Asia. The mental image is of a nation, reeling either from floods or dry spells, overcrowded, poor and badly governed. One of its foremost economists, Rehman Sobhan, says that in 1989-90 about 35 per cent of the population of the time or about 42 million people still lived in poverty.

‘Life expectancy at birth has remained unchanged at 56.0 in 1988 compared to 56.9 in 1980. Infant mortality has fallen very marginally from 101.4 in 1980 to 98 in 1989. Chronic malnutrition has remained largely unchanged with 56.1 per cent of the population reported as chronically undernourished in 1985-86 compared to 57.3 per cent in 1980-81. Adult literacy has risen marginally from 25.8 per cent in 1974 to 33 per cent in 1987. School attendance ratios show that enrolment rates have risen from 5-9 years old from 18.7 per cent in 1974 to 22.5 per cent in 1981.’ But for all age groups, barring the 20-24 group, they remained the same, indicating, Sobhan said, ‘that marginal improvements in primary school enrolment have not ensured improvement in the retention of children in these schools.’11

He declared emphatically: ‘While the debate may go on about the exact percentage point of improvement or decline registered in our conditions of life, there is no debate that compared to most other countries in Asia, Bangladesh has registered a weak growth performance, has a rather large number of its citizens living in poverty and has a poor record of human resource development (HRD).’12