Bangladesh in August 2018 - a snapshot

I visited Bangladesh for a little more than 3 weeks. It was from mid August to early September of 2018. Met many relatives, friends and colleagues which gave me a window to look into the past to regain the joy of my old time. However, I would like take an observer’s perspective to asses the country during my short visit.

The country had just resumed its business from the wake up protest by the students that had sparked from the uproar of students killing by a bus that ran over a group of students standing roadside. Also the election was coming up soon. Though it was a pure vacation trip but I couldn’t but observing few things and would like to share with all. 

• The flyovers in Dhaka are beautiful and mostly effective. It’s a demonstrable progress in the transportation landscape of Dhaka.

• Roads are crowded and dirty just like they were a decade ago. Cleanliness is yet to get into the habit of the nation.

• Cost of living is extremely high. The rickshaw fare that was 10-15 taka on 2010 are now 40-50 taka. A green coconut costs 60 taka and no bargain would take the price down. 

• Lots of people have money and good enough money to spend generously. This has caused the price to go high without any correlation to the supply side.

• People are very busy of making more and more money. A race to become richer, and quickly, is very much the name of the game in town.

• General law and order (excluding the politically motivated stuffs) seems to have improved, at least from the perspective of common day to day living. People can make money by doing any kind of work. Sellers in the market are asking ridiculously high price for goods and the buyers are happily agreeing with that ask. Both seller and buyer seems to be happy ever after.

• People are in fear of government, law enforcement agencies and politics. There’s no effective opposition party in Bangladesh. People are in general fearful that the upcoming election would be unfair, bloody and rigged. Government would do anything to stay in power. There seems to be grave like peace in the political landscape.

• The democratic institutions are either destroyed or corrupted by the money and power. This is the long term risk the country would have to face and pay the cost in future due to the lost democratic institutions.

• Infrastructure improvements varied across the country. For example: Chittagong- Cox’s bazar highway had given extremely hard time due to the bad condition whereas Dhaka - Chittagong highway was very good.

• People in public place seems to become nicer in conversation. Generally, there is less chaos in the road and public places. However that didn’t change the behavior that made the country so dirty to live in.

• The smoke and dirt in Dhaka gifted the city infamous haze like weather. It was humid, hot and unbearable for the first few days. It turned into little better later part of my trip. Probably I became more used to after a week or so.

• Uber and Patthao are two great addition to the transportation of Dhaka. Without Uber I wouldn’t have the pleasant transportation service that I enjoyed throughout my trip. People like me who are vacationing but don’t have personal car, would be in difficult situations without these services.

• Influenced of India is everywhere. In the job, market, even in the restaurants. People seems to like to eat Indian cuisine and visit India. A big but predictable shift has swept the country.

After all the good and bad side - this is the country of my birth, this is the country where I grew up and this is the country that gave me the education to stand high in this world with dignity.