Local technology for development
UNDERDEVELOPMENT breeds a hundred and one vices. The mindset of dependency is one of them. We have long been beholden to the very advanced West for about everything. Not long ago, a major portion of the country's development budget was dependent on foreign aid. However, of late, the nation has been able to lower this dependency to a considerable extent, thanks to the inflow of remittance and earnings from exports.
Countries like India in South Asia or the East Asian Tigers, as well as other emerging economies in different parts of the world, have made great strides in their economic development in recent times. Interestingly, they have similar stories to tell about how they could gradually wean away from foreign aid and the models of development the aid-giving nations and agencies would like to set for them.
As these nations gained some degree of independence from the aid-givers in terms of choosing their own development paths, the economic growths they achieved also turned out to be something to which they can lay claim to as their own. Mercifully, with the increase in its national income, Bangladesh, beset, though, with more problems than it can tackle, is well on the path towards gaining some independence in respect of setting its own development goals.
Taking charge of a nation's development does not consist only in having the financial resources necessary for the purpose under one's command. In fact, economic independence involves development on many fronts all at a time. Financial resources doubtless comprise a very vital component of growth, but it cannot alone deliver the goods unless other factors also play their due role.
In the modern setting, a nation is also desperately in need of technology for industrial growth. But for technology, we have again to depend on the West. The Western world, through endless discoveries in science and technology over the centuries, has created a huge resource-base for technology. At the same time, to match this technological growth, the advanced countries have created an expert manpower base to harness their enormous technological power.
So, technology is yet another broad front where Bangladesh will have to gain some degree of freedom, if it means to grow according to its own terms in the future. But it is also too early to dream of such freedom as the country still lags eons behind the highly industrialised countries in technology.
Some great minds made some efforts in the past to reduce the economic and technological gap between the highly industrialised countries in the North and the backward and impoverished nations in the South. Mention may be made here of one such attempt on a global scale taken between 1977 and 1983 under the leadership of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt. The grand mission was styled Brandt Commission. Among many of the recommendations made by that Commission was transfer of technology from the North to the South. The first report of the Commission, "North-South: A Program for Survival," dwelt on such vital issues for creating a condition for distribution of global resources between the rich and the poor nations in a more equitable manner.
But the high hope of bridging the North-South gap is still a far cry from the reality. It is not simply the lack of intention on the part of the developed nations to hand over their hard-earned technological resources to the Third World that comes in the way. In truth, the backward nations lack the very social, human and technical infrastructures to absorb the technological resources of the advanced North, even if the latter wanted to transfer those to the former. One is again back to square one, for there is no short-cut way to achieve this mission. So, for technological development, too, an underdeveloped nation like Bangladesh will have to learn it the hard way.
It is at this point that one is again faced with the dilemma of choosing the right course of development path from among the various options open before the nation.
Since, like in many other third world countries, the existing infrastructure in Bangladesh to absorb advanced technology from the North is rather weak, our first priority would be to develop and strengthen the necessary human infrastructure first. The technology already available should be used in a more efficient and innovative way to save cost and simultaneously develop our expertise to handle higher and costlier technology when the time and condition are opportune. However, such an option would be applicable only in the cases where use of high technology is not indispensable.
It is worth noting here the recent report on the suggestion to use local technology for dredging rivers made by Professor Khabirul Haque Chowdhury of Buet. However, such local technology and know-how are available in other fields like transport, energy, agriculture and medicine to name but a few.
To cut the long story short, we have also to grow out of our excessive technological dependency on the highly advanced economies to ensure our development on a sustainable level. Once we are able to attain a certain degree of freedom in this respect, time will not be far off when we would be craving for still higher technology to meet our emergent needs.
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