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Economic Policy Unit
Bangladesh Public Policy Watch
Bangladesh Public Policy Watch, first of its kind in the country and annual in nature, provides an update on the state of economy and society. The aim of the Policy Watch is to examine development intervention strategies by exposing its underlying paradigms and the impacts on the people, and to explore alternative approaches to public policy questions.
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Bangladesh Public Policy
Watch 2005 Millennium Development Goals: A Reality Check This year's Bangladesh Public Policy Watch presents a reality check on the achievement of millennium development goals (MDGs) in Bangladesh. The timely theme provides an independent review of implementation vis-a-vis the commitments made in UN Millenium Declaration (MD) by the largest-ever gathering of Heads of State in 2000 as they again meet from September 14 to 16, 2005 to take decision on how the governments have lived up to their promises. more |
Summary of the Interim Bangladesh Public Policy Watch in Bangla
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A rapid Assesment of WTO Hong Kong Ministerial meeting
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Slippery Slopes: How Hong
Kong Empowers Rich Countries to Choke the LDCs – A Rapid
Assessment This rapid assessment provides a brief account on the outcome of the Hong Kong Ministerial. The rhetoric of a special development package for the LDCs was aired in Hong Kong, and was told that, for sure, this Ministerial delivered on the promise of market access. The second part of the report examines the claim and contains an illustrative exercise that analyses the effectiveness of the deal by taking exportables of a single country to a single country market. Given the scenario, clearly, the country in question would not have much |
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benefit from the availed market access as her exports concentrated mainly on few products and very limited number of destinations. Apprehension is that many of the products under different tariff lines, in which she has export interests might be excluded from the market access - at least the US proclamation portends of such apprehension. The country could reap some benefit if she is capable enough to bargain with her bilateral counterparts to avail such facilities for some of the particular products, if not all, in which she has particular export interests. However, this requires a lot of ground work and, of course, it is inevitable to upgrade her negotiation skills. The final part of the report, thus, ends with some recommendations for the internal reflection and elements of strategy the LDCs may choose for their onward journey. To download the report save the link |
Trade Negotiations and Livelihood of the People (TNLP) Papers
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Demystifying
Effectiveness of Market Access for LDCs A Case Study of Bangladesh Apparel Exports to the USA
The rhetoric of
a special development package for the LDCs was
aired in
Hong Kong,
with the assurance that the Ministerial would deliver on the promise of
market access. The current study examine the effectiveness of the
DFQF provided to the products of LDCs, by taking exportables of a single
country to a single country market. For this purpose a trend analysis of
Bangladesh exports into the US market has been conducted for last six years. |
IFI
Watch-Bangladesh
IFI Watch-Bangladeshcontains fact-sheets, opinion
pieces and summaries of research reports that scrutinise and monitor the
activities of World Bank, IMF, WTO, ADB, with special focus on their roles
in Bangladesh.
This Issue of IFI Watch contains outcome of a study
conducted in Bangladesh as well as other five aid recipient
countries include Ghana, India, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia
under a pilot project of the UK Department for International
Development (DFID). The study was based on a survey to identify
country’s key stakeholders’ views about the performance of
multilateral organisations and their preferences for which
organisations disburse promised additional aid in future. The six
multilateral organisations that have been taken into account are:
the Asian Development Bank, the European Commission, the Global Fund
for AIDS, TB and Malaria, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and the World Bank.
IFI Watch Bangladesh, Vol.-5, No.- 2
The present caretaker government has been decided to review
the draft coal policy again, prepared in December 2007. The
government wants to determine mining method according to the
geological condition of respective coalmine. Open pit mining will
lead to excess production of coal beyond country’s annual demand
that will create pressure on the policy makers to give permission of
export of coal. In the draft policy it has stated that if there is
access production of high grade coking coal it can be exported in
the form of coke- a solid material derived from coking coal. But
minimum royalty rate has not been fixed in the draft policy. This
issue of IFI Watch analyses the coal policy and offers some
suggestion from people’s point of view. The Southwest Coastal Region of Bangladesh, located
at the mouth of the largest delta in the world is endowed with
unique environmental nature, fertile land and other natural
resources. Let, the region is suffering a development disaster due
to the projects, financed by Asian Development Bank (ADB). But
resilient people are mobilizing for the reversal.
The case study provides local people's perspective on
ADB-GEF-Netherlands funded Sundarbans Biodiversity Conservation
Project as Third Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) meets in the Cape Town, from 29-30 August 2006, to review GEF
policies and operations. The project alienated symbiotic eco-system approach
of human-animal-forest interdependence by creating artificial, alien and short term resource and livelihood systems for the local communities
and indigenous people in the name of 'poverty reduction' and was
unilaterally cancelled by the ADB, burdening the people of Bangladesh
to pay back the loan for a flawed-designed project.
IFI
Watch Bangladesh, Vol.-, No.- 1 (In Bengali)
To download the report save the
link
(In Bengali & English)
To download the report save the
link (In Bengali)
Waterlogging in the Southwest region of Bangladesh
IFI
Watch Bangladesh, Vol.-3, No.- 2
To download the report save the
link
A tale of Sundarban Biodiversity
Conservation Project (SBCP)
IFI
Watch Bangladesh, Vol.-3, No.- 1
To download the report save the
link
Bangla versions of various issues of IFI Watch-Bangladesh
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World Bank Immunity and Peoples’ Concerns(in Bengali) IFI Watch Bangladesh, Vol.- 3 No.- 1 |
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WTO and Bangladesh Agriculture(in Bengali)
IFI Watch Bangladesh, Vol.- 2 No.- 2 |
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WTO and Non-Agricultural Market Access(in Bengali) IFI Watch Bangladesh, Vol.- 2 No.- 3 |
Social Policy Unit
SCALING UP - Gender Equality in Primary Education in Bangladesh
Gender equality has received widespread attention in recent development discourse. The gender equality has often been reduced to numerical parity at the behest of projecting donor’s aid effectiveness and successes of government’s political expediency. The present report contends that view, argues that gender equality is not coherently assimilated neither by the current theoretical trends in education nor by the practices of the formal and informal systems, and provides conceptual clarity.
Pathshala is a regular publication of education section of Social Policy Unit, Unnayan Onneshan. Pathshala wants to enhance the existing analysis, discussion and critique on the discourse of neo-liberal education system, questions it and shows its limitation. This issue of Pathshala criticizes the neo-liberal project of reforming primary education of Bangladesh. It shows its limitations and its impact on our education system. It also suggests some policy reforms to achieve a more people oriented education system.
This study provides an in-depth investigation into the overarching
disparities existing in our primary education system through
studying input-output linkages in different streams of
primary education system and tries to develop clear pathway
of linking different steams for a sustainable uniform
quality education in Bangladesh. Its perspectives are built
around questioning the intrinsic value of education and its
outcome in different streams.
Click here to download the Report in English
Click here to
download the Report in Bengali
A gender responsive education, according to the report, must encompass a schooling system, the aim of which is the flourishing of the collective society, the community, as well as the flourishing of the individuals. The report in similar vain outlines an agenda for reform to scale up equality in education.
Education by definition is a natural ally of equality, if its sole purpose is assumed that the realm of education is enriched the more knowledge is shared and does not exclude others from its possession. But there is a relational aspect to equity, which is shaped in each context by its history, resources, power and ideology. Gender equality in education incorporates in itself not only the notions of numerical parity in access and participation but also equality in terms of outcomes. Viewing that gender discrimination is an expression of a larger system of social injustice, the present volume, contends that any intervention must relate to men’s and women's abilities to utilise their capabilities to realise their self potential while recognising that men's and women's abilities to utilise their capabilities depend on access to resources, entitlements, accountability and equality of opportunities.
Vol-1, issue-1, May’2008
Streams, Disparities and Pathways for Unified System
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The current
volume Encountering Exclusion reviews the National Education Policy (NEP),
National Plan of Action (NPA) and Primary Education Development Programme
(PEDP) and other policy instruments, plans and programmes in order to
provide domestic discourse on fair share in, and equal access to, primary
education, that the poor and marginalised children are able to enrol in
and complete quality primary education. The volume offers a point of
reference for citizens' engagement processes on policy design,
implementation and outcome in order to identify homegrown policy
alternatives and to build support for emerging policy options.
Right to education has not
only been promised through the Constitutional directives but also through
numerous international Covenants in which Bangladesh is a signatory. Many
of such promises carved out in different education policies and
programmes, as the volume spells out, have fallen through, becoming
rhetoric rather than reality in the education sector since policy changes
and resultant programmes neither originate from, nor are designed with,
stakeholder participation nor independent of the donors, limiting their
acceptability and undermining their
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many significant groups of people. So far all policy changes have
predominantly focused horizontal expansion for increasing access,
while the exclusion, according to the volume, is rooted not only due
to disquiet of access but also on concerns of equity, relevance and
social structure, thereby relentlessly jeopardising the credibility
of public policies. The volume demonstrates that top-down elitist
system of education, originally laid down according to policies and
framework of colonial administrators, has been in operation with
only minor changes and has created many tension points as regards
access, equity, relevance and structural dimensions of primary
education, and in effect has acted as a vicious circle of injustice.
This, according to this volume, has also methodically tended to
divorce the people and policy makers in articulating a bottom-up
approach to the design and implementation of plans to achieve
universal access to primary education. |
Listening to the People Living in Poverty: Oral Testimony of Dhaka Slum-Dwellers
The study listens to the experiences and perceptions of urban slum-dwellers to understand: (a) the processes and factors leading to the situation; (b) the perception on and experiences of transactional relationship between citizens and state; and (c) conditions viewed by them as necessary to move out of the situation. The study analyses the application of the methodology of Oral Testimony in order to make it more context specific, user friendly and appropriate.
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Focusing on the urban poverty, the study
elaborates on the processes which the urban slum-dwellers feel or
perceive are responsible for the state of affairs, their state and
reasons of exclusion, their views on the relationship between them
and the state in terms of identity, services and rights. |
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| Disability in Bangladesh: Prevalence,
Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices The
monograph promotes the rights of persons with disabilities in
Bangladesh by conducting research on the prevalence through a
nationwide representative sample survey, first of its kind in
Bangladesh, making an in-depth analysis of causes of disability, and
capturing the situation of the disabled in Bangladesh. |
Working Lives and Social Protection Unit
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National Minimum Wage for Workers’ Socio-economic
Security: Rights, Realities and Way Forward The paper exposes the fallacies of current debate on
minimum wage and orthodox emphasis on ‘flexibility’ in
labour market in Bangladesh. The paper amply
demonstrates the necessity of national minimum wage at
a level that ensures rights to live in dignity along
with rights in work and rights to work in just and
favourable conditions.
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Deserting the Sundarbans: Local People's Perspective on ADB-GEF-Netherlands Funded Sundarbans
Biodiversity Conservation Project
The Sundarbans Biodiversity Conservation
Project (SBCP) was the largest project of its king undertaken by the
government of Bangladesh aiming to establish a proper management
system for conserving the biological diversity and securing the
environmental and biological integrity of the Sundarbans. The US$
77.3 million project was intended to take place between 1999 and
2006, but the implementing agency and co-funder, the Asian
Development Bank suspended the project in September 2003 and
cancelled it in January 2005, citing problems with project design,
the implementation of some activities, and financial management.
This study illustrates that the Asian Development Bank and the
Global Environment Fund – the two main funding agencies failed to
put in practice their own policies. It also shows that one of the
key failures was the lack of recognition of the traditional
knowledge an customary practices of the sundarbans’ traditional
resource users, and their lack of involvement in the project. The
study concludes that the SBCP is best described as primary a design
failure and only secondarily and implementation failure. The funding
agencies thus should not be allowed to abandon the Sundarbans and
make the people pick up the bill for a failed project, but should be
made accountable to the local people’ especially the traditional
resource users, who should be compensated for increased restriction
on their resource use and their sources of livelihoods. |
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Resuscitating the Sundarbans
Customary Use of Biodiversity & Traditional Cultural Practices in Bangladesh
This is an output of collaborative action
research actively participated by stakeholders, researchers and
experts from home and abroad. It explores the nature of Sundarban
Reserve Forest, customary use of its biological resources and
related traditional cultural practices followed by the traditional
resource users which are compatible to |
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Sustainable Development and Environmental Risk:
Implications for the Financial Sector The paper throws light on main areas of environmental risk (of the borrower) that has implications for credit risk (of banks) including: (a) the risk that loans will not be repaid because borrower' |