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How bureaucracy drives away Bangladesh’s educated diaspora

Published : Friday, 18 April, 2025 at 12:00 AM  Count : 443
Pranto Chatterjee
In the heart of Dhaka, amidst a bustling metropolitan landscape filled with youthful vigor and aspirations, a paradox looms large. Bangladesh, celebrated globally for its resilience, rapid economic growth, and a burgeoning entrepreneurial scene, continues to grapple with a silent, yet profound crisis: the elusive return of its brightest minds after their pursuit of higher education abroad. This issue becomes ever more poignant when juxtaposed with neighboring India, whose prestigious institutions, especially the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), eagerly welcome returning intellectuals, providing a nurturing environment ripe for innovation and academia. Why then does Bangladesh remain a distant observer, unable to attract its highly educated diaspora back into the fold?

To fully grasp the magnitude of this issue, consider the numbers. According to UNESCO, Bangladesh sees nearly 60,000 students leave its shores annually in search of higher education. Destinations like the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia promise advanced curricula, cutting-edge research facilities, and opportunities that seem elusive back home. However, of these students, a staggering minority returns, perpetuating a worrying trend of intellectual exile. A recent survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics revealed that less than 20% of Bangladeshi students studying abroad come back permanently after completing their education. By contrast, India's numbers narrate a different tale. A vibrant ecosystem at institutions like IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, and IISc Bangalore consistently attracts back roughly 65% of their academic diaspora, fueling India's rise as a global technology powerhouse and research hub.

What, then, lies at the core of Bangladesh's conundrum? One primary issue is the pervasive bureaucratic inertia and rigidity entrenched in the Bangladeshi educational and governmental systems. Unlike India's proactive, policy-driven framework designed explicitly to integrate returning scholars into the academic and entrepreneurial landscapes, Bangladesh's academic institutions remain riddled with structural inefficiencies, limited funding, and political entanglements. Aspiring lecturers who return with global qualifications are often met with cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles and political favoritism, frequently discouraging the brightest minds from considering academia as a viable career path.

Take, for instance, the story of Dr. Fahim Rahman, a Bangladeshi scholar who earned his PhD from Imperial College London in renewable energy technologies. Despite publishing papers in internationally acclaimed journals and possessing credentials highly coveted worldwide, Dr. Rahman found himself entangled in an endless maze of bureaucratic delays and unofficial requirements when seeking a lecturer position at a reputed public university in Bangladesh. Frustrated by repeated setbacks and unclear evaluation criteria, he ultimately chose a lucrative research position in Germany, a country eager to leverage his expertise. Unfortunately, Dr. Rahman's story isn't isolated but emblematic of a broader systemic malaise.

Beyond bureaucratic hurdles, economic considerations weigh heavily on the minds of prospective returnees. In countries such as India, China, and Malaysia, returning academics are often presented with robust financial incentives, including attractive salaries, generous research funding, and housing subsidies. India's ambitious "GIAN" (Global Initiative of Academic Networks) and China's "Thousand Talents Plan" provide shining examples of how financial and logistical support can magnetize intellectual talent back home. In Bangladesh, however, lecturer positions are notoriously underpaid and undervalued, with initial salaries often not surpassing USD 400 per month-barely sufficient to sustain a dignified urban lifestyle, let alone incentivize returnees accustomed to higher standards abroad.

Additionally, research infrastructure in Bangladesh remains starkly inadequate. Laboratories and research centers frequently lack modern equipment and essential resources, a scenario painfully inadequate for those accustomed to the sophisticated research environments of developed nations. India's IITs, on the other hand, boast state-of-the-art facilities funded through substantial governmental investments and lucrative industry partnerships. Consequently, returning academics to Bangladesh often find themselves intellectually and professionally stranded, their potential unrealized due to infrastructural deficiencies.

The broader South Asian narrative reveals instructive contrasts. India and China have skillfully integrated returning intellectual capital into their developmental strategies. This approach, coupled with policy-driven incentives, has created a virtuous cycle of innovation and economic prosperity. Even smaller neighbors like Sri Lanka and Nepal, despite their limited resources, have begun making concerted efforts toward reforming their higher education frameworks to attract diaspora academics. Bangladesh, however, remains conspicuously absent from these strategic shifts, relying instead on traditional, often outdated mechanisms that fail to inspire confidence or excitement among its diaspora.

But this narrative need not remain bleak. Bangladesh, resilient and adaptable as history testifies, has every potential to reverse this intellectual exodus. Strategic reforms targeting academia-such as transparent recruitment processes, competitive salaries, performance-based incentives, and substantial research funding-can dramatically reshape the landscape. Public universities must be liberated from excessive political influence, allowing academic freedom to flourish and scholarly merit to triumph. A national policy explicitly designed to welcome and integrate the intellectual diaspora is no longer a luxury; it is an urgent necessity.

Indeed, the path forward must be holistic, addressing structural deficiencies, economic incentives, and administrative reform collectively. Lessons from India's IITs and China's academic policies illuminate a pathway. Yet Bangladesh's solution must be authentically Bangladeshi, rooted deeply in the nation's unique context, socio-political realities, and aspirations.

Ultimately, the essence of a nation's future lies in the vibrancy of its intellectual heartbeat. Bangladesh stands at a crossroads. By nurturing, rather than neglecting, its brilliant minds abroad, the country can rewrite its narrative from one of lost opportunities to a beacon of intellectual renaissance. Until then, each brilliant mind lost abroad remains not just a personal loss, but a profound national tragedy, a silent echo resonating across generations.

The writer is a postgraduate student in Autonomous Vehicle - Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy


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