A Master Plan for a Healthier Bangladesh

The problem is the system, not the people

Bangladeshis who move to Singapore, London or Toronto mostly work honestly, pay their taxes and do well. They are the same people. What changed is the system around them.

Corruption is an equilibrium: a trap everyone is stuck in together. When junior officers can’t live on their salaries, get sent to punishment postings for refusing a bribe, and never see anyone punished for taking one, honesty becomes self-sacrifice. In any country, most people won’t choose self-sacrifice.

Nor is it the whole truth that people are lost in their own concerns. Given a real chance, these same people have achieved extraordinary things together:

• On ever-shrinking land, farmers have nearly quadrupled rice output since 1971.¹
• Village health workers taught families across the country to make oral rehydration salts, helping save countless children.²
• Garment workers built one of the world’s leading export industries.³

They are not indifferent; they are under-served. When no system stands by anyone, looking after only yourself becomes the way to survive. A plan built on contempt for the public simply echoes the thinking of those in power. A good plan treats ordinary people as allies.

Societies that came back from the bottom

1. Hong Kong, 1974. Corruption was so normal that ambulance crews asked for “tea money” before carrying patients, and firefighters asked for it before turning on the water.⁴ Police corruption was organised like a business. After a senior police officer, under investigation for his unexplained wealth, slipped out of Hong Kong, the government created the ICAC, an anti-corruption commission that reported only to the Governor, outside police control. It worked on three fronts: investigation, prevention by redesigning procedures, and public education.⁵ Within about a decade, organised corruption in the public service had been broken, and today Hong Kong counts among the cleanest places in the world.⁶

2. Georgia, 2004. The traffic police was a byword for extortion. The new government dismissed around 16,000 traffic police overnight and hired a smaller, well-paid, retrained patrol force.⁷ Later it moved public services into “Public Service Halls”, where getting a passport or registering property takes minutes, with no officer deciding anyone’s fate.⁷ Within a few years Georgia’s corruption ranking had improved dramatically.⁸ The lesson: when the human choke-point goes, the bribe goes with it. (A caveat: that same government later concentrated power and committed abuses of its own.⁹ Reformers need checks too.)

3. Singapore, 1965. Separated from Malaysia, it had no natural resources, a recent history of race riots and widespread graft.¹⁰ It built a strictly merit-based civil service, paid officials well, and gave its anti-corruption bureau real teeth, including over ministers.¹¹ (A caveat: political freedom stayed limited. The merit system is worth copying, not the authoritarianism.)

4. South Korea, 1953. After the war it was poorer than Ghana¹² and run by corrupt, authoritarian governments. Land reform, a national obsession with education and export industry built the economy.¹³ Then citizens forced democracy in 1987,¹⁴ and since then several former presidents have gone to prison.¹⁵ In the end the institutions became stronger than the rulers.

5. Bengal itself. The famine of 1770, under East India Company rule, killed perhaps a third of Bengal’s people.¹⁶ Within about a century came the Bengal Renaissance¹⁷:

• Rammohan Roy campaigned against sati.¹⁸
• Vidyasagar won widows the right to remarry.¹⁹
• Begum Rokeya wrote Sultana’s Dream and opened schools for Muslim girls.²⁰
• Tagore won the Nobel Prize,²¹ and Nazrul gave a colonised people a voice.²²

Artists and thinkers led that revival, not politicians.

And Bangladesh itself. In December 1971, as the country was being born, US officials dismissed it as an “international basket case”,²³ and in 1974 came famine.¹⁶ Life expectancy, under 50 in the early 1970s, is now about 75, and on several health and gender indicators Bangladesh has moved ahead of neighbours that were once far ahead of it.²⁴

The common pattern:

1. A crisis opens a window.
2. A small committed core acts. Nobody waits for everyone to become good.
3. They change incentives instead of only preaching morals.
4. They deliver fast, visible wins that build trust.
5. They keep going for 15 to 30 years.

If society is rotten, is leaving the answer?

A saying often attributed to Hazrat Ali goes: “When society is rotten, leave it.” I’m not aware of that exact saying in the well-authenticated collections; many sayings attributed to him online are loose paraphrases. A well-known saying in Nahj al-Balagha comes closer:²⁵

In times of civil strife, be like a young camel that has neither a back to be ridden nor udders to be milked.

It means never becoming a tool in any faction’s hands. Refusing to be anyone’s tool is the mark of integrity and of a person of higher character.

And it is worth noting what he and the Prophet ﷺ actually did:

• Ali took up leadership during the worst strife of his era, and stayed until he was killed.²⁶
• The Hijra was not abandonment. It meant leaving to build Medina as a working model, and then returning.²⁷

Therefore:

• Leaving is a legitimate personal choice. No one owes their whole life to a broken system.
• Leaving can also be a strategy. Taiwan’s technology industry was built partly by engineers who trained abroad and came home, and the Indian and Irish diasporas opened doors through their networks and investment.²⁸
• It is possible to stay and still walk away from a rotten system, and that is often the most powerful path. By refusing to take part in wrongdoing, anyone can build small examples of honesty where they work. BRAC itself began as a small relief effort in one remote area; today it is one of the world’s largest development organisations.²⁹

The master plan, in three layers

Layer 1: Fix the state’s incentives

This layer needs political will.

• A truly independent Anti-Corruption Commission, on the Hong Kong model: a secure budget, protected tenure, and prevention and education as well as arrests. Officials’ asset declarations made public, and lifestyle audits.
• Honesty made affordable and safe. A living wage for civil servants, with the rules enforced hard. Fixed tenures, so transfers can’t be used as punishment. Whistleblower protection that works in practice; the law already exists on paper.³⁰
• No personal discretion at any counter, the Georgian way. Land records, mutation, passports, tax and trade licences fully online with legal deadlines, and automatic approval when a deadline passes.
• Open contracting. All public procurement data published in machine-readable form, so anyone can check who won which contract, at what price, against how many bidders.
• Merit-based recruitment through a fully independent Public Service Commission, with a lateral-entry route for outside specialists.
• Judicial independence and police reform. Without these, every other reform can be undone.
• Real local government with its own budgets. Sixty-four districts cannot be fixed from Dhaka.

Layer 2: A home for talent and artists

• Percent for art. 1 to 2% of every public construction budget set aside for art, and public buildings awarded through open design competitions instead of being handed to connected firms. Bangladesh produces world-class architects, from Muzharul Islam to the Aga Khan Award winner Marina Tabassum,³¹ yet the state rarely lets them compete fairly.
• Fellowships for artists, protected free expression, living cultural districts (Old Dhaka is a treasure we are losing), and properly funded Shilpakala and district cultural centres.
• A national talent pipeline: olympiads, research grants, and a programme for the diaspora to return with real positions, not ceremonial ones.

Layer 3: What citizens can do now

None of this needs anyone’s permission.

• Collective refusal. One person refusing a bribe gets punished; a whole profession refusing together changes the market. Associations of architects, engineers, doctors and lawyers can enforce their ethics codes and publicly back members who refuse.
• Honest institutions. Firms, schools and organisations that run honestly, and prove it works, become both evidence and training grounds.
• Documenting and publishing. Social audits of local projects, comparing budgets with what was actually built. Sunlight works.
• Organising and voting around specific demands, not personalities.
• Excellence at work, and mentoring others.

Every honest, skilled person who trains ten others is a reform in themselves.

AI’s role in building the nation

In building the nation, AI should be a helper, not a ruler. A country run by AI would have the least accountable government in history, because whoever controls the AI would control the country.

AI’s real strength lies elsewhere: taking power away from corrupt middlemen and putting it in ordinary citizens’ hands. For example:

• Procurement red flags: scanning tender data for single-bidder contracts, bid rigging and the same firms always winning.
• A legal assistant in Bangla: “What are my rights? What may this office charge? How long are they allowed to take?” Not knowing the rules is what makes extortion possible.
• Digitised land records: readable, searchable records would cut the roots of one of the most corrupt sectors.
• Advice for farmers: identifying crop disease from a phone photo, with soil and weather guidance, so the fertile land gives even more.
• A tutor in Bangla for every village child, closing the gap with Dhaka’s expensive schools.
• Budget tracking and fact-checking that turn rumours into evidence.

Where to begin

No single leader can change this country alone, and no machine should be handed that job. Every turnaround above began with a few people who did not wait for everyone else to change: a handful of investigators in Hong Kong, a few reformers in Georgia, Vidyasagar standing up for widows, Begum Rokeya opening a school for girls. They changed incentives, showed that it could work, and kept going for decades.

A healthier Bangladesh can begin the same way, wherever each of us stands: becoming excellent at our own work, refusing to be anyone’s tool, finding the other honest people in our field. They are there, waiting for someone to take the first step. Then building something that truly works, and telling others about it.

One honest example gives rise to ten more.

Sources

1. International Rice Research Institute, “Bangladesh” irri.org; The Business Standard, “Production of rice shoots up: Minister” tbsnews.net. ↩

2. Billah and others, Journal of Global Health (2019), “Bangladesh: a success case in combating childhood diarrhoea” pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov; BRAC, BRAC history brac.net. ↩

3. The Daily Star, “Bangladesh retains second largest apparel exporter spot in 2024” thedailystar.net. ↩

4. ICAC Hong Kong, “Brief History” icac.org.hk; ICAC, “The Mystery of a Police Detective Sergeant’s Wealth” icac.org.hk. ↩

5. ICAC Hong Kong, “Brief History” icac.org.hk; Corinna Wong (ICAC), UNAFEI Resource Material Series No. 107 unafei.or.jp. ↩

6. ICAC Hong Kong, “At a Glance” icac.org.hk; ICAC Post, Issue 33 icac.org.hk. ↩

7. World Bank (2012), “Fighting Corruption in Public Services: Chronicling Georgia’s Reforms” documents1.worldbank.org. ↩ ↩²

8. Transparency International, Georgia in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index transparency.org. ↩

9. Al Jazeera (2012), “Georgia prison abuse film sparks protests” aljazeera.com. ↩

10. National Library Board Singapore, “Singapore separates from Malaysia and becomes independent” nlb.gov.sg; Monetary Authority of Singapore, An economic history of Singapore mas.gov.sg. ↩

11. Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, Singapore’s corruption control framework cpib.gov.sg; CPIB, Our heritage cpib.gov.sg. ↩

12. World Bank, GDP per capita, Korea and Ghana data.worldbank.org. ↩

13. World Bank (2004), “Republic of Korea: Four Decades of Equitable Growth” documents1.worldbank.org. ↩

14. Britannica, South Korea: the Fifth Republic britannica.com. ↩

15. NPR (2018), Former president Lee Myung-bak sentenced to 15 years npr.org. ↩

16. Banglapedia, “Famine” en.banglapedia.org. ↩ ↩²

17. Banglapedia, “Bengal Renaissance” en.banglapedia.org. ↩

18. Britannica, “Ram Mohan Roy” britannica.com. ↩

19. Britannica, “Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar” britannica.com; Banglapedia, “Hindu Law” en.banglapedia.org. ↩

20. Banglapedia, “Hossain, Roquiah Sakhawat” en.banglapedia.org; University of Pennsylvania Digital Library, “Sultana’s Dream” digital.library.upenn.edu. ↩

21. NobelPrize.org, Rabindranath Tagore, facts nobelprize.org. ↩

22. Britannica, “Kazi Nazrul Islam” britannica.com; Banglapedia, “Islam, Kazi Nazrul” en.banglapedia.org. ↩

23. US Department of State, Office of the Historian, Minutes of the Washington Special Actions Group, 6 December 1971 history.state.gov. ↩

24. World Bank, Life expectancy at birth: Bangladesh, India and Pakistan data.worldbank.org. ↩

25. Al-Islam.org, Nahjul Balagha, sayings of Imam Ali, saying 1 al-islam.org. ↩

26. Britannica, “Ali” britannica.com. ↩

27. Britannica, “Hijrah” britannica.com. ↩

28. AnnaLee Saxenian, Brookings (2002), “Brain Circulation” brookings.edu; World Bank (2006), “Diaspora Networks and the International Migration of Skills” openknowledge.worldbank.org. ↩

29. BRAC, BRAC history brac.net; The Business Standard, “BRAC: How a post-war relief effort became the world’s largest NGO” tbsnews.net. ↩

30. Laws of Bangladesh, জনস্বার্থ সংশ্লিষ্ট তথ্য প্রকাশ (সুরক্ষা প্রদান) আইন, ২০১১ bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd. ↩

31. Banglapedia, “Islam, Muzharul” en.banglapedia.org; Aga Khan Development Network, Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Aga Khan Award for Architecture the.akdn. ↩