The Aid Lab - in pictures

1. Cover image The American Embassy in Dhaka
S. M. Samsu

2. About The Aid Lab
In 2013, Ferdous Jahan of Dhaka University
and I were researching a DFID-ESRC project
called Food Riots and Food Rights. We kept
being told that it was ‘because of the famine’
that Bangladesh managed the 2008 food crisis
so well.
People don’t talk much about the famine of
1974. The silence got me wondering: was it
possible that that terrible event had had wider
impacts? What had it meant for the elite and
their views on the development project?
What did it mean for what Mushtaq Khan calls
the ‘political settlement’?
Rereading the literature on Bangladesh and
reflecting on my own decades of research, I
concluded that the famine led to a
‘subsistence crisis contract’ between the
Bangladeshi elite, the masses, and their
donors. This meant a commitment to
protecting against the crises of subsistence
and survival that rural landless Bangladeshis,
particularly women, so regularly faced. This, I
believe, provided – continues to provide – the
strong foundations for Bangladesh’s human
development success.

3. Why is Bangladesh The Aid Lab?
When it won independence in 1971,
Bangladesh had virtually no geostrategic
significance. Yet it now plays a critical
ideological role in the contemporary world
order, as proof that the neoliberal
development paradigm works under the
most challenging of circumstances.
I call Bangladesh ‘The Aid Lab’ as a
reminder of the real – often far from
ethical - experiments through which aid
tested development theories and practice
on the Bangladeshi nation.
I chose this rickshaw painting of the
American Embassy in Dhaka to highlight
the significance of global actors and
institutions in Bangladesh’s development
process. But I also like how it suggests
their domestication: Bangladesh has
reshaped development ideas, and now
seeks to promote ‘the Bangladesh model’
of development. It has nationalized the
Aid Lab, turning it into its own machine.

4. Bangladesh’s
surprising
successA Police officer from Bangladesh, serving under the United Nations Police attends a ceremony during
which a total of 56 vehicles were handed over to the Somali Police Force. The vehicles were donated
by the Government of Japan through UNSOM in Mogadishu, Somalia on 9 September 2015.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/unsom/

5. What’s so surprising about Bangladesh’s
success?
The surprise is that Bangladesh has
progressed faster on human development
than many of its comparators, and from a
lower base. External observers were not
optimistic about Bangladesh’s prospects in
the early years.
This success cannot be explained by
economic growth alone. The state and
Bangladeshi NGOs have used aid and their
own resources to play a major role here,
delivering services right to rural
households, typically reaching women first
in highly innovative ways.
This poor, agrarian, patriarchal society has
been transformed in this time, most visibly
in the life-chances of rural women.
Bangladesh now plays an increasingly
prominent role in global development,
trade, and climate change negotiations.
Bangladeshi women are no longer
depicted as poor victims as often as in the
past; instead we see them travelling,
earning, organizing and even (as in this
picture) keeping peace around the world.

6. Malthusia
Picture: ©NOAA (Mariners Weather Log, January 1971, pg. 19) [Public domain], via
Wikimedia Commons
BayofBengalTCNov1219700956UTCITOS1.png
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABayofBengalTCNov1219700956UTCIT
OS1.png

7. Was Bangladesh really a ‘basket
case’?
Henry Kissinger’s reference to Bangladesh as a
‘basket case’ in 1971 was a crude but accurate
enough summary of conditions facing the new
nation. In the early 1970s, the new nation of
Bangladesh became the poster child for
Malthusian ideas and policies among the right,
and the object of humanitarian concern among
progressives.
But the ‘basket case’ label ignored the political
ecological, imperial and neo-colonial conditions
that impoverished the vast Bangladeshi
population in the first place. The 1971 war of
liberation was devastating, a genocidal effort to
suppress a rebellious province. It followed a
series of major historic disasters that the people
of East Bengal had faced without the help of a
state that had their back, including the 1943-4
famine created by Churchill’s wartime policies.
The liberation struggle was triggered by the
1970 Bhola cyclone which killed up to 500,000
people (previous picture). The Pakistani regime
showed it cared little for the people of the Bay
of Bengal. Protecting people against deadly
disasters became central to the nationalist
struggle, and to the mandate of the new state.

8. A
Bangladesh
©Arju Rahman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Shahbag_Protest
February 11, 2013
Used under Creative Commons Licence
https://www.flickr.com/photos/arjurahman/8465758848/in/dateposted/

9. Is there a ‘Bangladesh paradox’?
From these Malthusian beginnings,
Bangladesh made rapid progress, and by
the 2000s was lauded as a development
success story. The World Bank identified
a ‘Bangladesh paradox’, puzzled by the
fact of rapid development success
without ‘good governance’. (Naturally,
the World Bank concluded their policies
explained Bangladesh’s success.)
Politics remain confrontational and
governance is far from perfect. But
successive Bangladeshi regimes have
consistently focused on human
development, and been highly
responsive to basic needs. Disaster
management, poverty reduction and
food security have remained ‘above
politics’ or party competition, and
largely insulated against ’bad’
governance. This is a classic case of
Merilee Grindle’s ‘good enough
governance’.

10. A human
development
success story
Sustainable Development Goals
Icon credit:
http://unicdhaka.org/files/2015/09/SD
Gs-Bangla-Icons-final.jpg

11. Development success as performance
legitimacy
Bangladesh performed creditably on the
Millennium Development Goals,
winning a load of awards and
acknowledgement for its achievements.
It is proceeding full steam ahead with
plans to achieve the Sustainable
Development Goals, and with its own
home-grown development agenda.
Development performance has become
an increasingly important part of
government legitimacy in Bangladesh.
Governments report performance on
development indicators as a sign of
their commitment and competence. It
may be particularly important for the
legitimacy of the present government,
because of the effective absence of
political competition and the closure of
democratic space in recent years.

12. The elites,
the masses,
& their
donors
Cover of Ajker Orthokonto
September 1, 2013. Issue 4, Year 3
http://businessnews24bd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Cover-Final.jpg

13. The emergence of a ‘subsistence crisis
contract’
The argument of this book rests on the
idea that out of the horrors of the cyclone,
war, and famine, a social contract emerged
between the Bangladeshi elites, the
(mainly rural, landless) masses, and the
country’s aid donors. This was a contract
of domination, not of equals, and
Bangladesh was pushed into liberalizing
policies it had not originally planned. But
the contract to protect against crises of
subsistence and survival has held over
time, because the elites knew their
survival depended on it. There was a
strong elite consensus on the basics of
development that has lasted across
regimes.
It helped that the Bangladeshi elite have
been unusually close to the rural masses.
This situation is now changing with the
new affluence and the rise of new
business interests, such as ‘Prince Dr.
Moosa (pictured above). For now,
however, the compact appears to hold.

14. The broken
patriarchal
bargain
Bengali women fetching water from the well in earthenware pots, 1944.
Picture: Cecil Beaton for HMG Ministry of Information
National Archives catalogue reference.: INF 14/435/7
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bengali_women_fetching_water_fr
om_the_well_in_earthenware_pots,_1944.jpg

15. The breaking of the patriarchal bargain
What Deniz Kandiyoti calls the ‘patriarchal
bargain’ had been breaking down in East Bengal
over decades or longer. The agrarian basis for
family and social life changed as more people
became landless, and women’s post-harvest
processing and child-bearing became less
central to family survival and success.
From conversations with Naila Kabeer, I started
to think about the effects of wartime violence
including the campaign of mass rapes, and the
collective trauma this meant for gender and
social relations.
The anthropologist Nayanika Mookherjee has
shown that the new Bangladeshi state took a
pioneering role with respect to women who had
been raped during the war. I argue that this was
the start of a strikingly different relationship
between Bangladeshi women and their state.
This relationship was an important source of
‘biopower’, or the state’s ability to exert power
over life and death.

16. The emergence
of the ‘woman
issue’ in
development
The War in the Far East, 1944. Indian women labourers, engaged in
airfield construction work, pass mechanics working on a Royal Air Force
Consolidated Liberator bomber at a base in Bengal [note: possibly
Tejgaon Airport).
Credit: Royal Air Force official photographer
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_War_in_the_Far_Ea
st%2C_1944_CF166.jpg

17. Women at the centre
The image of East Bengali women carrying
water c. 1944 by Cecil Beaton of Vogue
fame, suggested an unchanging
traditionalism in the lives of rural women.
But in key respects, the lives of Bengali
women were not those of an unchanging
peasant patriarchy. They were already on
the frontline of global crises and conflicts,
through empire, trade and climate change.
In the previous image we see women
building a WW2 airforce base, probably
the Tejgaon airport in Dhaka. This was also
during Churchill’s wartime famine.
As the sociologist Sarah White has argued,
representations of Bangladeshi women
have always been deeply problematic,
veering between victim and heroine,
closely shaping the development
interventions intended to ‘bring women
into development’ and empower them.

18. 1974
© Lutheran World Federation photo
Kurigram gruel kitchen
November 1974
Used in The Lutheran, January 22, 1975.
ELCA Archives image
www.elca.org/archives

19. The last famine
It is difficult and contentious to discuss
the famine of 1974, but I worry that if
we forget that it happened and what it
meant, we risk forgetting its vital
lessons.
The 1974 famine was the product of a
lethal combination of factors: major
floods, a global food price spike, aid
donors playing Cold War politics with
food aid, inadequate relief, and a
political economy that favoured the
urban middle class over the rural poor. If
the population had not been so poor
and hungry already, devastated by the
events of previous years, 1.5 million (2%
of the population, according to
estimates by the economist and
chronicler of the 1974 famine
Muhiuddin Alamgir) may not have died.
Part of the tragedy of 1974 was that this
was not a famine caused by a negligent
political elite, but fundamentally by a
lack of state capacity, the lack of the
power to keep its most vulnerable
citizens alive.

20. Never again
Local vegetable market in Khulna, Bangladesh. April 17, 2014.
Credit: M. Yousuf Tushar.
©WorldFIsh https://www.flickr.com/photos/theworldfishcenter/
Used under Creative Commons license

21. The long shadow of famine
1974 was the last major food crisis Bangladesh
suffered. Disasters never stopped – in fact they
increased in frequency – but capacity to warn,
protect and recover was built. Food security was
gradually assured through a mix of agricultural
investment, opening food markets, and food and
cash transfers to the hungry.
Why did famine have this effect in Bangladesh?
One reason was the political crisis, particularly
the brutal assassination of the founding father of
the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, along with
most of his family in 1975. A second was the
economic crisis that engulfed the bankrupt
nation. The political settlement that emerged in a
15 year period of authoritarian rule gained
legitimacy by building the foundations for food
security and disaster management for which the
nationalists had struggled.
The famine also inspired several of Bangladesh’s
famous NGOs and the Grameen Bank. Witnessing
the devastation firsthand provided a strong
motivation to work with grassroots communities,
particularly women, to do development from the
ground up.

22. Making Bangladeshis
Three Kids, Three WIndows September 22, 2012
Credit: ©Sudipta Akra Das
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sudiptadas/
Used under Creative Commons licence

23. Building biopower
In the years after the famine, there was a strong,
aid-driven focus on population control. But for the
ruling elite, the development project was to turn
rich human resources into national wealth. For that,
the people needed basic education, to be able to
benefit from new opportunities. And they needed to
survive in order to be able to thrive.
From the democratic period (after 1991), human
development indicators improved steadily. With the
help of aid, the state built schools and clinics and
outreach services, partnering or competing with the
growing NGOs to reach women and children in the
poor rural heartlands. National statistics systems
enabled the state and its aid and NGO partners to
monitor progress, detect problems, and plan new
policies and programmes.
This new state capacity amounted to what Foucault
called ‘biopower’, or the power over life and death.
Biopower was essential to the development of a
state that had been pushed into global markets with
little but its labour power to sell. Crucially, the
project of human development aligned closely with
the desires of the population itself.

24. Aerotropolitans &
Cinderellas
Patiently waiting for a flight home.
Bangladeshi migrant workers who have
crossed the Egyptian border wait
patiently for a repatriation flight home,
relieved to have escaped the fighting in
Libya.
Credit: ©Stabilisation Unit /DFID
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/57
55270530

25. Bangladeshis in the global economy
Bangladesh is now firmly part of the global
economy, mostly positioned near the bottom
of global value chains. But exports of
readymade garments and migrant labour have
made a vast difference to foreign exchange
earnings and GDP.
Ongoing struggles over low wages in the
garments industry have demonstrated the
limits of a development model based on very
hard and hazardous work for very low pay. In
the global economy, few workers have rights.
This is particularly true of the ‘aerotropolitans’
who cross borders in their search for a living.
Bangladesh is particularly famous for micro-
credit, but this technology has gone, as Jayati
Ghosh put it, ’from hero to zero’ in a decade.
Indebtedness and market saturation are
factors in Bangladesh, too. But I argue here
that this anti-poverty technology very likely
helped rural Bangladeshis build their resilience
to the myriad everyday disasters of poverty.
Microcredit continues to evolve to meet the
emerging needs of Bangladesh.

26. Post-Malthusian futures
Hatirjheel by night. January 4th 2014.
Credit: ©Nadia Hossain
Used with permission

27. Towards a new social contract?
Bangladesh’s unexpected success owes much to its
foundational subsistence crisis contract against
repeated threats to life and livelihood from disasters
and food shocks. The old threats of climate change,
food crises and domination by bigger powers
remain. And there are new threats, notably religious
extremism. Industrial unrest continues, and
Bangladesh’s migrant workers are the precariat of
the global workforce. Business interests increasingly
dominate politics and Parliament.
As Bangladesh transforms itself into a middle
income country, its continued success implies a
move towards a rights-based social contract. This
means enforcing the de facto elite consensus on
development with legal rights and public provision.
It also means a massive investment in upgrading
education, health and social protection provision, to
meet the demands of a middle income society for a
more skilled, resilient and empowered population.
Authoritarian rule did not prevent Bangladesh’s
success. But its greatest achievements were in the
democratic period. The recent narrowing of
democratic space must be watched carefully to
ensure its success is not jeopardized.

28. Picture credits
1. The American Embassy in Dhaka: S. M. Samsu (2016)
2. A Police officer from Bangladesh, serving under the United Nations Police attends a ceremony during
which a total of 56 vehicles were handed over to the Somali Police Force. The vehicles were donated
by the Government of Japan through UNSOM in Mogadishu, Somalia on 9 September 2015.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/unsom/
3. Satellite image of the Bhola Cyclone , 12 November 1970. ©NOAA (Mariners Weather Log, January
1971, pg. 19)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABayofBengalTCNov1219700956UTCITOS1.png
4. ©Arju Rahman en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Shahbag_Protest. February 11, 2013.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/arjurahman/8465758848/in/date posted/
5. Sustainable Development Goals. http://unicdhaka.org/files/2015/09/SDGs-Bangla-Icons-final.jpg
6. Cover of Ajker Orthokonto. September 1, 2013. Issue 4, Year http://businessnews24bd.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/Cover-Final.jpg
7. Bengali women fetching water from the well in earthenware pots, 1944. Picture: Cecil Beaton for HMG
Ministry of Information. National Archives catalogue reference.: INF 14/435/7

29. 8. The War in the Far East, 1944. Indian women labourers, engaged in airfield construction work, pass
mechanics working on a Royal Air Force Consolidated Liberator bomber at a base in Bengal [note:
possibly Tejgaon Airport). Credit: Royal Air Force official photographer
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_War_in_the_Far_East%2C_1944_CF166.jpg
9. © Lutheran World Federation photo. Kurigram gruel kitchen November 1974. Used in The
Lutheran, January 22, 1975. ELCA Archives image www.elca.org/archives.
10. Local vegetable market in Khulna, Bangladesh. April 17, 2014. Credit: M. Yousuf Tushar.
©WorldFIsh https://www.flickr.com/photos/theworldfishcenter/ Used under Creative Commons
licence
11. Three Kids, Three WIndows September 22, 2012 Credit: ©Sudipta Akra Das
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sudiptadas/ Used under Creative Commons licence
12. Patiently waiting for a flight home. Bangladeshi migrant workers who have crossed the Egyptian
border wait patiently for a repatriation flight home, relieved to have escaped the fighting in Libya.
Credit: ©Stabilisation Unit /DFID https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/5755270530
13. Hatirjheel by night. January 4th 2014. Credit: ©Nadia Hossain. Used with permission
Picture credits

30. @nomhossain
@IDS_UK
https://nomhossain.wordpress.com/
Continue the
discussion

31. Further reading on the political economy
of Bangladesh’s development
Talukder Maniruzzaman. 1988. The Bangladesh Revolution and Its Aftermath. 2nd
edition. Dhaka: University Press Limited
Mushtaq H. Khan 2011. “The Political Settlement and Its Evolution in Bangladesh.”
http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/12845/1/The_Political_Settlement_and_its_Evolution_in_Ban
gladesh.pdf.
Mirza Hassan. 2013. 'Political Settlement Dynamics in a Limited-Access Order: The Case
of Bangladesh.'. http://www.effective-states.org/wp-
content/uploads/working_papers/final-pdfs/esid_wp_23_hassan.pdf.
Wahiduddin Mahmud, Sadiq Ahmed, and Sandeep Mahajan. 2008. ‘Economic Reforms,
Growth, and Governance: The Political Economy Aspects of Bangladesh’s Development
Surprise.’ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTPREMNET/Resources/489960-
1338997241035/Growth_Commission_Working_Paper_22_Economic_Reforms_Growt
h_Governance_Political_Economy_Aspects_Bangladesh_Development_Surprise.pdf

32. Centres of research on the political
economy of development in Bangladesh
Centre for Policy Dialogue: http://cpd.org.bd/
Department of Development Studies at the University of Dhaka: http://devstud-
udhaka.ac.bd/
Effective States and Inclusive Development (University of Manchester):
http://www.effective-states.org/
Department of Public Administration at the University of Dhaka:
http://www.du.ac.bd/academic/department_item/PUB
Power and Participation Research Centre: http://www.pprcbd.org/
BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BRAC University):
http://bigd.bracu.ac.bd/
Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex: http://www.ids.ac.uk/