Patriotism: An introspective view for Bangladeshi

What is patriotism? I m confused. Is patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel? My patriotism doesn’t make me a blind. My patriotism opens my eyes for the development of the mass. My patriotism teaches me to study myself first. Today, I am confused due to the activities of few bloggers. Because my wisdom ask me today, are you a patriot? Why do you not talk about the negativity of your colleague? BSF killed innocent people in Indo-Bangla border; you should protest against it and abandon Indian goods for a day. Both my brains and hearts condemned the border killing. But abandon Indian goods for a day, makes me predicament. Because my experiences tell me it is a wrong idea; my wisdom tell me to find out a way to make it for years. But the question is that how can we make it years? By not feeding our own people? By stopping industrial production? Or the total movement is just a political game? All those mess push me to write something to share with audiences.

From my professional experiences in supply chain and SME business development sector, I get to know that Bangladesh lacks enough resources. Today I will share some of my experiences. Today I will discuss only two experiences.

I would have some experiences on Textile Industry. Bangladesh can meet only 2% of its raw cotton consumption. The garments industry contributes about 80% of our GDP that totally depends on cotton bale and spinning industry. About 98% of total cotton consumptions are imported mostly from India and Uzbekistan. But most of the time, the planning department of textile sector choose to import cotton from India because of cost effectiveness and geographical proximity. Even, during the time of Caretaker government, the spinning industry could not support the garments industry, I, myself ordered  few tons of yarn bales to meet the demand of the garments at where I worked. The second experience: I worked in a project that has been focused on SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) development of Bangladesh. The project was funded by Asian Development Bank and collaborated with Ministry of Industry, Bangladesh. The story is on Clay Brick industry of Bangladesh. Due to infrastructure development of Bangladesh and accordingly huge demand on clay bricks lead the industry to become Auto-kiln which depends on coal and gas. The government is now trying to abolish coal based kiln for its impact on environment; but still more than 70% brick fields are run with coal and few still depend on biomass. The power generation industry and brick fields are largely depend on coal imports from India, China and Malaysia. But in reality, most of the coals are imported from India. When we talk about Fulbari Coal Industry, the so called environmentalist and communist (Leninist) started a campaign against any coal and gas mining. But the question is that do you want advancement of civilization or want a green environment? Obviously we want both. But in reality, we need to compromise green environment for development of civilization.

So my earnest request to all bloggers: please be positive, please write something to inspire the mass for capital developments so that the imports would be reduced. Why don’t government and non-government sectors take steps for cotton productions? Why don’t they take any steps to farm cattle? Why don’t they take steps to produce more crops and vegetables and spices? Why don’t take any initiatives to improve our cinema industry? Well, now let’s see what the bloggers have been written down. Blogger’s main topics are border killing, price hike, throw out Indian goods for a day, and so on. Why don’t I see a single blog that talk about our technology, resource, people and so on? Why don’t they talk about how to develop our infrastructure and technology? Why don’t they spend a single moment to write down something regarding how to produce more crops and teach that knowledge to farmers? Don’t you think most of the bloggers mislead you?

Actually, we are busy only with politics and judge everything with biased eye. We are reactive patriot, not constructive patriot. Our brain cells fulfilled with some bloody politics and agnosticism. At the end of the day, we, Bangladeshi are the loser, not the Indians.

[Continued: Part 2 - the light engineering sector and small cottage industry]

- Suman Chowdhury