Demographic Dividend
66. Bangladesh is passing through a demographic transition. At the moment 63.25% of Bangladesh population falls within the age bracket of 15-64. Therefore the biggest proportion of Bangladesh population falls in the group of active population. It has significance for economic development. A country where the proportion of children, juveniles and old age people is lower can accelerate the pace of economic development through utilizing the active population. However, such opportunity comes only once in a nations life. Both the children and the old age people are dependent on the income earned by the active people. Under such a situation, higher proportion of active population contributes towards accelerated and higher economic growth. Active population includes both woman and man. South Korea could take advantage out of demographic transition and has become a developed state. On the other hand despite being wealthy, Nigeria could not take advantage of this situation, and therefore mired in poverty.
67. According to a projection of the Asian Development Bank, the size of active population of Bangladesh in 2025 will be 78 million. In 2010 it was 56.7 million. In 2010, 2/3rd of the active population was minimally literate and only 4% got some form of training. Different estimationsreveal that every year 2.2 million persons enter into the job market in Bangladesh. Out of which only 1 million gets job. The rest remains unemployed.
68. To avail the opportunity of demographic dividend, employment has to be created for all active persons. This is a huge task. In order to achieve this goal, the national savings rate has to be increased to 40%. This saving has to be invested in totality. A portion of the investment will be used for required human resource development. The other potion has to be used for the fast development of agriculture, industry, and service sectors.
69. To achieve the goal of human resource development, change has to be brought in the mindset of the people. The youths of the country has to be freed from non-technical ‘Diploma Disease’. Diversity in the field of education has to be brought in consonance with taste, ability, merit, and market demand. Training program has to be introduced for professional and technical education, engineering education, medical education, science education, and different research areas of fundamental and applied scientific research, hundreds of trade and occupation (for example – plumber, fitter, electrician, electronic mechanic, health technician, nurses, master tailors, fashion designers, agricultural equipment mechanic, lathe-operator, mechanics for garments machineries and their maintenance, mechanics and engineers for industrial machineries, hospitality service, housekeeping, furniture designing, art and craft work, masonry, rod binder, land surveyor, rail workshop technicians, mechanics for vehicle, motor driving, printing technologies, and technicians for repairing mobile telephone and computers). This presupposes quality primary and secondary education. Parallely, at every stage of education and training, the quality of the teachers has to be improved. If necessary Bangladeshi scientists, engineers, and professors working abroad are to be utilized. Necessary number of institutions for trade and vocational education and certification are to be developed. To develop human resources, both the government and private sectors have to be utilized efficiently. Instructors and trainers of technical and vocational institutes have to be given special economic and other benefits, so that these institutions become effective. The banks and financial institutions have to be encouraged to spend for human resource development a larger slice of the money they use for corporate social responsibility. The main strategy during demographic transition period will be to create efficient human resources through enhancing savings and investments and to create attractive job market through investment in them. It will be necessary to create a bridge between education, research, training institutions, and business firms. Human resource has to be developed through advanced knowledge, technology, information technology, and education, and create jobs for the human resources so developed. There has to be a balance among tacit knowledge, applied knowledge, theoretical knowledge, applied and theoretical research, and such other knowledge creation activities. If we want to make Bangladesh a developed and dignified nation, there is no other alternative to achieve demographic dividend. Attaining demographic dividend is one of the priorities of BNP.
70. According to human development index–HDI 2016 of the United Nations, Bangladesh ranks 139th position among 188 countries. This indicates that Bangladesh has not yet been able to achieve high index of human development and could not take effective steps for achieving the demographic dividend. BNP shall adopt planned and effective steps for attaining High Human Development Index within 2030.