Searching for Digital Bangladesh

In the ennui that invariably follows election jubilation, promises made during campaigning can quickly turn into whispers. All too often, this happens even before the bunting has been folded neatly away. Throughout her campaign in December, the promise of a 'Digital Bangladesh' was a slogan continuously repeated by the Awami League leader and prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. But as it is true for all good political slogans, the particulars of what exactly a 'Digital Bangladesh' would look like were, and remain, frustratingly vague. The idea is to develop a digitalised Bangladesh by the year 2021, the 50th anniversary of the country's independence. But what does this mean? When the concept first began to be bandied about, this writer had envisaged fishermen being able to throw computerised nets into rivers, which would digitally calculate which fish were mature enough to catch. But that does not seem to be what any political leader has in mind.

One way or another, the slogan was successful in capturing the imagination of many voters – particularly young first-timers who constituted one-third of the electorate. But one has to decipher Sheikh Hasina's speeches to try and understand what Digital Bangladesh is all about. During one gathering, she announced, "the Awami League-led Grand Alliance has set the vision of 2021 for the youth. We want to build a Digital Bangladesh, where people will get developed lives, free from crime and misrule, to face the challenges of the 21st century." From the sounds of it, Digital Bangladesh seems to point to something other than smart computers. After all, technology is not a requirement to get rid of crime and misrule. At the same time, a society that values justice, and whose politicians have integrity (rather than millions of dollars in overseas bank accounts), is the precondition to achieving these goals.