Expatriate Bangladeshi 2000

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Is There Any Scope of Fantasy With Information Technology?

Khaled S. Ahmed

email: KhaledSA@aol.com

Introduction

Is there any scope of fantasy with Information Technology especially when it is being identified as engine for national growth? That is what came in my mind as I was reading Dr. Yunus's BANGLADESH 2010. A serious reading between the lines gave me a strange feeling making me wonder - can this be a juvenile fantasy? It also made me sad because it came from no other personality than Dr. Mohammad Yunus. I have great respect for Dr. Yunus, and have reasons to believe that a few people are fanatically looking at this with great enthusiasm, therefore I felt it is time to glimpse at the realty of IT in relevance to Bangladesh in the next millennium. I also have a feeling that Dr. Yunus did not look into the technological details, dynamics of marketing of commodities and services in the USA and mostly tried to base his dream on hearsay. Especially when he said that IT activities can be done almost at no cost, at the lowest level programming is a repetitive jobs can be done by ordinary labor forces, people form remote villages of Bangladesh can get jobs of accounting farms in New York working from their home and one will not need any education to reap financial benefit through IT. I wonder if he ever thought that we would need to have at least 100,000 highly trained engineers and professionals (10,000 per year) to enable us to earn $15 billion by way of providing IT services to the world market in 2010. During this decade we could not produce more than few hundreds. If we ignore the legal complexities of security business in the USA, I wonder if any one explained to him about the transmission bandwidth we would need to monitor thousands of security live video cameras from half way around the world?

Realty of IT Business In The USA

Let us first look at the platform on which Information Technology demonstrated phenomenal growth in the USA. It is a huge platform of trillion dollars economy with a population of 250 million and per capita GNP over $25,000. A nation with highest percentage of education, a purchasing power of $6,250,000,000,000.00 and are willing to use that buying power to create market for every conceivable consumer goods and services. E-commerce came in existence because there is an existing market and it is trying to offer slightly convenient and less expensive way to buy the same product and services Americans were already buying. However, till now we do not see any major change in the way of day-to-day life of Americans because of computer.

It just created convenience for them to do the job they were already doing and will continue to do. It is also reducing cost of doing business. However, most American would like to test drive when they buy a car and feel the touch of it when they buy an apple.

Major reason for proliferation of IT is because businesses are always desperately trying to save time and offer quickest and best possible services in a highly competitive free market. In the face of regulations for consumer protections they had to keep records of every transactions. They found computer is the most acceptable and convenient tool to do that. To make computer work they needed computer programming and therefore programmers. To generate database they needed data processing professionals and data entry workers.

They found highly educated youth in Ireland, Israel and India and governments of those countries willing to provide infrastructure to do sophisticated programming jobs. They found highly disciplined workforce in Mexico, Philippine and West Indies to support data processing services. One US corporation using data entry facilities in Mexico installed eight T-1 link with cumulative data throughput of over 12 Mbps is good enough to demonstrate the kind of infrastructure US corporations are using in this business.

Almost all the 250 millions of Americans were already connected through telephone and cables network. They have world's best telephone system on which Internet is growing. Advancement of microelectronics and development of digital transistor switching by the telephone industry needed to generate billions of lines of computer codes. It was also time to replace most of the old mechanical telephone switching equipment already became obsolete. US corporations found it much more profitable to outsource those software development services and India took full advantage of it as they were running excellent and world-class education systems, having good governance and knowledgeable entrepreneurs in their country as well as in the USA.

Y2K problem is another area where they had to regenerate billions of lines of new computer codes to replace the existing one generating multi billions dollar business where expatriate Indians with education and extraordinary talent played a key role to organize offshore programming in their country and earned in billions.

Internet became a new tool for marketing creating a demand for services like server installations and web page development where apart from technical capabilities knowledge of corporate business culture remained an essential factor to obtain such businesses. Therefore most web page development business retained in the country creating thousands of new jobs for Americans as well as expatriates from Europe and Asia.

IT revolution and advancement of computer technology in the next millennium will need multibillion dollars worth of services from people with education, knowledge and skill. Americans will continue to utilize knowledge, skill and talents from all over the world and countries can maintain suitable environment through high quality education, freedom and democracy will reap the benefit. There is no scope of people from any remote villages in Bangladesh without any access to education to gain a dime out of IT business even if they have loan to buy a Mobile Phone, Internet and worlds most expensive voice activated computer.

Bangladesh Predicament

In the event 'public press' is called "Fourth State" in Bangladesh 'corruption' should be called "First State." And because of corruption almost every politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, business entities could profitably pursue their own agenda ignoring overall national interest. Those who tried to pursue issues of national interest were systematically eliminated.

Real reality is that we have missed the initial phase of information revolution during 80's and 90's. Main reason for that is we have messed up with our education environment and could not create infrastructure like corruption free import/export facilities required for data processing services in the 80's and high-speed telecommunication link required for software development (also data processing services) in the 90's. Although we have had highly motivated professionals with extraordinary talent and skill, corrupt and inefficient governments did not take any notice of them and continued to provide lips services without caring to provide the required infrastructure support. Unfortunately till this day there is no change in the attitude of the government.

No Scope Of Fantasy

Information technology will certainly change the way the world is doing business today creating new opportunities. It will change the way consumers are thinking today and create a new civilization. We will need highly innovative mind with the comprehensive knowledge of the market, genuine feel of the corporate culture and familiarity with the behavior of the people to take advantage of that changes and find niche area for any windfall profit.

I could not believe Dr. Yunus will base his business propositions on the basis of hearsay without understanding the complex dynamics Dress Shirt business. It is a wrong connotation to say that Cotton Grower, Yearn Spinner, Yearn Dyer, Weaver, Garment Manufacturer, Packaging Manufacturer, Trucking Cost, Shipping Cost along with Taxes all put together are getting from $5 for a Dress Shirt from a General Merchandiser in New York and by selling it at $30 they are making a $25 for themselves. His belief is that to enable Bangladeshi manufacturer to sell those direct to an US customers at $20 and they would only need a web site and "just a warehouse." As an economist he would never have believed that only if he would have known that during 1998 annual profit made by General Merchandisers like Sears Roebuck is 3%, Macy is 6%, and Nordstrom is 4%. Altogether they employ 492,693 people. Even if we ignore investments, brand name loyalty, designers idea and no question asked return policy, warehousing in the USA is also not "just a warehouse," management of warehouse itself is an expensive high-tech business.

Security monitoring of US organizations from remote villages of Bangladesh is another fantasy crated without understanding the transmission bandwidth requirement for transmitting live images of thousands of video cameras half way around the world. One fiber optic line can handle not more than four. We must also consider the fact that the entire security system in the new millennium will be revolutionized because of new technologies. Security cameras will be smart enough to identify an intruder just zooming at their eyes, comparing the images with the database and may even confine intruders with automated devices.

I also believe in high potential of software export and even possibilities of $15 billion by 2010. During 93/94 I did publish a paper in the Daily Star (Dhaka) on this subject. It is an enormous task because as it will call for services of at least 100,000 highly educated and sincere professionals and an investment of at least $3 billion in facilities, marketing, education, professional development and infrastructure. I would also estimate a startup marketing cost of $3 million to organize an office in the USA because without strong onshore presence it will not be possible to take jobs offshore.

I do not want to elaborate further. Any one with knowledge of US commodity and services market and trend of technological advancement should do a careful reading of Dr. Yunus's paper before supporting its philosophy. I do not believe computer will ever replace the requirement of education by the mankind. Perhaps funniest thing Dr. Yunus has said that a person without any capabilities of reading and writing will be in a position to use a computer.

Whatever he or she will speak, the computer will instantly put it on the monitor. If he or she does not know how to read how would he or she know what is in the monitor? I also do not believe voice recognition technology that can support varied Bangla accent across the country will be there in the near future and other than pure entertainment uneducated people will ever benefit or profit from the use computer. It can certainly be used as a tool for mass education. I do not believe with present buying power uneducated Bangladeshis can purchase such a voice-activated computer. I believe Dr. Yunus should clarify such misgivings and should encourage the nation to prepare with education and knowledge to meet the challenges of next millennium.

Where Chances Are Better

In an area Bangladesh has enormous potential is in the development of digital telecommunication equipment including digital public switching systems. Because telephone switching is now software driven and hardware components are available in the free market we may design our own public switching architecture based of 64 bit microprocessors bringing down the cost to 50% of what we will be paying for import of millions of those from the world market. I believe Dr. Yunus has resource and courage to pursue in this area as part of his software development project. It will be much more nationalistic as well as profitable than trying to sell foreign made telephone systems in our cash starved rural market.

GDP Growth

If we want to double our economy in ten years as anticipated by Dr. Yunus we would need a sustained yearly growth of at least 7% and only way we can achieve that is through well planned export lead rapid industrial development. Information Technology may be a part of that but it is by itself at this stage may not be sufficient to add another 2% or 3% he is looking at.

We should rather look for a double-digit growth and whenever any government will ensure freedom, contain corruption and control law & order Bangladeshis will demonstrate their enormous potential to device their own strategy to do that. Until then we will have to leave with all kinds of juvenile fantasies.

Copyright © 1998 Global Amitech

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