Post by Asim Qureshi

Bangladesh's GDP per capita has surpassed India's, which is rather incredible given that a decade ago, when Sheikh Hasina became PM, it was a little over half of India's. The argument that India has a larger population and so grows slower, is the same excuse Malaysians often make when being compared with faster-growing Singapore. I mean, how do you then explain China? Being large has as many advantages as being small, and, besides, large is just a sum of many smalls. So, why has Bangladesh done so well? The biggest single factor is gender equality. In the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report, which was released a few weeks ago, Bangladesh came 65th, the only South Asian country to make the top 100. Bangladesh has a female-male labour force participation ratio of 0.46 vs India's 0.28. On a 1-7 scale with 7 being the highest, the equality of wages between men and women for similar work in Bangladesh is 4.09 vs 3.38 in India. Bangladesh's earned income per capita female-male ratio is 0.40, India's is 0.21. These are significant differences - and women make up a significant proportion of the potential working population. India needs further reform fast - in fact, so does Bangladesh. "We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back" - Malala Yousafzai.