Communication for Development

UNDP in Chittagong Hill Tracts

Abstract

It would be hollow to argue with Sadiq Ahmed‟s statement: “In the early 1970s, following independence, Bangladesh faced daunting development challenges.”1 As it would be to dispute the World Bank‟s (WB) explanation for why such a situation had come to pass: “Desperately poor when it won its independence in 1971, overpopulated, and reeling from overwhelming war damage to its institutional and physical capital, Bangladesh looked to become, as Henry Kissinger forecast, „an international basket case‟.”2 Having inherited a precarious state to begin with, Bangladesh was then placed in further predicament by a famine that ravaged the country in 1974.