UNTIL the mid-90s Bangladesh was wealthier and more developed than Vietnam, but as Vietnam has moved decisively ahead of us in recent years, we now often look to them with envy to see what they have done right and we have done wrong.
The reason Vietnam piques our interest is that, with its 86 million people, deltaic terrain, and rice-growing culture, Vietnam is a close-ish approximation of Bangladesh. The economies are about the same size at roughly $90 billion, though per capita income is a third higher in Vietnam.
I had thus always been keen to see Vietnam for myself, and so when I was invited to attend a conference in Hanoi on post-crisis growth and poverty reduction in low-income Asia, I responded with an alacrity that had little to do with the scintillating content of the conference.
The first thing I found was that Hanoi was a truly lovely city. With its population of 6 million (half that of Dhaka) and with 3 million motor-bikes and motor scooters so that there were few cars, the city was arrestingly scenic and uncrowded.
The tranquil and breathable feel was enhanced by the wide tree-lined boulevards and many lakes and open spaces where people could sit quietly to enjoy the outdoors. Most impressive for a visitor from Dhaka, it was neat and tidy and clean, and the environment seemed unpolluted.
Hanoi remains a charming and well-planned city, with many French colonial-era buildings, narrow three- and four-storied houses with graceful balconies, gabled roofs, and green wooden shutters.
It didn't seem as modern or as developed as Dhaka. The city still has roundabouts and rickshaws and an old school, old-fashioned feel to it. There were fewer high-rise buildings of glass, concrete, and steel, far fewer (and less fancy) cars on the roads, far less neon and glitz, far fewer flashy mod-cons in the appliance stores.
But the people are better off. There was no real grinding poverty all around us as we see in Dhaka. In Vietnam the poverty rate is 12 percent while in Bangladesh it is 35 per cent.
This you can see. The slums of Hanoi were far fewer and far less miserable than the slums of Dhaka. Even the shabbiest dwellings were less like the squalid tenements of the Dhaka bastis and more like the neat little shacks one sees in villages here, which are humble but often clean and nice.
What struck me most about Vietnam, though, was the palpable respect for the simple dignity of all men and women. In how people spoke to one another and behaved with one another it was clear that this was a country of equality where everyone is treated with fairness and respect.
This is surely, in considerable part, a result of the country's communism that still exists in its societal structure if not in its economic policies. But, then again, this respect for individual dignity, like the admiration for asceticism and obedience and the rejection of material excess, may have as much to do with the society's traditional values as with the country's ideological moorings.
When I went to the home of my friend who is the head of the UN in Vietnam, I did not find it brimming with staff like it would be here. There was only a driver, whom he did not use for personal business, and a part-time maid and cook who come in a few times a week for a few hours. I was introduced to all three and they shook my hand, something that would never happen here.
This, I think, more than any of the economic steps or policy decisions it has taken, is Vietnam's comparative advantage: the more equal a society is and the greater the respect for human dignity, the quicker the country will move out of poverty.
Of course, the two are inter-related. The high level of education they have is a reflection of their respect for human dignity. The high level of tax-to-GDP ratio compared to Bangladesh (22 per cent to 11) is reflective of their commitment to the public interest.
To me, as we celebrate the 39th anniversary of our Independence Day, this is the shortcoming we need to ponder most deeply: our continuing failure to create a society which recognises and respects the simple human dignity of all men and women.
The fix we need isn't so much what we think it is. We are always looking for a quick fix. We think that economic reform, or political reform, or judicial reform, or legal reform, et cetera et cetera ad infinitum, will solve all our problems.
But these quick fixes, these reforms, never work. Why? Because the problems are merely manifestations of the greater problem, and that is that need to fix our society and our culture, because what is our utter disregard for those below us on the social ladder, our utter disdain for the notion of equal rights for all, our utter contempt for the common good -- other than the values of our society and culture?
This is the thing we never like to look at because it means looking in the mirror and admitting that the problem is us. The problem is our values. The problem is our moral compass as a nation, or lack thereof.
This, more than anything else, is what needs to be fixed. This is what ails us. This, far more than economic policies or political systems, is the difference between Vietnam and Bangladesh.
One last way that Vietnam is similar to us is that it, too, is a country forged in the crucible of war, though theirs lasted for 30 years against an even more ferocious enemy and left even more people killed.
Again, the difference is striking. The Vietnamese give due pride of place in their historiography to what they refer to as the American War. It forms the central core of their identity as a nation today. There has been a unified post-war narrative of what it meant in terms of building a nation and a national identity.
We in Bangladesh, have, of course, suffered the splintering of our national narrative, the history of our heroic war has been rewritten and the central narrative of our nationhood compromised.
In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, lying in state in his mausoleum, remains revered by all, and the great military commander, General Giap, 100 years old this year, still lives in honour and glory.
There is no counter-narrative that excuses or tries to explain away the actions of the South Vietnamese army and government and their collaborators, who are referred to by the common people as puppets. For a senior puppet leader to be in high honour in government or even in society would be unthinkable.
As we start our war crimes trials, almost 40 years after the fact, it is worth thinking about what the failure to hold them has cost us in terms of forging a unified nation with a unified national narrative and identity. This is another area we could take a page out of Vietnam's book.

Zafar Sobhan is Editor, Editorial & Op-Ed, The Daily Star.