Economists stress deeper regional links

Finance Minister AMA Muhith, centre, poses with the two volumes of the collected works of Swadesh Ranjan Bose at the books' launch at BRAC Centre Inn in Dhaka yesterday. Former finance minister M Syeduzzaman, third from right, is also seen.Photo: STAR

Economists in a commemorative lecture on Swadesh Ranjan Bose yesterday stressed the need for increased regional connectivity to achieve expected economic growth.
“The cost of non-cooperation is very high,” said Prof Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of Centre for Policy Dialogue at the city's BRAC Centre Inn.
Referring to the works of Swadesh Ranjan Bose, Rahman said the scholar had done excellent work on regional cooperation decades back.
Bose, whose life spanned from 1928 to 2009, was an economist who served the World Bank, the then Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). He completed his MA in economics in 1960 from Dhaka University.
“The works of Bose could have been a massive source of information for regional cooperation, had they been published earlier,” Rahman said.
The time has come for regional connectivity and regional cooperation, he said. Bose realised the importance of regional cooperation and regional connectivity in the early 1960s, he said.
While moderating the discussion, former finance minister M Syeduzzaman said Bose's thoughts were pragmatic and realistic, far from any dogmas.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith said Bose had been treated in the Pakistan regime as an ordinary person in prison as the then Pakistani government rarely honoured people like him.
“Bose thought about the dynamics of regional cooperation many years back. The importance of regional connectivity and cooperation has surfaced now for achieving the economic growth in the region,” Muhith said.
Muhith suggested the editor of two books of Bose publish a third volume so that people can learn about the unpublished works of the economist.
The University Press Limited has recently published the collected works of Bose in two volumes edited by his son Jaseem Ahmed.
Of the two published volumes, the first is on regional cooperation for development in South Asia and the second is a rich anthology of essays on economic policies, inequalities and problems of development.
The rationale and various forms of regional economic cooperation, the relative economic conditions of the South Asian countries and their intra-trade, implications and probable effects of mutual free trade and cooperation of planning between India and Pakistan, market sharing and specialisation -- a few more examples -- fertilisers, chemicals and paper -- are mainly discussed in the first volume.
Major contents of the second volume feature East-West contrast in Pakistan's agricultural development, some basic considerations of agricultural mechanisation in West Pakistan, the cost of draft animal power in West Pakistan, labour force and employment in Pakistan, 1961-86: a preliminary analysis, foodgrain availability and possibilities of famine in Bangladesh and the price situation in post-liberation Bangladesh: a preliminary analysis.
BIDS organised the lecture on the occasion of Bose's book launching ceremony.
Prof Sanat Kumar Saha, Dr Mahabub Hossain, executive director of BRAC, Quazi Shahabuddin Ahmed, former director general of BIDS, and Dr Mustafa K Mujeri, BIDS director general, also spoke.