Development Re-examined : Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

Book Review: Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

What is development, and how should it be examined in the context of Bangladesh? Professor Anu Muhammad in his new book Development Re-examined tries to give the answers to these questions in the light of the political and economic framework of Bangladesh. The book takes a multidisciplinary approach which includes various fields like the utilization of national resources, the current condition of production and labor rights, role of NGOs in poverty alleviation and ends with a conclusion that does justice to the book. The writer proposes some primary principles which mainly state that the policymakers should whatever plans or policies consider the outcome in favor of the people otherwise all this development work will turn futile.

Starting from the first chapter of the book, the authors try to break down how the planned development that was once proposed and has been a vital part of our policies has not been implemented. Rather, the policymakers opted for approaches that increased the cost of the Project and paid large amounts of money to the foreign consultants from the World Bank and other such institutions. The writer also put two key examples forward in this book, firstly the use of excessive groundwater was evaluated, followed by the evaluation of the Flood Action Plan. The excessive use of groundwater created a man-made calamity of arsenic pollution which could have been avoided altogether. Besides, the Flood Action Plan did severe harm to water bodies like Chalan Beel, the Middle Karatoa floodplain, and even Sundarban. The writer profoundly discusses Sundarban in Part 2 of the book titled “Natural Resources, Energy and Environment.” Here he tells us how the ongoing coal power plant will be detrimental to the natural resources of the country and might even end up destroying Sundarban altogether. Though there was the support of various political parties to his cause he laments over the fact that most of this support was merely for the political gain of those parties. Any reader who is keen on knowing about the downfalls of evaluating the progress of a nation based on DGP can agree to the statement of the writer “GDP was gained by destruction of the environment.” Besides, in the next chapters, the writer also discusses crucial aspects in other fields like how labor rights are close to nonexistent in Bangladesh, how the flood plans caused severe harm to the agricultural lands, how the World Bank and other aid agencies facilitated their profit by raising the prices of electricity and gas in our country.

To judge the development of a nation is not an easy task as there are several scales like GDP, Human Development Index, Per Capita Income, Gini index but what makes this book different from the rest is that the writer proposes the policymakers consider the aspects of livelihood, ecological balance and the future of the environment. The proposals given by the writer like public ownership over natural resources should be ensured, the common property should not be privatized, no immunity for any global or national institutions might not be the ones that are the favorites in policy-making but they are crucial for the development of the people who are the heart of any nation. The book succeeds to give the reader a new view of development and the picture of development from both sides of the coin. Development re-examined l is not just a book that you read in your bed or with a coffee mug in hand, it’s a book that demands your attention and keenness to absorb the insights about history, politics, institution, and economics stored in a form of a pandora’s box, making it a must-read to any seeker of policy and economic knowledge. Besides, the amazing binding, eye-catching cover and the distribution of the chapters by the publishers will provide the readers with a thrilling experience along the way.

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