WHEN we were students in the 1980s and ’90s, we frequently heard that education was the backbone of a nation. Personally, I believed that education was the (only) path towards social mobility, freedom, and human flourishing. However, now, as an educator, I have developed the impression that the ‘backbone status’ of education may have been lost to other agendas and priorities in Bangladesh.
My initial impression was formed by, among other factors, the interim government’s attitudes towards education. This ‘relief’ government formed a dozen commissions including one for political consensus building to execute reforms in major domains and institutions. However, education was left out. An education commission didn’t see the light of the day, no matter how urgently reforms were needed in this sector. This policy inattention to education may encourage different kinds of interpretations and meaning-making. For example, some may say that education can wait, as it was less urgent compared to other areas in terms of reform imperatives. Or, education was too political to be reformed by a non-political government. So, as this line of argument might go, it was safer to leave it for an elected government to handle in the future. All such thinking may point to a hierarchy of national agendas where education sits towards the bottom.
My impression gained more weight from a recent experience of attending a two-day international conference. It was held on the last weekend of August 2025 in a luxury hotel in Dhaka. My participation was co-incidental. I arrived in Dhaka from Australia on the early morning of the first day of the event. I had heard about the conference from a colleague who works at a university in the Gulf region.
I feel gratified that I was able to be in the audience of such a wonderful learning opportunity. I learned a lot from the local and international presenters’ views, perspectives, critiques, and constructive thoughts on the key national agenda.
The inaugural ‘Bengal Delta Conference 2025’ was arranged by an institution called Dacca Institute of Research and Analytics (Daira). Their reversion to the old, colonial spelling of the Bangladeshi capital remained an unanswered curiosity. However, I learned that this research thinktank emerged in the wake of the August 2024 mass movement that ousted Sheikh Hasina from her long-held, fascist power. The audience was also told that the conference was organised mainly by youths who were at the forefront of the anti-fascist movement. They are also researchers and think tankers in the institution, which is led by an advisory board whose members are academics and researchers based in Bangladesh or overseas.
The first day of the conference attracted over 400 people in the audience. As I looked around the plenary hall, I found that most of them were young people. I couldn’t figure out how the institution or the inaugural conference came into being. However, the dominant presence and the leading role of the ‘youngsters’ gave me a sense of optimism. That the students who recently freed the country from the clutches of autocracy invested in research and scholarly work to address key national challenges would make any academic and well-meaning citizen happy.
The theme of the conference couldn’t have been timelier or more urgent: ‘Bangladesh at the crossroads: Rethinking politics, economy, and geopolitical strategy.’ As a number of speakers pointed out, the rethinking was needed to remake Bangladesh, so the country did not revert to the old style of authoritarian rule. Politically and economically, a new kind of political ‘settlement’ or consensus was sought that would break the oligarchy that manipulated the economy during the past regime. Geopolitically, it was emphasised that Bangladesh needed to open itself up to all potential partners and stakeholders in the region and globally. Methodologically, it was outlined that the Delta perspective would enable a holistic look at not only the issues and challenges but also the prospects and possibilities.
The conference handbook was clear about the rationale for this lens: ‘The Bengal Delta is not only a geographical backdrop to political change; but also it is a living architecture that actively organises power, livelihoods, and vulnerabilities.’Ìý It was emphasised that the Delta was ‘not a passive setting but as a structural force that shapes how communities survive, resist, and negotiate authority.’ This was also important to understand the recent transformations in Bangladesh including the 2024 regime change through a student-led mass uprising.
The inaugural ceremony was rather long, lasting over two hours and accommodating speeches from more than half a dozen speakers. However, it set the scene and the tone for the two-day event. Some of the expert speakers who occupied the inaugural stage were later involved in panel discussions, either as keynote speakers or as discussants.
While the themes of politics, economy, and geopolitics were timely and judicious, I wondered why education failed to be included in the agenda. I considered this remiss at least for two reasons. First, like the other themes, education also needed serious ‘rethinking’ at a public event such as the conference after the fall of the Hasina regime. Education was one of the sectors which was brought to the brink of collapse in many ways by Hasina and her people. We heard stories of corruption of all types, and at all levels of education. Given such a corrupt education system under Hasina’s watch, it was probably no surprise that bribe was demanded even from Palestinian authorities so that Palestinian students could come to study at a Bangladeshi university. Needless to say, it was a student movement that toppled the previous government.
Second, education demanded to be a public agenda to address the fact that the interim government didn’t initiate a much-needed education commission for whatever reasons. The conference could have been a suitable forum to discuss how education interacts with politics, economy, and geopolitics.Ìý
The absence of education as a theme points to how we view it, what status it is given in public discourse, and how education compares with other agenda such as politics and economy.
However, it will be unfair to say that education was totally absent from the scholarly discussion, even if the word ‘education’ was not mentioned in the title of the any panel discussions or individual paper presentations. It was given some attention in a special panel session which was titled ‘Human capital and job creation: Navigating the demand and supply side challenges.’ Clearly, the perspective taken here was that of the economics of education. As education was viewed through an economic prism, languages of economics such as ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ dominated the content. In the conference handbook, the panel session was framed in the following way:
‘Bangladesh’s education sector continues to face deep structural weaknesses. Despite impressive gains in enrollment, gaps in quality and the limited relevance of skills to industry persist. Curricula remain outdated, vocational training is underdeveloped, and the link between higher education and labour market needs is weak.’
It was noted that ‘mismatches between the supply of labour and demand of a rapidly changing economy’ affected the growth of business and industrial upgrading and the national capacity to fully capitalise its human capital.
While the education-industry alignment cannot be ignored, an exclusively economic orientation undermines other important, non-economic contribution of education in society. Economists of education may not do justice to the full scope of education; we need educators to talk about it. This is what seems to have been ignored by the economistic view of education presented at the conference.
The importance of education beyond its economics was acknowledged by the Adviser for Foreign Affairs in his address as chief guest at the opening ceremony. A key point that I noted from his delivery was his observation that there had been an ‘education apartheid’ in the country. By this, he referred to the many kinds of divides in education and their social and economic consequences. This line of thinking about education may not be an exaggeration. Whether we talk about the question of access to education or educational attainment, we can note an indelible impact of students’ social backgrounds. Another example of divide or apartheid is related to geography. That is, rural students are disadvantaged in all sorts of ways compared to their urban counterparts. Such class and geographical divides suggest that urgent rethinking was needed of education as well, so we could explore possibilities for breaking the apartheid in education.
The education question was also highlighted by a Malaysian speaker who heads an international institution for Islamic studies in his country. He emphasised the role of education for human capital development. In his view, technical and vocational education demanded renewed attention from education authorities and its various stakeholders.
The question of education apartheid reminded me of another divide which cannot be ignored. This is the question of exclusion and inclusion through language as a medium for scholarly conversation.
The official language of this international conference was English which was not a surprise by any means. As English has emerged as a global lingua franca, it is often preferred as the most viable medium for international events such as conferences and symposiums. Many presenters and discussants at the conference came from overseas who did not speak Bangla.
From one perspective, it was reassuring to see that all Bangladeshi presenters were fluent speakers of English. We often hear of severe deficiency in English language proficiency at the national level which affects high-stakes communication with the outside world. Every now and then, employers complain about the short supply of English-profienct skilled workers to be produced by higher education institutions for the industry. We hear that they are often forced to recruit Indian or Sri Lankan employees who are more promising in terms of English proficiency and work skills. The conference gave the impression that our graduates were probably investing in English language skill development for effective professional communication.
However, delivering the conference exclusively in English may point to one kind of social and knowledge-making divide. Certainly, one condition for inclusion as a speaker at the conference was one’s ability to speak English. In other words, the ‘rethinking’ of politics, economy, and geopolitics was restricted to English-profienct speakers. Those who could speak in Bangla only — even if they had smart ideas related to the three themes — were ignored. In this sense, this was an elite conversation about politics, economy, and geopolitics. Such a conversation is partial and exclusionary; it does not represent all speaking voices in the country from a language point of view. The ignored theme of education is clearly implicated by such arrangement of who will get to speak and who won’t be given an audience, even if they deserved.
The significance of the ‘Delta perspective’ was outlined by several speakers by referring to the history of the country and the region. It was reassuring that this perspective was presented not only as holistic but also interdisciplinary. This was noted by the vice chancellor of the University of Dhaka at the opening ceremony. However, the exclusion of education as a theme may suggest a missed opportunity for going beyond disciplinary boundaries. The English-only choice also undermined interdisciplinarity as it excluded other potential speakers who use Bangla for academic communication.
In conclusion, the new research institution and its inaugural conference deserve commendations for creating public spaces to discuss challenges for a new Bangladesh and find research-informed solutions. However, the absence of education as a theme whether intended or unintended gives the impression that, in their views, education does not have the equal weight of politics, economy, or geopolitics. We expect that, in the future, their research and dissemination endeavours will be more inclusive, both thematically and linguistically.Ìý
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Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world. He is a co-editor of Current Issues in Language Planning.
