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ASHIK Chowdhury, the executive chairman of the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority, has become a strong advocate for a reform agenda aimed at fast-tracking foreign direct investment, deregulation, public-private partnerships, and labour flexibility. These new BIDA proposals, however framed as pragmatic instruments of development, express the deepest entrenchment of neoliberal ideology — an ideology which will always favour capital mobility, efficient markets, and unregulated growth over democratic accountability, labour rights, and environmental sustainability. Chowdhury’s proposed BIDA ‘noya bondobosto’ paradigm blatantly helps to cement class-based inequities. Let us not forget that in this country thousands of garment workers of the TNZ factories sat in front of Srama Bhabon only weeks ago demanding their unpaid wages all throughout Eid-ul-Fitr. Since the Covid pandemic in 2020, 25 jute mills were abruptly shut down, leaving over 50,000 people unemployed, clearly illustrating the historically weak governance and lack of accountability of private industries and companies in Bangladesh.

At the core of Ashik Chowdhury’s proposals is a bedrock belief in the ability of markets and private capital to provide development. Promulgation of one-stop service windows, investment-friendly reforms, and aggressive promotion of special economic zones (SEZs) imply that ease of doing business will automatically translate to national welfare gains. In neighbouring India, we observed the Nandigram SEZ, initially proposed for a petrochemical hub, triggered violent clashes due to land acquisition, displacing thousands of farmers whose fertile agricultural lands were appropriated, severely undermining local food security and pushing affected households into poverty. Similarly, the proposed Posco steel plant in Odisha, India, planned as an SEZ, resulted in prolonged resistance and displacement threats, further illustrating the harsh socio-economic consequences faced by rural populations in India’s SEZ-driven industrialisation strategy. Special economic zones in Bangladesh, such as the Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in Chittagong and Dhaka, have frequently been sites of labour rights infringements, including suppression of unionisation efforts, extended working hours, and inadequate wages. Additionally, environmental violations have been starkly visible in zones like the Mongla SEZ, where weak enforcement of environmental regulations allowed unchecked industrial pollution, severely impacting local biodiversity and the health of nearby communities. These examples reflect how prioritising foreign investment through SEZ investment projects, without stringent oversight, exacerbates social unrest and ecological degradation.

Ashik Chowdhury’s BIDA investment model is no different from BIDA’s previous modus operandi, and it very well runs the risk of repeating the previous regime’s corrupt history. One should not forget that national dailies have for months headlined on how many private industry and factory owners (all benefiting from ‘ease of business’) have fled abroad with hundreds of crores of easily accessible commercial bank loans, which the current government is still floundering to recover. Instead of proposing deregulation of private enterprise, the Bangladesh economy must enforce a strict regulatory framework in place, especially to ensure a business environment which is socially and legally responsible.

Chowdhury’s prescription for BIDA is weaponised and is targeting the working class, which is the first casualty of this noya bondobosto investment vision. The recommendations for labour law ‘modernisation’ to digital upskilling schemes are cast as instruments of inclusion, but in practice we see the opposite take place. Bangladesh’s garment sector and India’s automotive industry have led to significant workers’ rights violations, including mass layoffs without adequate severance or alternative employment opportunities due to automation. In Bangladesh, rapid automation within factories supplying global apparel brands has displaced thousands of workers, predominantly women, pushing them deeper into poverty due to limited social safety nets. Similarly, in India’s Manesar automobile hub, aggressive automation has resulted in substantial job losses, weakening unions, exacerbating income disparities, and intensifying socio-economic vulnerabilities among marginalised worker communities.

Furthermore, Chowdhury’s championing of ‘fast-track’ investment clearance and regulatory streamlining recklessly compromises environmental safeguards. But in a climate-vulnerable country like Bangladesh, where ecosystems and livelihoods are already under threat from rising sea levels, industrial pollution and unregulated extraction, reducing ‘green tape’ in the name of investment is not only reckless — it is violent.

Infrastructure megaprojects linked to foreign investment have already displaced thousands in Rampal and Matarbari, for example, with minimal, if any, consultation or compensation. By undercutting such projects through expedited approval processes in the absence of rigorous environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs), the BIDA model exacerbates environmental injustice, shifting eco-collaterality onto the rural and marginalised. No less alarming is the yawning democratic deficit the new BIDA recommendations would lock in. The model is basically suggesting centralised decision-making through elite policy formations and placing investment policy beyond the reach of public scrutiny; the framework is designed to depoliticise development. In Chowdhury’s vision, we do not hear about participatory planning, community consent, or labour voice in the technocratic jargon of investment climate reform which has been suggested. Instead, in this BIDA vision for Bangladesh, what we see is a new packaging of ‘the same old’ elite consensus and corporate collusion that held sway over national economic futures without any democratic legitimacy. Is this 2.0 Bangladesh packaging the same as the 1.0 formula?

The BIDA aggressive pursuit of foreign direct investment has frequently overlooked the potential of local industries, such as indigenous textile producers in Narayanganj, who struggle continually to compete with foreign firms receiving significant incentives and tax breaks. Consequently, unemployed local labour, particularly skilled youth and vocational trainees in regions like Khulna and Rajshahi from closed jute mills, sugar mills and the agriculture sector, remain sidelined, exacerbating unemployment and socio-economic disparities as these investment frameworks heavily favour foreign entities over domestic human capital and industry.

On a different note, one cannot overlook Ashik Chowdhury’s self-titled claim of being Bangladesh’s ‘Chief Marketing Officer’. From the people’s perspective, this title blurs the lines between public service and personal branding. While promoting the country to attract investment is part of Chowdhury’s role, adopting corporate titles in a governmental context can be seen as an attempt to align state functions with corporate interests. This alignment signals his intent to prioritise market-driven agendas over public welfare, challenging the democratic accountability of public institutions. Perhaps Chowdhury would benefit from doing countrywide consultations at the community level across all districts with workers, farmers, women, children and indigenous peoples and validate whether the people would like their ancestral domains, natural resources, labour and cultural fabric marketed to foreign investors. And if so, at what cost?

An equitable alternative to Chowdhury’s investment paradigm needs to start from refusing the false binary between investment and rights. Bangladesh can and should pursue industrial growth, but it must be based on principles of economic justice, environmental stewardship and democratic accountability. Instead of chasing after FDI at any cost, the state should purposely invest in (through public financing) labour-intensive sectors, support worker cooperatives, expand environmental enforcement, and respect community land rights. International collaborations must also be put in place on the basis of goals set nationally and not forced templates driven by the World Bank’s and ADB’s doing business metrics or the IMF’s structural benchmarks.

In sum, the new BIDA framework presented by Ashik Chowdhury is a political project that ultimately prioritises the interests of capital over those of people, workers, and the environment. But for a democratic, equitable and ecologically resilient Bangladesh, we need to break with this orthodoxy. Perhaps we need a deeper ground-up thinking for Bangladesh development rather than top-down lofty concepts. Skydiving hundreds of feet high, people on the ground must seem like ants; one should come down to the ground and perhaps meet the people in their villages and communities and then think about big recommendations.

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Rayyan Hassan is executive director of NGO Forum on ADB.