Basket Case: Bangladesh’s Image Problem
I have not quite gotten over with what Roseanne Barr had to say about Bangladesh. While doing one of her stand-up comics in front of a studio audience, America´s most profane–and perhaps most overweight TV actress–once said, the best formula for weight loss is 'to spend a few weeks in Bangladesh'.
On the other hand, Roseanne´s comment is not particularly surprising. This image of Bangladesh, once described by a former US Secretary of State as a 'bottomless basket', and since repeated countless times by the Western media, is now written in stone.
Not only in the West, but also in much of the developing world, whenever the talk shifts to under development and poverty, it is Bangladesh that immediately springs to mind. Living in the United States, one does not have to go far to search for examples to cite. In recent months, as the American press jostled for the best sound bites to cover the Presidential primaries, Bangladesh´s name came up repeatedly, each time in the unenviable role of a footnote to illustrate a single point: it is desperately poor, unwanted and godforsaken.
Pat Buchanan was particularly persuasive, as he theatrically warned his compatriots of the pitfalls of NAFTA and GATT and open-door immigration policies. 'Soon America will become just like Bangladesh,' he forecast. In a televised debate with Al Gore in the run-up to the last Presidential elections, Ross Perot maintained that if NAFTA were approved US products would fail to compete with Bangladesh. Garment workers there are paid peanuts and competition with them would kill American workers, the maverick millionaire thundered.
Whenever someone needs to prove that America is sliding through a downward chute, Bangladesh is fished out as a good example of 'rottenness'. Malnutrition is on the rise among the American blacks; their longevity is declining. What measure does one use? Compare it with Bangladesh. The situation in New York´s Harlem is so despicable that its child mortality rate is higher than even that of Bangladesh, writes the New York Times, among many other newspapers, at every available opportunity.
Bangladesh is also featured in most discussions on illegal immigration to the West. Recently, in a major article on illegal immigration, the New York Times provided a graphic illustration of how astute Bangladeshis are in evading immigration officials at Western check-points. It reported the interception of a Germany-bound convoy supposedly carrying tomatoes. When the convoy was searched in Slovakia after it had crossed Hungary through Romania, customs officials were shocked to discover 60 Bangladeshi men and women hiding under the canvas cover, suffocating and nearly dead.
There is perhaps nothing untrue reported by the Times. Forced by crushing poverty and driven by desperation, Bangladeshis are leaving home in large numbers. There is also no conspiracy by the Western media. 'Journalists report what they see. If they see bad things, they report about bad things,' Barbara Crossette recently told me. As a New York Times correspondent in New Delhi, Ms Crosette covered the countries of South Asia for a number of years. 'We are not driven by any ideology,' she said.
Single-Image Portrait
Or are they? Whether one agrees or not, creating a single-image portrait of a nation serves very subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, political purposes. Let us leave Bangladesh for a moment and take up the case of American blacks. There is nothing wrong, statistically speaking, in stating that every third or fourth black American has at one point of time or another been put behind bars. When this statistical truth is repeated–and frequently laced with stories of rape, murder and domestic violence– what in the end remains is the picture of a criminal nation.
The fact that blacks are also America´s best athletes, artists and religious leaders is easily forgotten. Similarly, the word 'fundamentalist' is used by the American media in a manner that it is always associated with a Muslim. Many Muslims are fundamentalists and some of them are perhaps terrorists. But the clever use of the images links the three and succeeds in establishing a fallacy: all Muslims are fundamentalist terrorists.
And so with Bangladesh, The country is poor, but it is also a lot more. It is a heroic nation that faces nature´s cruelty with utmost courage. Poor governance and military dictatorship have lashed it for too long, but the people have refused to give up, never failing to summon courage to rally for democracy. Nurturing old traditions, it has produced great music and art. The economy is anything but moribund, and the garment labels to be found in New York´s best department stores prove the point. Activism and work in the non-governmental sphere is an example for the rest of the world.
None of this will ever make it into the Western media. Dan Rather is not interested. While there is no conspiracy to prove Bangladesh´s impoverishment, when only its image of poverty is identified with the country, it provides the media with a simple illustration of all that is unwholesome. It then becomes easy for a Pat Buchanan or a Ross Perot–both, politicians who rely on the simple sound bite to rouse the rabble– to drive home an ideological point. Which is, build a wall around America. Or else, you become another Bangladesh. Impose trade restriction. Or else, your wages will fall to the level of Bangladesh´s.
In the United States today, no one even spends any time anymore to explain why communism–or even liberalism–is bad. Just utter the words, and the message is conveyed. And so, with Bangladesh. Mention the name and the synonym pops up in the television-fed American mind: ´poverty´.
It might be a simple game of words, but the result is devastating for a country which is poor, but also very rich in ways the American media men and women would never care to know or understand.
After all, in the United States, image is everything.