'The difference between Bangladesh and England...' (18/02/09)

I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been spending so long sitting on Mahabub’s motorbike (he likes to talk, let’s just say, regardless of impending doom by bus), but over the last few days I’ve found myself engaged in some pretty deep conversations.

Topics included:
- Joining the armed forces: how this is regarded in Britain, whether I would like to join, the reasons I would never join voluntarily, the way recruitment works in Bangladesh, whether Mahabub would join etc, etc.
- The relations between management and other staff in GBK: how good do I think they are, how they compare with other organisations I know, whether I think there are any problems with relations, the culture of hierarchy and deference in Bangladesh, the potential problems that can arise when people cannot give their opinions freely, the possible difficulties when constructive criticism is not allowed (note: the last two points were hypothetical, naturally…)
- Opinions of members of staff: (can’t go into this here!)

But what struck me most was one conversation I had with Mahabub, while we were waiting for a meeting to finish.

“How many countries you have visited?” he asked me.

This is quite a common question, and I normally just say ‘quite a few’ because I can’t be bothered to work it out, but seeing as we had time, he asked me to name them all. As I went through them in my mind, and the numbers mounted, I began to wonder whether it was a good idea to keep going. It seemed so self-aggrandising, and so insensitive (he’d already told me he’d only ever visited India, and that was once when he was twelve). But I carried on, and eventually reached a figure.

“Maybe sixteen?”

Mahabub sat back in his chair to think about this. Then:

“How much does an English person earn for one day?”

I don’t know the average, so I guessed that the minimum wage is now about £6/hour.

“So that is about 600 taka an hour?” he asked.

I nodded.

“The Bangladeshi person get 500 taka for one day,” he told me.

Again, I nodded.

Then he sighed and said:

“This is the difference between the Bangladeshi and the English.”

Isn’t it just?