Sat 2 Jun 2007
I was running past the crowd in a hot summer day to buy ice cream at Baskin Robbins for my kids inside Square One mall in Mississauga (Toronto’s largest mall) the other day. I couldn’t believe when my Chachi (aunt) stopped me and pointed out Bangla newspaper (Bangladeshi newspaper based in Canada) on a shelf in the main newsstand inside the mall. I am and possibly most Diasporas in North America are probably past that stage of getting surprised to find Bangla newspaper in Bangladeshi or Indian stores but finding Bangla newspaper in the newsstand of a major North American shopping mall was a pleasant surprise indeed! I am sure many of your had experiences like this one that took your by surprise. Are we getting to that point in some of the major North American cities like Bangladeshis in London?
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 am
Being the forth largest spoken language in the world, one would have expected this much earlier. But I was always sad to see that Bengali as a language never appeared on the language list of most of the software which even supported twenty to thirsty languages.
The reason might be the fact that the producers only counted the users and the ones with purchasing power, where Bangladeshis were little in numbers.
But things are changing. I won’t be surprised if I see Bangladeshis are doing like or better than our neighbors in western countries in near future.
First, Bangladeshis have demonstrated their relatively high spending power, or “non-kongush” attitude (which has already attracted the mobile companies in her land).
Second, though Bangladeshis started to move to west comparatively later than its neighbors, but she is approaching with “quality” now, rather than quantity. Studies showed that Bangladesh is slowly moving from sending un-skilled migrants to semi-skilled migrants.
Available statistics also showed that Bangladesh even earned more remittances in subsequent years when she sent less labors to the world. One explanation is that Bangladeshi’s are getting high paid job around the world now!
Third, Bangladeshi students are performing really well, when compared with its contemporaries from other parts. And enthusiasm among the BD students to go and study abroad was never at such a heightened level before. It’s a new phenomenon and it will have its result (even the brain-drain issue has taken a new turn in this globalised and internet world where the Diasporas are contributing more in BD’s development from abroad than they could possibly do if they were in BD).
So Bangladesh is not only getting to that point in different western nations like Bangladeshis in London, it will be even better in terms of quality.
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:27 pm
ভালো খবর যদিও আমি দেখি নাই এখোনো কোথাও। সত্যি বলতে, বেশির ভাগ বাংলা পত্রিকার কোয়ালিটি ভালো না–অবশ্য সেটা অন্য ভাষার বেলায়ও হতে পারে।