Report of seminars held in Dhaka during 1994 & 1996.

This book explores the diverse experience of Bangladesh’s development over the last fifty years and provides systematic explanations of its success in socioeconomic development. It also assesses future trends on the basis of past experiences. It is widely acknowledged that Bangladesh provides one of the most striking examples in the study of present day development along with rapid growth and catching up. The analysis highlights the development traps that Bangladesh faced during its journey and the ones that may have to be faced in the coming decades in order to move towards prosperity. The book asserts that explaining Bangladesh’s development is not for the simpleminded; any single mono-causal explanation for Bangladesh’s development is bound to fall down in the face of reality. This book will be of interest to academics, students, policy makers and development practitioners especially in developing countries—in particular in South Asia and Bangladesh.

This book examines how migrant remittances contribute to household social resilience in rural Bangladesh. Using a mixed methods approach, the authors show that remittances play a crucial role in enhancing the life chances and economic livelihoods of rural households, and that remittance income enables households to overcome immediate pressures, adapt to economic and environmental change, build economic and cultural capital, and provide greater certainty in planning for the future. However, the book also reveals that the social and economic benefits of remittances are not experienced equally by all households. Rural village households endure a precarious existence and the potentially positive outcomes of remittances can easily be undermined by a range of external and household-specific factors leading to few, if any, benefits in terms of household social resilience.