Category: Economics

Last Sunday, I attended a party (okay, okay it was lunch) along with a few field hockey people somewhere in the town of Ann Arbor. The food was enjoyable; we had tandoori chickens with some spiced rice and an ice cream cake. This coming Friday, there will be a party for the field hockey people again and then, another party (or lunch) on Saturday a week later. I think the field hockey club is starting on a tradition (from now on, I will refer field hockey as hockey. Ice hockey is irrelevent as much as calling football as soccer). A yum yum tradition!

The lunch started to get interesting when the conversion started. The conversion at first was about the game that we played on the previous day. It was a good game under a fantastic weather. The sun was bright, the sky was cloudless and blue, neither too hot nor too cold. It was heaven. We even had two MSU people playing with us.

Then, we talked about hockey still. It should not be a surprise that we talked a lot about hockey. It was a sort of hockey lunch in any case. This time, it is about the Olympics in Greece. There was one Australian there and he said it is going to be Australia. But the Netherlands shares the same group with the Kookaburras. So does India. So, it is too early for me to have that Australian confidence.

For me, the most disappointing part of the Olympics hockey is the Malaysian team absence. It is simply too bad Malaysia lost to England earlier during the qualifying round. Malaysia should have beaten the English but pity that this is going to be Malaysia’s first Olympics game without a hockey team in a long time. I wonder whether Malaysian hockey quality has gone down (Malaysia was ranked 10th in the world barely four years ago) or we just got unlucky.

The topic then shifted to India, Bangladesh and the Brahmaputra River. The conversation started off with the current flood crisis in Bangladesh where more than 2000 people have died. A person asked a question about the high casualties number. Somebody explained that Bangladesh is merely a quarter of Michigan Lower Peninsula’s size but has more than 125 million people in it. Therefore, if something happened, many would be involved.

After I got home, I did some research on that just to know more. By comparison, Michigan is about 250 000 km² with only 10 million people and Malaysia has a land area of almost 330 000 km² with only 25 million people. The contrast in density is drastic; Michigan 40 people/km², Malaysia 70 people/km². Bangladesh has a staggering 926 people/km²!

I did not make up the data, unlike the New York Post. All hail to Wikipedia, in my opinion the best online encyclopedia in the world. Give Wikipedia a visit and howl me at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Earth.

The person that asked the question earlier was not satisfied with the answer and pressed on for a better answer. He asked, if the river floods every time, why do people go there at all?

A depressing answer was given. The people of Bangladesh are poor. They have nowhere to go but the river. The delta is rich with alluvial, an extremely fertile type of soil. Their only hope of survival is the river delta. There is no other economic activity but agriculture.

Another question was fired, why don’t they migrate?

That is easy to answer. There is a cost to migration and poor people cannot afford expensive cost. Worse, nobody wants to accept too many Bangladeshis. In fact, nobody wants too many immigrants.

The last question, given the context of the discussion, strengthened my belief in globalization though I am not saying I agree with globalization with its current form. My notion of globalization is the free flow of capital and labor. The free flow of labor is possible for people from the first world and probably from the developing countries too. However, this is not entirely true for the Bangladeshis and the people from third world in general.

If only free flow of labor were possible for all of us regardless of countries, I believe poverty would be less of a problem, less of a crisis. I of course do think some restriction on labor is a must for the sake of the environment and sustainability.

I am thankful that I am not from the Brahmaputra delta. At the same time, I feel sorry for the people of the delta. It is heartbreaking to see people being stuck in such vicious poverty cycle. On the chessboard, it would have been an impasse.