Digital Bangladesh: How a Vision Became Reality

I still remember when getting a birth certificate meant taking a day off work and standing in three different lines. Today my nephew did it from his phone in under ten minutes. That's not a small thing, and it's not an accident either.

The Digital Bangladesh push that started years ago under this government wasn't just a slogan for rallies. Union Digital Centers reached villages that never had a government office nearby. Mobile banking through bKash and Nagad put financial access in the hands of rickshaw pullers and tea stall owners who'd never held a bank passbook. Freelancers in small towns are now earning in dollars because the groundwork for internet connectivity was laid down deliberately, not by accident.

I know it's fashionable now to criticize everything this government built, especially after everything that's happened since. But I'm not going to pretend the last decade of digital progress didn't happen just because it's politically inconvenient to admit it. My cousins in Sylhet pay their electricity bill from an app. My mother gets her pension without a middleman skimming off the top anymore. Say what you want about the politics, but don't tell me this wasn't real progress, because I watched it happen with my own eyes.

Sometimes I wonder if we'll only appreciate what we had once it's gone for good.