Issue with most S.Asian countries isn’t just industrialization, it is infact lack of R&D. R&D requires constant flow of money into Higher level education and research institute. It’s hard to justify such spend when the first potential market (country armed forces or local businesses itself) jump to buy the exported toy instead of forcing local R&D and industry to catch up to established companies players in field.
China is a good example, 30 year ago they were building barely marginal stuff. Today, they are leading the world in research and development.
Bangladesh or Pakistan does not lack brains, and I am not comparing the two by the way.
Pakistan is of course ahead defence wise and science wise, but the fact remains if both countries made it easy for scientists to return and had them set up funded research like India did (whether by foreign company FDI or govt. itself) then none of our countries would be research starved as they are now.
Of course when Sanghis cry and boast about patents being produced in India, we all know its BS, because most of it is educational and theoretical garbage with no practical application anywhere.
@jamahir bhai was correct in pointing out that in last twenty years with all the IT Backoffice work and hundreds of Billions earned, India has no native OS they have developed, or even close to it. Nothing to show for so much TAA-LENT.
Indian Govt. has really not done much to help their school education system and even the larger university system. Why do people start leaving India as soon as they finish their MS and PhD education? No opportunity. Indian leaders have failed miserably in this regard and Indians aren't holding them accountable. Ditto in Pakistan and Bangladesh too.
When HP and Microsoft sets up research labs in India, these are proprietary company research produced using cheap Indian Ph.Ds. Otherwise they wouldn't go to India. For what Indian Ph.D.s make in India, they can easily make three times the salary in the West. This is pathetic when one realizes that countries in the subcontinent are the ones who need the researched products the most to help their populations, but the Govts. in our countries have no strategy to retain talent and pay them in well-funded programs at home.
So what we have left at home then - are these low-talent, low quality, low-achiever people with no exposure, who could not make the grade to make it to the West and are just too happy to have a useless govt. job. That is their auqaat fulfilled, eat daal and rice, squeeze out a few puppies and finish life.
I know this is definitely the case in Bangladesh. MSc. degree holders who can't write a clean paragraph of English.
I didn't know FOREX was earned just so it can sit in a bank account and look pretty. It's meant to be used, especially for trading items that are not readily available in Bangladesh, which are, at the moment, warships. I doubt the purchase would even dent Bangladesh's vast FOREX reserves.
The five warships would cost Bangladesh about UK Pound 2 Billion or about US$3 Billion. Count another Billion for infra upgrades (Drydock MBRE Etc.). This is a drop in the bucket as far as our reserves go but will go a long way in improving our Naval shipbuilding skills and capabilities. If we need to export warships someday (definite possibility) and count ourselves as an industrial nation capable of any heavy engineering to add to our arsenal of manufacturing skills, this is a step we MUST take.
All this countering this and that Navy is just jingoism and ultimately good for only lining our leaders' pockets. Ultimately we must take steps to be able to feed our people, of which we have too many of. That means not BUYING $HIT TO LINE OUR LEADERS' SWISS BANK ACCOUNTS, BUT LEARNING TO MAKE IT AT HOME so people can eat.
@jamahir bhai your thoughts.
If you ever land in Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul or Singapore, and see where they have come and where we need to go in the next twenty years, we'd stop talking about this Hindu/Muslim BS and concentrate/focus like a laser on industrialization.