Huge response to Indian Eid visa camp for Bangladeshis

[Joe Shearer]

Actually we need to stay away from India as much as possible.Visiting India is a major health risk considering all those free flowing human excreta across India.

What is WRONG with you?

 

[Nilgiri]

1 million is not a huge number considering our total population of 150 million.

Definition of 'least developed country' doesn't really include the number of outbound medical tourists.

Its a pretty huge number if you look at the total number of outbound tourists from Bangladesh. That number was around 1.5 million in 2013.

Furthermore its a pretty big number if you reduce the cohort to people that can actually afford to indulge in such travel.

And you are saying all or most of this is predicated on "medical" reasons. If true you are basically asserting Bangladesh deserves to be in the least developed category since any country that can't provide health services to 1 million of its citizens (who have the means and income to travel to another country) is definitely not a generic developing country.

Conversely if anyone asserts these tourists are not all medical but only some are, that means a good number visit for other reasons (business, pleasure, family visit etc).

You can't hold up both sides together basically and expect it to fly.

Heck, I didn't deny horlicks is imported from India but this is not a major product that is consumed by a significant number of Bangladeshis.

Well your compatriot brought it up, so take it up with him. "Horlicks" here like I said was used as a generic reference to consumer goods anyway. Its pointless to debate which ones are in large demand and which ones aren't. His general assertion is that Bangladeshis consume "way too much" Indian produced "garbage".

lol, you mean importing horlicks has tilted the bilateral trade in India's favor? I guess most of our imports from India are mainly agricultural products.

Wait, are you preparing for another economic thesis here?

Importing consumer goods in general from India yes (again Horlicks is just one small example). The split between raw commodity to processed goods (which include labour margins) is about 60 - 40....so its not like Bangladesh imports near 100% only raw goods from India....About 40% is a significant percentage and it explains why the trade disparity is so high.

http://ris.org.in/images/RIS_images/pdf/South Asia meeting 2-3 may 20013 PPT/Abdul Basher_paper.pdf

I am referring to table A.8 on page 28.

Its a 57/43% split by primary commodity/manufactured in the Indian exports to Bangladesh...further broken down by low, med and high skill manufacturing component.

If you have a later source of the current composition in trade, please post it.

In 2013-2014 India exported around 6 billion USD to Bangladesh....and imported about 456 million. Thats terms of trade overall at about 13 to 1.

Look at the composition of the items:

http://www.dhakachamber.com/Bilateral/India-Bangladesh Bilateral Trade Statistics.pdf

Some examples of what Bangladesh imported from India and the amounts that year:

Vehicles other than railway or tramway rolling- stock and parts and accessories thereof (497.7 million)

Nuclear reactor, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances, parts thereof (278.7 million);

Iron and steel (213.9 million)

Organic chemicals (160.8 million)

;Mineral fuels, mineral oils and products of their distillation, bituminous substances, mineral waxes (141.7 million);

Plastics and articles thereof (138.3 million)

Electrical machinery and equipment and parts thereof, sound recorders and reproducers, television image and sound recorders and reproducers and parts and accessories of such articles (114.1 million);


and theres more further down the list....certainly looks like the 60/40 ratio is about the same. Also compare with the composition of things Bangladesh exported to India that year.

So the TOTAL amount we import from Bangladesh is more than financed by JUST the vehicles we export to you. Everything else is on top of that. Assuming by 2018 India exports around 9.2 billion and imports 800 million (going by current trends)....that means you will be importing around 3.7 billion worth of industrial/manufactured goods from us (the rest 5.5 billion is agri, cotton, primary ores etc) and exporting around 600 million of primary products (raw jute, agri) and 200 million manufactured (mostly RMG) in return.

 

[Grevion]

Any Bangladeshi visiting India becomes a celebrity at home, when they go back (if), their relatives, neighbours and even people from their neighbouring villages come to meet the guy and stand in queues to listen to the wonderful stories of a modern country and their modern cities with amazing things like a functioning transport system, metro rails, escalators, lifts, malls, multiplexes, highways, etc. The area around the 'foreign returned' lucky guy starts looking like a fairground, many small traders gather their and open their shops selling 'cutting tea', fried papad, salted peanuts, jilipi (jalewi), singara (samosa), khaja, goja (types of cheap sweets), bhujia, etc. Some people serve luchi/kochuri-tarkari (puri-bhaji), daal-bhat (lentil soup and rice) etc. to the waiting crowd. Some people sell lemon water, coconut water to the waiting crowd (the weather is hot most of the year), during the rainy season people sell kolapata (banana leafs), kochupata (another plant with big leafs), to waiting crowd to protect them from rain. Some people sell colorful balloons, plastic toys, wooden and clay toys, paper windmills, whistles etc. to the loitering kids coming with their parents, sometimes nagordolas (small Ferris wheels) also come! More than one million Bangladeshis visiting India create more than one million mini carnivals all over Bangladesh, every year!!

@BDforever @Anubis @Doyalbaba @Species @UKBengali @bongbang trolling aside, we are happy to give these little pleasures of life to millions of Bangladeshis every year!

Btw, I can give photos of these mini carnivals, but then I have to take permission from each of these individuals appearing in the photos, otherwise it is illegal in my country to use photos of individuals without their consent.

I wish you are just kidding around cause that surely cannot be true.

Holy craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!!!

Mate are you ethnically bengali? If so which part?

 

[Joe Shearer]

I was talking about our region (Northern most India) not Kolkata.

Can't say about Kolkata, may be @Rain Man is OK to see them around.

But i doubt, since there is nothing in common between Kolkata and Bangladesh the former is known as the land of elite Bhadra lok and descendant of Tagore, Bose and Ram mohan Roy.

You obviously know nothing about things there.

 

[SarthakGanguly]

Mate are you ethnically bengali? If so which part?

No. But I follow RM's posts especially in this section at times.

 

[Species]

Its a pretty huge number if you look at the total number of outbound tourists from Bangladesh. That number was around 1.5 million in 2013.

Furthermore its a pretty big number if you reduce the cohort to people that can actually afford to indulge in such travel.

And you are saying all or most of this is predicated on "medical" reasons. If true you are basically asserting Bangladesh deserves to be in the least developed category since any country that can't provide health services to 1 million of its citizens (who have the means and income to travel to another country) is definitely not a generic developing country.

Conversely if anyone asserts these tourists are not all medical but only some are, that means a good number visit for other reasons (business, pleasure, family visit etc).

You can't hold up both sides together basically and expect it to fly.



Well your compatriot brought it up, so take it up with him. "Horlicks" here like I said was used as a generic reference to consumer goods anyway. Its pointless to debate which ones are in large demand and which ones aren't. His general assertion is that Bangladeshis consume "way too much" Indian produced "garbage".



Importing consumer goods in general from India yes (again Horlicks is just one small example). The split between raw commodity to processed goods (which include labour margins) is about 60 - 40....so its not like Bangladesh imports near 100% only raw goods from India....About 40% is a significant percentage and it explains why the trade disparity is so high.

http://ris.org.in/images/RIS_images/pdf/South Asia meeting 2-3 may 20013 PPT/Abdul Basher_paper.pdf

I am referring to table A.8 on page 28.

Its a 57/43% split by primary commodity/manufactured in the Indian exports to Bangladesh...further broken down by low, med and high skill manufacturing component.

If you have a later source of the current composition in trade, please post it.

In 2013-2014 India exported around 6 billion USD to Bangladesh....and imported about 456 million. Thats terms of trade overall at about 13 to 1.

Look at the composition of the items:

http://www.dhakachamber.com/Bilateral/India-Bangladesh Bilateral Trade Statistics.pdf

Some examples of what Bangladesh imported from India and the amounts that year:

Vehicles other than railway or tramway rolling- stock and parts and accessories thereof (497.7 million)

Nuclear reactor, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances, parts thereof (278.7 million);

Iron and steel (213.9 million)

Organic chemicals (160.8 million)

;Mineral fuels, mineral oils and products of their distillation, bituminous substances, mineral waxes (141.7 million);

Plastics and articles thereof (138.3 million)

Electrical machinery and equipment and parts thereof, sound recorders and reproducers, television image and sound recorders and reproducers and parts and accessories of such articles (114.1 million);


and theres more further down the list....certainly looks like the 60/40 ratio is about the same. Also compare with the composition of things Bangladesh exported to India that year.

So the TOTAL amount we import from Bangladesh is more than financed by JUST the vehicles we export to you. Everything else is on top of that. Assuming by 2018 India exports around 9.2 billion and imports 800 million (going by current trends)....that means you will be importing around 3.7 billion worth of industrial/manufactured goods from us (the rest 5.5 billion is agri, cotton, primary ores etc) and exporting around 600 million of primary products (raw jute, agri) and 200 million manufactured (mostly RMG) in return.

As I expected, you are up on another weird economic thesis.

I stick to my statements,

Bangladeshi tourists to India are mainly for medical purposes and mostly belong to the middle or lower middle class category (just check the images of the article posted here).

1 million is far less than even 1% of our population. Having said that, I do agree our medical sector is not up to the mark especially in the small towns. They usually have to depend on the major cities for advanced treatment; often travelling to India comes in cheaper for the border towns.

Bangladesh's import from India is dominated by agricultural products.

 

[bongbang]

Any Bangladeshi visiting India becomes a celebrity at home, when they go back (if), their relatives, neighbours and even people from their neighbouring villages come to meet the guy and stand in queues to listen to the wonderful stories of a modern country and their modern cities with amazing things like a functioning transport system, metro rails, escalators, lifts, malls, multiplexes, highways, etc. The area around the 'foreign returned' lucky guy starts looking like a fairground, many small traders gather their and open their shops selling 'cutting tea', fried papad, salted peanuts, jilipi (jalewi), singara (samosa), khaja, goja (types of cheap sweets), bhujia, etc. Some people serve luchi/kochuri-tarkari (puri-bhaji), daal-bhat (lentil soup and rice) etc. to the waiting crowd. Some people sell lemon water, coconut water to the waiting crowd (the weather is hot most of the year), during the rainy season people sell kolapata (banana leafs), kochupata (another plant with big leafs), to waiting crowd to protect them from rain. Some people sell colorful balloons, plastic toys, wooden and clay toys, paper windmills, whistles etc. to the loitering kids coming with their parents, sometimes nagordolas (small Ferris wheels) also come! More than one million Bangladeshis visiting India create more than one million mini carnivals all over Bangladesh, every year!!

@BDforever @Anubis @Doyalbaba @Species @UKBengali @bongbang trolling aside, we are happy to give these little pleasures of life to millions of Bangladeshis every year!

Btw, I can give photos of these mini carnivals, but then I have to take permission from each of these individuals appearing in the photos, otherwise it is illegal in my country to use photos of individuals without their consent.

Dont talk from your personal experience, what happens after an Indian visit to BD. I know nothing like this happens in BD, incase of India or any other country.

http://www.dhakatribune.com/showtim...-1952-wished-visit-his-native-home-bangladesh

 

[Grevion]

No. But I follow RM's posts especially in this section at times.

So he was kidding in that post afterall.
I say you must be like me then - parents born and raised in their native states but then moved to some other state for work.

 

[Riyad]

By your same logic, Bangladesh ultimately belongs to greater India. Meghna derives from a Sanskrit name. Also look at origin of name Bangladesh....and where Bengali language even comes from.

'
Bangladesh is part of Indian 'subcontinent' along with Pakistan, not 'greater' India.

 

[Anubis]

Holy craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!!!

Interesting you should mention that....that is also some thing we talk about when we go back from India!

Drugs are bad, always avoid these things.

Did you listen to the song?? Its awesome!

 

[SarthakGanguly]

Interesting you should mention that....that is also some thing we talk about when we go back from India!

We pagans consider everything holy.

And the disgust at worst or amusement at best at our practice by Muslims is well known and pretty universal.

 

[Nilgiri]

'
Bangladesh is part of Indian 'subcontinent' along with Pakistan, not 'greater' India.

You will notice the word "Indian" in "Indian subcontinent".

I am not talking of political concept of today's India....but the nation of people, society and culture that extends well beyond the political borders of the country.

As I expected, you are up on another weird economic thesis.

I stick to my statements,

Bangladeshi tourists to India are mainly for medical purposes and mostly belong to the middle or lower middle class category (just check the images of the article posted here).

1 million is far less than even 1% of our population. Having said that, I do agree our medical sector is not up to the mark especially in the small towns. They usually have to depend on the major cities for advanced treatment; often travelling to India comes in cheaper for the border towns.

Bangladesh's import from India is dominated by agricultural products.

So whenever I post actual source data, its an economic "thesis"?

60% of imports by value is not domination of the import basket. That is ignoring the 40% of vehicles, electrical goods, steel and other manufactures Bangladesh imports from India....all various levels of high, medium and low value added manufacturing. High value added manufactured product would be like this Bajaj motorbike in Bangladesh:

The high value manufacture compromises a full 10% of all exports to Bangladesh. So about 600 million dollars a couple years ago. Just this small section is already a lot more than Bangladesh entire export to India.

Whereas the only "manufactures" we import from Bangladesh are RMG which is very low value added, compromise maybe 20 - 30% of the total stuff we import from Bangladesh which is tiny to begin with (1/13th) compared to what we export to you.

Whether they are lower middle class, middle class or elite....Bangladeshi tourists spend their money on India in significantly higher number than Bangladesh earns from its total tourism arrivals.

2/3rds of Bangladeshis that leave Bangladesh for tourism, are leaving for India.

And in return how many Indians visit Bangladesh for tourism?

Next to none. Bangladesh gets about 125,000 total foreign visitors a year (And most are Bangladesh origin people who have western citizenship). Thats fewer than Bhutan does.

More Indians would want to visit Nepal, SL and Bhutan than Bangladesh.

 

[Khan_21]

Next to none. Bangladesh gets about 125,000 total foreign visitors a year (And most are Bangladesh origin people who have western citizenship). Thats fewer than Bhutan does.

More Indians would want to visit Nepal, SL and Bhutan than Bangladesh.

Bangladesh might have some tourism potential but for me personally I find it too one dimensional and monotonous . The landscape is a bit flat and very little variety when compared to its neighbours . Also got to do with how little well known it is abroad .

 

[Homo Sapiens]

wish you are just kidding around cause that surely cannot be true.

Of course he is kidding.Bangladeshi people are not frog on the pond like west bengali.We have spread out far and wide across the world.There are at least currently 10 million Bangladeshi people in overseas.You will find significant number of Bangladeshi even in a country like Brazil,Paraguay,Bolivia.There are millions of Bangladeshi in the rich countries like,USA,UK,Italy,Germany,Sweden,Singapore,Malaysia,Hong Kong,UAE,Kuwait,Qatar,Saudi Arabia,Oman etc.Going and returning from developed country is very normal things in Bangladesh.Nobody notice around.This @Rain Man guy is trying to be very funny with this cooked up story.

 

[Nilgiri]

There are millions of Bangladeshi in the rich countries like,USA,UK,Italy,Germany,Sweden,Singapore,Malaysia,Hong Kong,UAE,Kuwait,Qatar,Saudi Arabia,Oman etc

You forgot Canada. I have lots of Bangladeshi friends here.