The digital revolution came very late to Bangladesh as compared to many other parts of the world. The biggest challenge in tracking the emergence and evolution of digitalisation in Bangladesh was a fledgling documentation culture in several spheres of life.

This is where the importance of Bangladesh’s veteran journalist Ajit Kumar Sarkar’s book “Digital Revolution In Bangladesh: Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib To Sheikh Hasina” (published by Tathayseba Barta Sangstha, Price Taka 700) lies. Proper documentation and its preservation serve as the take-off point for any country’s march along the digital path and lead to transparency in governance. The book is the outcome of a good deal of research based on documents both in Bangladesh and outside.

In tracing the early signs of a digital society in the early 1970s when Bangabandhu played the key role in ushering space technology in the country, the refusal of the then Khaleda Zia government to join the international submarine cable in 1992 on the spacious argument of national security and the declaration of a digital Bangladesh project in 2008 are among the 11 chapters of the 318-page book which is a product of the author’s long experience of following the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

He has collated not only a painstaking chronology of Bangladesh’s journey along the digital revolution path but also brings out a slew of successive Sheikh Hasina government’s initiatives to bolster the role of information and communication technology across the vast field of governance. That is a commendable performance in view of the fact that Bangladesh had to do a lot of catch-up to keep pace with the rest of the world in the digital revolution.

The book brings out how the policy initiatives under Hasina in digitising Bangladesh have produced a series of successes and brings out the role of Sajeeb Wazed Joy, Hasina’s ICT Adviser in shaping the policies and implementation programmes. At the same time, the book has also listed the challenges Bangladesh has faced in its quest for a digital society and the shortcomings in government policies and initiatives and pinpointing the areas that need to be looked into and concerns addressed. For example, the book analyses in detail the pitfalls of digital tech tools like Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and Machine Learning in a country with a huge labour-intensive sector like garments manufacturing and how the government needs to strike a balance by ensuring enhancement of the skill of workers so that they can keep themselves with abreast with the march of digital technology.

It was on 12 December 2008 that Sheikh Hasina pledged to build digital Bangladesh while releasing the Awami League manifesto “Din Badaler Sanad: Roopkatha 2021”. It was the same conviction that prompted the Hasina government to announce the plan of ‘Smart Bangladesh” by the year 2041.

The book rightly points out that if Bangladesh has to take digitalisation to newer heights, it needs to teach the digital way of life to school students at a very early age and come out with education reforms, an initiative first launched by Bangabandhu, so that Bangladesh comes up with a future-ready and knowledge-based society because the march of digital technology is inevitable and unstoppable.

The wealth of authentic information, all sourced properly, in the book will be of immense help to students and researchers alike in trying to make sense of the history of digital technology. It is for this reason that widely respected academic Dr A A M S Arefin Siddque, former Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University, says in his preface to the book that “Perusing the manuscript of…‘Digital Revolution in Bangladesh: Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib to Sheikh Hasina’ reminded me of a line from Rabindranath Tagore’s poem ‘আকাশতলে উঠল ফুটে আলোর শতদল’ (Hundreds of lights rise up in the sky).”
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The reviewer is a veteran Indian journalist