Bangladesh's Padma Bridge inaugurated: Here’s how PM Sheikh Hasina turned adversity into opportunity
India Today
With the inauguration of Padma Bridge in Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has turned adversity into an opportunity. According to economists, Padma Bridge will contribute 1.2 per cent to annual GDP growth.
Bangladesh has come of age as a huge turnaround story with the formal inauguration of the 6.15-km rail-road bridge on the Padma River on June 25, Saturday.
This is the country's biggest infrastructure project since independence from Pakistan, which left Bangladesh bloodied and battered. But in 50 years down the line and with Sheikh Hasina at the helm, this youngest nation in South Asia has excelled to become the bull case for the region.
Bangladesh can finish the $3.9 billion Padma Bridge project (original estimate) with its own funds and has paid back fair and square. Hasina's long-term adversary, the US, sided with Pakistan in the 1971 liberation war and reputedly persuaded the World Bank to pull out of the project.
For PM Hasina, the rosy economic picture emanating from the Padma Bridge will come as a shot in the arm in the rundown to the parliament elections due in December 2023. Despite opposition protests over enforced disappearances and rigged elections, even her critics have admitted that Hasina has a brilliant record of economic growth and human development during her thirteen years in power.
But for Sheikh Hasina, this is a moment of great pride and vindication of her decisive leadership that has given Bangladesh its ‘Golden Decade of Development’.
It was she who decided to do the project with Bangladesh's own resources after the World Bank stalled the proposed funding, citing 'credible evidence of corruption', later trashed away by a Canadian court.
"I am the daughter of the great Bangabandhu (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman). I do what I promise," Hasina told mediapersons recently, recalling how detractors including her bete noire, Khaleda Zia (opposition BNP chairperson) had ruled out completion of the Padma Bridge.
