Social Watch, an international network of citizens from different countries, has released a report ranking Bangladesh 164th among 173 countries on a uniformly applied quality of life index. Were it not for our rating in terms of access to water and sanitation, and lower morbidity and mortality we would have compared less favourably with other countries.

Problem areas are education, food security, reproductive health and science and information technology. Of particular interest should be the pointers to food security gap and opaque public expenditure pattern. The first one is illustrated by starvation experienced in the northern region due to an inefficient official distribution system. And, public expenditure is not directed at securing poor people's health.

There is one way of looking at our standing. It has to be seen through the governance lens. Our positive indicators would have been brighter if governance hadn't failed us, political commitment to social sector was stronger, transparency were a given thing, corruption got curbed and bureaucracy had worked efficiently. And our negative reading on the quality index could have been avoided, again if the above factors had worked our way.

It has been the tendency with every government to be dismissive about any report which ranked us low on a global scale. Government would invariably trivialise it and question its methodology and authenticity. At the other pole, government would go gaga over any positive references made to the country, own these up fully as if they had no history, and try to make a political capital out of it.

Any report from international organisations and bodies, the latter being independent and without any axe to grind will nevertheless be rejected out of hand if it highlighted lack of progress on certain indicators. World Bank report has been taken with a grain of salt, and as is common knowledge, government has been allergic to corruption evaluation by Transparency International or TIB. A particular TIB report featuring the huge Chittagong Port rip-off drew a highly dismissive comment from the minister concerned.

In the process, the indicative aspects of such reports, their recommendations, and the data, insights and potentially good counsel contained in them are lost sight of. Instead of being tentative or dismissive about them, the government would do better to use them in drawing up an action-oriented programme.