John CoonrodProf. Badiul Alam Majumdar is known by millions of people in Bangladesh and tens of thousands of people around the world, yet very few know his life story. And that life story is as inspiring as are the multifaceted results of his leadership.
This biography by Cathy Burke follows Badiul’s life from his childhood in abject rural poverty, through his two decades as a graduate student, professor and consultant in the US, then back to Bangladesh when that nation returned to democracy in 1991. Just like Mahatma Gandhi, the leadership that Badiul is known for didn’t begin until he was nearly 50 years old – a fact that should give us all hope. The book was already titled and readying for publication before the dramatic moment on August 6, 2024 when then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country in the face of massive youth-led protests. The book’s title refers to the quiet, daily revolution of millions of low-income women, men and youth shaking off their dependency mindset and justifiable hopelessness, and organizing to overcome their own hunger and poverty.
As it turns out, many of the young protestors who toppled Sheikh Hasina’s regime had been trained by Badiul and his programs, making this book particularly relevant to our time.
Full disclosure: I have known and worked closely with Badiul since 1993. From the first day we met, I saw that he was on fire with a vision for a Bangladesh of self-reliance and dignity – a future that honored the sacrifices his compatriots had made during their long struggle for independence – first from England and then from Pakistan, and now from home-grown autocracy.
Despite our long working relationships, however, I was only vaguely aware of his childhood and his days as a student activist leading up to the war for independence in 1971. I knew a little of his education as a favorite of the renowned business professor Peter Drucker, but I was entirely unaware that his championship of Bangladesh continued throughout his 20 years in the US. This book is therefore a particular treat for those of us familiar with Badiul’s successful leadership at The Hunger Project in Bangladesh by learning how his personal journey led to his later impact.
At the same time, I believe this book will be particularly valuable to those with no direct knowledge of Bangladesh. The profound injustice of entrenched poverty is a complex challenge everywhere in the world. Everywhere, people are tempted to not see it as finite, confrontable and solvable. Cathy Burke has done a brilliant job of showing how, step-by-step, Badiul has led his colleagues to create people-powered solutions to overcome the subjugation of women and girls, the unemployment of youth, the petty corruption of local officials, the spread of contagious and water-borne disease, environmental destruction and the ways that unscrupulous politicians exploit religious differences to accrue power to themselves.
Badiul’s journey and impact have been extraordinary, but I think he would be the first to say it is not unique. He has found ways to unleash extraordinary leadership from hundreds of thousands of “ordinary” people in his country and do so with unfailing joy. This recounting of his journey can serve as both an inspiration and perhaps even a road map for how each of us can take on the racism, sexism and rising autocracy in our own towns and countries.
Cathy is the perfect person to write this book. She has traveled many times to Bangladesh since 1998 as head of The Hunger Project Australia. She has written two other books on leadership that express the enormous amount that we in the overdeveloped world can learn from the leadership of very low-income women leaders, and she has had the tenacity and empathy to pull the threads of personal history from Badiul’s memory.
Whether or not we choose to pursue a path of social activism similar to Badiul’s, I think all of us owe a debt of gratitude to Cathy Burke for doing the hard work of pulling together the long-private life story of Badiul into a beautifully written narrative.
The book is available on Amazon in paperback and as a Kindle e-book and at www.cathyburke.com
