It would be hollow to argue with Sadig Ahmed’s statement: “In the early 1970s, following independence, Bangladesh faced daunting development challenges.” As it would be to dispute the World Bank’s (WB) explanation for why such a situation had come to pass: “Desperately poor when it won its independence in 1971, overpopulated, and reeling from overwhelming war damage to its institutional and physical capital, Bangladesh looked to become, as Henry Krissinger forecast, an international basket case’.” Having inherited a precarious state to begin with, Bangladesh was then placed in further predicament by a famine that ravaged the country in 1974.