How did Malaysia succeed while countries like Bangladesh couldn't?

Imagine Bangladesh as a failed math student who finally gets a B after years of hard work. Next, let's look at Malaysia, which started as a grade B maths student and moved up to A.

As a Malaysian, I don't think you are giving Bangladesh the recognition it deserves for its current economic situation. At the same time, you are making an unfair comparison between the two countries of different nationalities.

On the one hand, you have Malaysia, a country that was never engulfed in a "war of liberation" before independence, whose entire economic infrastructure is intact, whose government has never been significantly unstable, and which has never dealt with mass genocide or rape.

has a relatively strong economy that trades with many countries after independence, has a much smaller population, which means less pressure in fighting poverty

On the other hand, there is Bangladesh, which initially suffered from economic inequality compared to West Pakistan, a large population where many lived in poverty and gained independence through devastating wars in which many were killed and raped. and that the country's damaged infrastructure started out as a very poor country, with millions dying of hunger and disease.

There is a lot of state instability and military rule

Here we can all see that Bangladesh is clearly facing a very bad map in its economic development. Given what they have been through (and are still doing), Bangladesh has indeed achieved the extraordinary feats that many poor countries, including

Resettlement of more than 15 million Bangladeshis out of poverty since 1992

To become one of the fastest growing economies in the mid-2010s

Has a realistic chance of becoming an average income country by 2030.

Thanks to Mohamed Yunus, microcredit and microfinance were introduced. A concept that Malaysia eventually copied to help poor Malaysians

The existence of a service economy that is dominated today, not agriculture.

Despite all the corruption, infrastructure bottlenecks, electricity shortages, instability, and poverty are still going on. Bangladesh has come a long way to the economy today, especially after its devastating childhood. It has an ambitious goal of eradicating poverty within a decade.

Of course, it may never be as successful as Malaysia in terms of its economic strength, but at least you can see that this country is resilient by allowing people to live better lives.