Social Stratification in Bangladesh: A country ravaged by black money:

Social stratification is present in every family, society, culture and country. This is something that can never be avoided, although people tend to turn a blind eye towards this situation.

Social stratification can be governed by various external as well as internal stimuli. External stimuli can comprise of things like money, appearance etc. Internal stimuli can be things like prejudice, the general mentality of the people etc. A very interesting phenomenon I have witnessed on my recent expeditions around my home country of Bangladesh is that how money has an exceptional influence over the levels of social stratification and also how people strive to achieve a higher level of social status by obtaining more money. Notice that I say “obtain” and not “earn” money. This is because most of the money that flows around and about in Bangladesh is what we call “black” money, and this has nothing to do with the color of the bank note. Money obtained by not-so-legal means is known as black money.

People in Bangladesh, mostly the upper-middle class and the upper class, figured out ways to literally get free money. They bring in foreign currency, mostly dollars, into the country and exchange them in, again, not-so-legal places to get better exchange rates than those offered by established exchange offices. So basically, those lucky families that know those places that have lower exchange rates are getting more for a dollar than those who still use the exchange offices.

Due to this anomaly, there is a widening gap between the rich and the poor sections of the society. The interesting thing here is that the rich are getting richer yet the poor are not getting any poorer. This can be due to the reason that the rich community does not need to steal from the poor to keep their income of money stable. Due to this influx of black money, one can find expensive and classy cars roaming the cities and the country sides.