***Economics text books are not about the poor, the women and the human beings. They are, if ever referred to, subjects to serve the prince, the entrepreneur. So, right framework with right conceptualisation is needed

W’lLFULLY or not. students of economics tend to fall a victim to the wiles of some unscrupulous" concepts used in economics text books. The disconcerting episode is that those concepts that we come across in economics text books, do have a perceptible influence in creating our mind-sets whicn are instrumental Inputs In creating the world. In our student life, we were warned by some of our esteemed teachers (e.g. Dr Abu Mahmood, Akhlaqur Rahman (late) and Anisur Rahman) about the futility of such concepts and also they used to advise us to learn about different paths for growth and development than those that are written by western authors driven by conventional wisdom.

In a recent seminar on "Structural Adjustment and Beyond", jointly organised by the Bangladesh Economic Association and Internet Economic Association in Dhaka, economics as a discipline came under heavy attack. And that was fired by Dr Mohammed Yunus, the Grameen Bank wizard. For most of the woes of the present day world e.g. poverty, unemployment, corruption etc.. Yunus fiercely blamed the teachings of economics as espoused i in conventional text books. "For one thing, seeds of poverty are planted firmly In the pages of economics text books,” Yunus added. Let us pick up some of the rockets he saw as the villain of peace.

First, the creative aspects of human beings were mercilessly ignored by economics. All human beings are put under the category called "labour" and the way economics tends to treat labour is akin to the way draught animals are treated. "They have no creativity, no ambition, no sense of sacrifice, pride or accomplishment, worst of all they have no gender." The failure of economics as a social science mainly springs from its inability to incorporate the difference between man and woman in them, the basic institutions they hail from, the family they were reared up in etc.

Yes. economics values creativity but at the same breath assumes that creativity could be displayed by only a few of the many called "entrepreneur". The princes of economics seem to be those rare species called entrepreneurs and royalties in terms of incentives, regulations, patronisation always are meant for the royal princes of economics. The society has to serve the princes, all human beings are born to salute them. Such a notion of economics is not merely placed in the pages of text books rather, on an empirical plane, it has influenced the design of institutions, framing of legislations and policies and shaping politics. Because of this misconstrued vision of the human beings, wage employment emerged as the only legitimate source of employment". Had we walked or run with the premise that all human beings are potential entrepreneurs, we could have possibly crossed much more miles than we have so far. Economics text books would then force us to follow the other route to development to create a living for everyone, rather than lining up everyone to serve a few.

Second, since wage-employment became the only "'logical source of employment." "self employment" category of employment — its sources, finance, ramifications — was dashed to the sideline. It is as if self-employment is not employment at all (there is no white collar status, no wage, no pension in self-employmehtf). Yunus argues that "If economics could imagine human beings with more options than the labour has. it would have created a theory of self-employment which would have made it easy to address the issues of poverty, development, family, population and gender. It could have enriched itself with other socially powerful theories of credit, banking and entitlement."

The poor got the poorest treatment from economics text books. The failure lay in the incompetence of those text books in understanding the poor. "Poverty is not created by the poor, it is created by tne theoretical framework that we work with. Institution that we built and policies that we pursued and the norms that we created. Economics had chance to reflect on the poverty of an individual person. Because it never nad an individual human being in its mind. All it had in mind was a labour."

Unsung and unheard though by economics text books, there appears to be a pervasive presence of a living through self-employment worldwide. There is no theoretical analysis built around such a flourishing activity and around which the poor mostly hover. Economics gives a glimpse at it under the aegis of "informal sector", and tend to curse it as a symptom of primitiveness of an economy. The creativity of the people is reflected through the presence of Informal sector where people create their own livelihood, own enterprise. But unfortunately, such creativity and energy of people have very little space in the voluminous text books of economics. In fact, no attempt is made by economics to enter people's boxes. What economics attempts to do is to bring people to the box of economics — the box of the prince to serve.

Credit — the powerful input to create economic and social power — and the institutions to deliver such Inputs is another area where economics failed to realise the realities. This institution by deciding that it can do business only with rich, literally has created financial apartheid. When it announced that the poor are not creditworthy, it was almost pronouncing death sentence on the poor for no fault of their own. Economics went along with It."

Marketplace is generally dubbed as a place for the rich, greedy and entrepreneurs. But social goals can be a powerful substitute of those to drive them out from the market place. For that to happen, what is direly needed is social consciousness driven enterprises, not greed-propelled ones. Why not encourage socially motivated people to come play in the marketplace? It would not, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that had there been a level playing field, the guardians of greed would surrender to the socially motivated workers and entrepreneurs. Economics needs to revisit its theory of market to find that it is not an "exclusive play ground"" for blood hunters. Challenge awaits the good people to be in the market.

Economics text books thus are not about the poor, the women and the human beings. They are, if ever referred to, subjects to serve the prince, the entrepreneur. So, right framework with right conceptualisation is needed. Once that happens, there is no reason why a person should remain poor. Poverty should be a matter which will find its place in the poverty museum. It will be a part of history of human indifference to their fellow human beings and human arrogance about their so-called knowledge. The sooner we can write new economics text-books, the closer will be the day where we will have a poverty-free world.' ‘y? »'

This is the first of a series' on papers presented in the recently concluded seminar on Structural Adjustment and Beyond. The writer would attempt to present to the readers some other aspects discussed tn that conference in his next write-ups.