THE first thing that the members of the civil society ought to do, I think, is to get down from their SUVs (forgive me if you don't have one), and out of the airconditioned comfort of Five Star Hotel, and spill out into the streets. It is time to get their hands dirty. Enough pontificating and posturing and platitudinising about 'The-Condition-in-Bangladesh' question! We all know what the problems are. Now, the civil society must become visible if it wants to make a difference. Witness how the civil society reacted in France recently to a hugely unpopular employment legislation. Hundreds of thousands of French citizenry poured into the streets of Paris and protested loudly and angrily against the legislation. These are not lumpen or hired

voters and demonstrators; my understanding is that these are conscious citizens spontaneously and self-consciously protesting measures that go against their interests. Can we do something similar? If we can, then there is a likelihood that the recently formed citizens' committee might make a difference. Bangladesh now has a sizable educated middle class. If even a fraction of this section of the populace can be seen on the streets, if teachers and lawyers and engineers and doctors and businessmen and NGO workers and all others who form part of this nebulous civil society make themselves both audible and visible, there is just a chance that the government might sit up and take notice. If the roundtable leaders can lead us into the streets all this talking might be

meaningful.

You do not have to be a genius to understand that we need clean and competent leaders to lead the nation. Yet, the roundtable must be applauded a little for articulating this need forcefully and placing it before the readers of The Daily Star and Prothom Alo. However, you do have to be a genius to come up with a mechanism, given the nature of our political parties, that can ensure the nomination of such candidates. Dr Eunus, the mogul of micro-credit, has offered a formula by which good candidates may be selected and offered for nomination by the political parties. While I am still trying to figure out what this formula entails and whether it is workable at all, I have this to suggest: assuming that all the members of the new committee are

clean and competent, for starters they should offer themselves as candidates to parties of their choice, or be up for grabs by whichever party wants them. To show that I am not being facetious, I would like to offer myself as a candidate: I'm relatively clean, educated, I care about my country, and I speak Bangla and English fairly well -- the latter a little better than the former, just like the convener of the committee. However, I can wager that my cousin, less clean and less educated than me, but much much richer ( he can spend the one-crore that is necessary), will be given the nomination. Can any formula stop this from happening?

Shawkat Hussain is Professor of English, University of Dhaka.