Government does not work through improvisation. It does not shift the goal posts. Indeed, every government must consciously strive for a place in history, through putting in place all the stones and all the bricks that will render it into a structure able to withstand the vagaries of time. And government is best formed and operated by men and women who know how the soil smells and which way the river flows, who understand the tears of sacked mills workers and the churnings of an empty stomach. Yes, we speak of politicians.***

IT is not always the job of a people to ensure the happiness of the government. it is not right that the people be expected to uphold the power and strength of a government, especially when that government begins to feel at sea. And a government feels at sea when it begins to lose focus, when it gets its priorities all wrong.

When, therefore, an adviser to the government suggests, with that tinge of desperation in the voice, that his government cannot afford to fail, that it is in everyone's interest to make sure that the government stays on its feet, one cannot reasonably agree with him.

Throughout history, people have entrusted their faith in men who they thought were ready or able to provide them with good, purposeful government. When these men fail, it is not because of the people but because of themselves.

And what precisely do we mean by good, purposeful government? There are, in Bangladesh, quite a few good instances of such a government we can fall back on as we try coming up with an answer to that question. There was purposeful, well-meaning, government in the nine months of the war of liberation we waged against the Pakistan army in 1971.

The integrity of the men who

constituted that government, the ethics that drove that government, clearly refute the argument that Bangladesh has not had an efficient administration in all the years since it turned into a credible idea for its people.

A singularity of purpose is what defined the politics of Tajuddin Ahmad, Syed Nazrul islam, AHM Quamruzzaman and M. Mansoor Ali, as they went about forging the elements necessary for the poetry-driven idea of independence to transit from dream to reality. in those very dark days of national existence, the government did not go around asking to be saved from impending doom.

On the contrary, it moved from hamlet to village to town informing embattled, beleaguered Bengalis that they had nothing to fear for they had a government behind them, willing and fully prepared to defend their cause.

That is not the kind of reassurance you see in these times of gathering despair. Thousands of jute mills workers are suddenly pushed out on the streets as the mills they have sweated in for years on end are closed down; and no one in the government has any idea about what to do for them. That would have been excusable had it not been for the fact that there are people in the govern-

ment who really believe that shutting down jute mills is but one more step toward economic streamlining.

Nothing -- not the pain creasing the faces of the dismissed workers, not the tears of their children who cannot go to school any more, not the stunned silence of the wives -touches these functionaries of the government.

They will tell you, with all the glibness at their command that corruption has been eating away at the vitals of the jute industry. How many of the men responsible for such corruption have been penalised by the law? You will get no answer.

Meanwhile, as you watch these dismissed jute mills workers raise their bootless cries at the heavens, you remember how, a few years ago, thirty thousand men at Adamjee jute mills were turfed out of their jobs because the mills had turned into a "white elephant." How many of us have cared to know what eventually happened to those workers and their families? And we still tell ourselves that sooner or later we will have Golden Bengal arise out of the ashes of our misery?

A government ought not to ask that the people whose fortunes it presides over save it from impending doom, when it cannot ensure that these very people can afford to buy what they need to eat at the market place. Your

green chilli shoots up in price, your vegetables go beyond your reach, and meat and fish are fast receding into the region of memory.

And yet no one in government is concerned, except to tell you and me that there are syndicates, which have a stranglehold on prices. it is not the job of the hapless citizens to go after those syndicates. it is never the responsibility of men and women leading ordinary lives to go looking for the men who ratchet prices up, and then hand them over to the law. No, Sir, it is the business of the government to ensure that those syndicates are spotted and then hammered into pieces.

But when a government cannot do that, when the price of rice goes beyond the capacity of the common man, those who man the machinery of the administration must sit back and reflect on all those matters that cause discontent among the huddled masses. You cannot explain prices away in terms of economic theories you learnt in school decades ago.

And, no, you cannot simply tell us that prices have gone up because income has registered a rise. Where is the rise? And why do the wise men who try their wisecracks on us not see the pernicious thing that is inflation arising, and subduing everything before usin a vise-like grip?

Government is not about mouth-

ing platitudes. it is about doing things, even in the most adverse of circumstances. Between January 1972 and August 1975, we certainly did not live in the most ideal of circumstances, and we surely did not believe that miracles were about to be. The roads were potholed, the bridges had been destroyed, whole villages lay plundered, and millions of people lay murdered at the hands of a bloodthirsty foreign army.

And yet the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did not falter. it suffered from the usual problems of bad administration, of pilferage of relief goods. But it did put the elements of the state in place. it did give the country a sense of being, a particular feeling that it belonged in the wider association of nations around the world. it fought its enemies within, and it was constantly on the lookout for snipers looking in from outside.

Foreign forces willed that the state of Bangladesh wither and die, through turning away ships carrying food, and into distant territory. inside the country, men all too ready to undermine the government produced a woman in sackcloth, to demonstrate how miserable conditions were getting to be.

But the government, wobbling and unsteady, managed to survive. You may have your own opinions about Bangabandhu's Second Revolution, or Baksal. But place your hand on your heart and tell yourself the truth -that by early 1975, Bangladesh was on its way to political stability and economic progress. A murderous coup set all of that at naught.

When you speak of government, of what it can and must do, you essentially talk of politicians who understand the lessons of history, and who then apply those lessons to the ways in which they would like to conduct administration.

Good, purposeful government

defined our lives in 1998, when the Sheikh Hasina administration tackled the long drawn-out floods and, in effect, proved once again that Bengalis were capable of giving to themselves a government as good as themselves. You judge the quality of government, you call it substantive government, when a political administration keeps the lid on prices and does not allow the market to fall prey to predatory elements of corruption.

The Awami League government between 1996 and 2001 did not push people into a panic over prices. That is the unadulterated truth. if that does not embody good government, what does? if reaching deals with india, and with insurgents in the hills, is not sagacity, what is?

Government does not work through improvisation. it does not shift the goal posts. indeed, every government must consciously strive for a place in history, through putting in place all the stones and all the bricks that will render it into a structure able to withstand the vagaries of time.

And government is best formed and operated by men and women who know how the soil smells and which way the river flows, who understand the tears of sacked mills workers and the churnings of an empty stomach. Yes, we speak of politicians.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.