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Student politics and beyond
THE demand of major political parties to hold elections to the parliament, before holding them at the upazilla level, which the caretaker interim government and the Election Commission proposed to do, has brought about an element of uncertainty in the political atmosphere of the country.
The government and the Election Commission's insistence on holding local government polls earlier is to, supposedly, free the leaders elected in the local bodies from the overriding influence of the members of parliament in administering and provide services to the people in the basic administrative units, as parliament members now control the purse strings of these units.
Consequently, financial mismanagement and nepotism allegedly abound under the present system since no program for infrastructural development, relating to health and education, etc. can be undertaken without the explicit permission of the member of parliament who represents that area.
Naturally, political parties are reluctant to make any move that would curtail the power and influence of parliament members over the local government bodies.
The constitutional validity of the law, requiring the mayors and chairmen of municipalities elected recently, to severe their ties with political parties, has been challenged in the court. The political parties also oppose the requirement to abolish fronts of student, labour, and professional bodies, arguing that, as students and others who had spearheaded successful political movements in the past against dictatorship and authoritarian regimes, the severance of ties with their mother political parties would not be beneficial for the country.
Besides, the political parties argue that students today are national leaders of tomorrow and student politics is their training ground. Indeed, students played, along with freedom fighters from all walks of life, a glorious role in the war of liberation. One can also cite the example of student protests against the Vietnam War in the sixties on the campuses of American universities, which had profound effects on the US government's decision to end the VietnamWar.
Protesting against the Vietnam War in 1968, the students at Columbia University organised a takeover of several campus build-ings to protest university research related to the Vietnam War that members perceived as evidence of university administrators' racism.
While never a major factor in American political life, the students played a significant role in the 1960s movement and the anti-Vietnam war protests. Its emphasis on grassroots democratic activism strongly influenced the development of other social change movements such as the environmental and women's movements, in the 1970s.
In Britain, there exists the Young Conservatives, Young Labour, and Young Liberal Democrats such as the student bodies in US. But these are mostly debating societies or are involved with solving the problems of school and college students. Rarely do they get involved in contentious national politics.
Though the students in the developed economies do play a political role at critical moments in the life of their nations, in Bangladesh the umbilical cord that ties the students with the political parties' program often displays blind loyalty of the students to the party of choice.
The recent violent demonstration by the student front of a political party, demanding the release of a leader from deten-
tion, accused of corruption on an unprecedented scale, that resulted in the death of an innocent passerby, testifies to the extent of blind politicisation of the students.
For countries like Bangladesh to survive, let alone excel, in this age of globalisation marked by time-space compression, accelerating interdependence, and intensification of inter-regional interconnectedness, it is absolutely essential that our student community be armed with the best of skills to compete.
Though critics of globalisation have tried to portray the process as an attempt by the First World to continue its domination of the Third World, it has to be admitted that globalisation has now become an irreversible process. This struggle for excellence is more difficult than generally understood.
Professor Denis O'Hearn (University of Dublin) writes in his book Tigers and Transnational Corporations: "Unfortunately the real world transition of globalisation has made access to, and control over meanings of,
technologies and resources more unequal than ever. The rise of supra-national global institutions and market-oriented global networks has increased the power of core capitals to subjugate the peripheral regions in the age of 'postmodernism' and post developmentalism.”
This view is echoed by Professor Ziauddin Sardar (a leading Muslim author and writer) in his lament: "The real power of the West is not located in its economic muscle and technological might. Rather it resides in its power to define, for example, what freedom, progressive and civil behaviour (...) is. The non-Westcrn civilisations have simply to accept these definitions or be defined out of existence."
While the centre-periphery relationship may have been a matter of the past, the reluctance of the developed countries to accept free mobility of people from the developing countries, particularly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that has consigned Islam and Muslims as promoters of terrorism, makes it imperative for us, a Muslim least developed country', to arm ourselves with knowledge, transforming us into skilled agents who cannot be dismissed on account of race, religion, colour, or ethnicity.
Unfortunately, the leaders in developing societies, more often than not. are politicians who can see up to the next elections and not statesmen who can see up to the next generation.
Such myopic view of the people and politics, reinforced by their greed for power, which would help them conduct public affairs for private gains, induce them, among other things, to utilise students as mules for narrow political purposes.
One hopes that the patriotic future leaders of Bangladesh would be alive to the myriad challenges that Bangladesh would have to face in the 21st century and would take great care in creating a generation of citizens capable of leading the country towards higher level of socioeconomic development.
Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador