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The fight has to be won

Kazi Anwarul Masud
ELECTIONS are days away. The political parties are ready with their pledges to the people. With the army having prepared perhaps the least faulty voters list in the history of Bangladesh and the Elec tion Commission determined to hold a free and fair election, the people are raring to send members to parliament who would not conduct public affairs for private gain.
The people's expectation of a government that would rid Bangladesh of misgovernance, lack of transparency, absence of law and order, massive corruption and criminalisation of politics is not ill-founded.
Understandably, the Awami League-led mohajot has made elimination of poverty and food security as priority tasks if voted to power. It also aims to reduce poverty rate to 15% from the present 45%, and reduce unemployment to 15% from the present rate of 40% by the time Bangladesh is 50 years old.
The aims, though ambitious at first blush, are achievable through commitment to the service of the people. The World Economic Forum's report asserts that better governance will lead a country to achieve greater competitiveness indicating the ability of the nation to maintain high rates of economic growth, productivity and sustained employment that would ultimately lead the country to greater prosperity.
Faced as we are with socio-economic Darwinism from global competition, we have no other option but to acquire better skills that the market demands. Education, therefore, shall automatically get preeminent attention of the next government, with admission at the primary level at 100 percent by 2021, elimination of illiteracy by 2017, improvement in the quality of education, and creation of a generation educate d in science and technology.
The party would also like to formulate an education policy in line with the global environment. But the question that had agitated the minds of the Americans when they were in the throes of depression in the thirties, the question framed by Adolph Augustus Berle -- "between a political organisation of society and an economic organisation of society, which will be the dominant factor" -- continues to agitate our minds as well.
Good governance will remain a mirage unless economic development of the people is also ensured, an economic development that is equitable and would eliminate the growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots. But the Western countries are finding out to their
utter discomfort that unbridled capitalism does not ultimately work out.
The First World today has enveloped the global economy because of its profligacy. The Third World, of which Bangladesh is a prominent member, has to get out of this adversity thrust upon them. The fight will not be easy. The World Bank's lead economist, Branco Milanovic, in a survey of LDCs during 1980-2002, found that the poorest countries have fallen behind the middle income and rich countries, which he attributed mainly to involvement in wars and civil conflict.
This factor alone accounted for more than 40% of the LDCs registering negative growth. The exceptions were Bangladesh, Uganda and Lesotho, who had registered positive growth. Globalisation left the LDCs out of its orbit though, theoretically, the free flow of capital and free trade should have been helpful. One of the reasons could be that globalisation needs not comparative but absolute advantage to attract investors.
According to a World Bank survey, if the investment climate in Bangladesh had matched that of China then output growth would have been 80% higher and growth rate would have been 3.75 higher. The mohajot is determined to contain abnormal price rise that, according to the World Bank, has pushed an additional 40 million people into poverty bracket.
Nora Lustig has observed that between 2002 and 2008 the prices of meat and poultry nearly doubled and corn and wheat price more than doubled. Price of rice doubled within four months. India's restriction on export of rice in October 2007 accelerated price increase from $300 to $400 per ton. Price acceleration continued and soon China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Egypt followed suit, and in April 2008 rice price went up to $850 and then exceeded $1000 per ton in May.
This left poor countries like Bangladesh, already faced with a myriad of problems, unable to cope with food import. According to some economists, 105 million people in LDCs have been added to the world's poor since 2005 due to increase in food prices -- that is equivalent to 10% of the people living on less than one dollar a day and "close to seven lost years of progress in poverty reduction."
With the dedicated leadership that has been the tradition of the party that led the liberation movement, the people expect continuance of similar leadership from them to face and win the stiff challenge facing us.
Kazi Anwarul Masud Is a former Secretary and Ambassador.