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Bangladesh At 40: Looking Back And Moving Forward

Moving Forward

Rehman Sobhan
[Concluding Part]
THE introduction of socialism as a pillar of the constitution was intended as a metaphor for social justice. The struggle for social justice was central to every democratic struggle which inspired the politics of the people of Bangladesh from the peasant uprisings of Titumir and Nureldin, to the 6-point/11-point movement led by Bangabandhu which drove the election campaign of 1970. The dispossessed peasantry of Bengal, which constituted the numerical majority of the population, provided the support base of every major democratic struggle. It was this same class of peasants, now joined by a nascent working class and the students of Bangladesh, who provided the vanguard for the liberation struggle. It was this class which gave the Awami League its overwhelming electoral victory in 1970 and uncompromising support to the noncooperation movement which culminated in the genocide unleashed by the Pakistan army on March 26, 1971. It was again this same subaltern class which provided the foot-soldiers for the liberation war and bore the brunt of the casualties. It was their families which were the principal victims of the genocide, their wives and daughters who were raped and their homes which were burnt by the Pakistani army.
The incorporation of socialism into the constitution was, thus, a recognition of the debt of honour owed to the deprived majority of Bangladesh who bore a disproportionate share of the heavy price we paid for liberating Bangladesh. It was expected that post-liberation Bangladesh would put the deprived majority at the forefront of our concerns. We never aspired to build a society which recreated a privileged elite, presiding over an inequitable social order, which had characterised Pakistan. Contrary to our aspirations, mass poverty has been perpetuated at an unacceptably high level over the 40 years since our liberation even though its percentage level has been reduced. Over the same period our development strategies have recreated a highly inequitable, deeply unjust, society which has graduated from the two economies which characterised Pakistan, into two societies which characterise contemporary Bangladesh.
Bangladesh's two societies are characterised by the emergence of an elite which is becoming increasingly differentiated from the mass of society. This elevation of a group of people who, a little over three decades ago, were part of a shared fabric of middle class society in Bangladesh, into a far more exclusive elite, integrated into the process of globalisation and operating in a policy environment which makes it possible to perpetuate themselves, has far reaching implications for the people of Bangladesh. Such an emergent elite, it is argued, goes in the face of Bangladesh's history, repudiates not just the spirit of the Liberation War but the two-century old democratic struggle of the people of this country also.
The sustainability of a social order depends on its legitimacy in the eyes of society. Those who exercise political and economic power should be deemed to do so on the basis of a freely given electoral mandate and through demonstrable enterprise, efficiency and competitiveness. Social disparities originating from such legitimised political and economic disparities enjoy a greater degree of acceptance by society. If such social power is deemed to be illegitimately acquired it remains exposed to instability because it will remain under constant question and hence challenge which can only be contained by a monopoly of force, violence and money in the hands of the elite. Such societies, founded on weak social legitimacy, tend to be more prone to crime, violence and possible social breakdown. The weak legitimacy of Bangladesh's social order derives from the questionable ways in which both political and economic power has been attained in Bangladesh.
The manifestations of injustice in our political system itself originates in the injustices in the economic order, which have been accentuated by the policy regimes put in place over the last two decades. A policy agenda based on an indiscriminate belief in the allocative efficiency of the market place, notwithstanding the structural features of an economy, or
the institutional arrangements which determine the working of markets, is likely to malfunction with serious implications for social justice in any country.
In such a system where markets either do not function or malfunction due to the capacity of those with power and access to resources to manipulate these markets, justice emerges as the first casualty. Thus, those who are honest and competent have little reason to expect that either the government or even the market will reward them. The reward systems of our society, in its present configuration, depend on access to power and influence, the capacity to manipulate the system for personal or sectoral gain and to escape from accountability either in the market place or through exposure to popular or legal institutions. Where power, access and immunity from the law are distributed very inequitably, the values of a market driven system tend to aggravate inequalities and injustice.
Those who remain without land, access to adequate education and health care, cannot expect to avail of the opportunities offered by the open market. Where access to work is a privilege which lies within the patronage of those with privileged access to knowledge and resources, the system itself becomes whimsical since no competitive norms guide access to administrative decisions or economic opportunities. In such an environment those who produce outputs do so in an unprotected and uncertain environment where price behaviour and foreign competition make an already unpredictable environment even more erratic. In such a system access to capital is not based on market principles but on access, and the cost of capital itself varies from person to person depending on their power to perpetuate their defaults. Law enforcement remains a hazard rather than a source of security where access to the law is determined by who you are and what you are willing to pay so that there is one law for the rich and one for the poor. Within the rich there is one law for those with political access and another for those who compete in the market for purchasing law enforcement. The system of justice at the lower levels remains negotiable and encourages contempt for the rule of law.
Illegitimately acquired wealth and misgovernance percolate down to private crime. Defaulters in Motijheel and political leaders patronising these defaulters finance mastaans who help them to contest elections. These mastaans use their political access to buy immunity from the law to extract tolls and use crime as an instrument of private enterprise. Many of these criminals graduate into politicians and eventually into elected representatives. In such a milieu crime becomes another form of entrepreneurship as well as an entry point into politics. Such a process perpetuates the injustices of a system where the dividing line between the law enforcer and the law breaker is increasingly becoming invisible.
Are we in a position to give meaning to the dreams which sustained our liberation struggle? Can we build a democratic order which responds to the needs of the people rather than the greed of the powerful? Can we recapture autonomy over our policymaking process? Can we build a tolerant, plural society where all faiths are respected and minorities, including both religious and indigenous communities, enjoy equal opportunities? Is there any escape from the growth and perpetuation of injustice?
In this quest for recapturing the dreams which motivated our liberation struggle we should recognise that in 40 years much has changed not just in Bangladesh but in the world and our position within the world. This does not mean that the foundational principles which underwrote the liberation struggle should be compromised in the quest for introducing contemporary relevance into our policy agendas. There are certain truths which remain immutable and this includes the commitment of our founding fathers to build a society based on democracy, national self belief, tolerance and social justice. The critical challenge is to calibrate our foundational beliefs to the realities of the 21st century.
The search for answers lies in our ability to build a democratic order where each citizen assumes responsibility, individually and collectively, to question those in authority above them and to eventually demand accountability from their political leaders and elected representatives. If we wait upon our leaders to voluntarily make themselves more accountable we may wait for ever. Thus the building of a democratically accountable society becomes our personal responsibility and more so for those with some education and political consciousness. Many more citizens must seek this accountability more directly by joining political parties and participating in the struggle to democratise our political parties.
This, assertion of individual responsibility must translate into collective action by a civil society which need to remain committed for 365 days in the year to recapturing the spirit of the liberation war rather than just limit themselves to ritual observances on February 21, March 26 and December 16. Civil society should not be seen as a part-time task left to NGOs. In the vacuum left by a non-performing parliament and a casualised civil society full time terrorists and commercialised mastaans will continue to undermine the sustainability of the democratic process.
A more accountable system may minimise the injustices of the existing system. But it will do little to moderate the injustices created by the policies and institutions which create and perpetuate such injustice. We thus need to rethink our policy agendas and to restructure the institutions which perpetuate such injustice. Policy and allocative regimes have to be put in place which prioritise the ending of hunger and poverty by emphasising justice and giving a stake to the less privileged in Bangladesh's development process. Such an agenda, whilst establishing the right to education and health care, must also ensure more equitable access to educational opportunities and health care so that the children of the deprived face the same opportunities in life as those of the elite. The digitisation of Bangladesh must begin with empowering the less educated through access to knowledge and information available to our urban elites.
We need to democratise economic opportunities by providing resources to the deprived to acquire productive assets in the way of land, water, and technology so as to enable them to compete more equitably in the market place. 5 million acres of khas assets, mostly under illicit occupation, need to be recovered and distributed to the land poor. Access to assets should include opportunities to the resource poor to own corporate assets through access to credit from the banking system and the building of institutions which can help them to acquire and manage such assets.
I would hope to live long enough to see a Bangladesh where the deprived majority own a significant part of the shares in our corporate sector whilst the women whose labour sustains 80% of our exports eventually own at least a third of the shares in the enterprises where they work. I would like to see bustee dwellers own apartments in multistoried buildings built for them in Dhaka and Chittagong and the landless own homesteads throughout Bangladesh. I would like tobacco, jute and sugarcane growers to own shares in the factories which process their produce, tea garden workers to own shares in the tea companies where they work, whilst fruit and vegetable growers should own shares in agroprocessing and cold storage enterprises which buy their produce. I would hope to witness the emergence of large labour service exporting enterprises owned by migrant workers whose remittances can transform them into major investors in the corporate sector of Bangladesh.
We will need to develop a system which rewards work, skills and production rather than rent seeking intermediation. We will need to build a system which not only guarantees the right to work but puts employment generation at the centre of our policy agendas rather than as an afterthought of our devel-
opment plans. We will need to invest in upgrading the skills and productivity of our farmers, artisans, our rural industries, our garment workers. We will need to give the deprived majority an investment stake and price regime which enables them to capture more of the gains from their labours and improved productivity. We need to develop a system which directs resources and rewards to those who use this competitively whilst sanctioning those who misuse these resources and default on their fiscal and financial obligations.
Above all, we need to rediscover a sense of community where we not only make ourselves more accountable but also fulfill our social contract with the less privileged segments of society, whose labour and sacrifice have underwritten our elite status. We will accordingly have to restructure our political and development institutions to accommodate this more inclusive policy agenda where the stake of the deprived classes is institutionalised by law rather than left to the political whims and changing allocative priorities of our policymakers.
This rediscovery of a sense of community will hopefully move Bangladesh towards a search for more indigenous solutions, where externally driven policy agendas will be superceded by policies which originate from our domestic felt needs, expressed through a more democratic consultation process articulated by our indigenous expertise and underwritten by a democratic political consensus.
To operationalise such an inclusive agenda for change will require the emergence of drivers of change. In a democratic society the lead drivers must be the elected political leadership. Our incumbent prime Minister had, in her victorious election campaign, committed herself to realising a din bodol for Bangladesh. In her recent address to the international community at the UN she has proclaimed her belief in justice and empowerment of the poor as instruments of change. Dare we hope that she devote the remaining two years of her tenure in office to giving substance to the realisation of din bodol through empowerment by carrying forward some of the ideas spelt out above which seek to promote societal change through collective action by the disempowered? In moving towards realizing din bodol our political leadership will need to conscientise their political workers to the concept and need for change rather than personal accumulation, and reconstruct their political parties to serve as instruments of change.
Whilst we may continue to place our faith in the political process we must keep in mind that the state is not the only driver of change. A new class of entrepreneur, both big and small, who are not debt defaulters or market manipulators but genuine entrepreneurs, would also support change and should be incentivised to support such a process. Our vibrant voluntary sector, hard working farmers, creditworthy rural women and an enterprising, hard working, increasingly feminised labour force also remain critical agents of change. Above all a new generation of youth, tired of corruption, political partisanisation and lack of vision need to be mobilised and empowered to promote and operationalise change.
In conclusion it must be stated that the emergence of two societies remains in violation of the social contract which has underwritten Bangladesh's struggle for liberation. When the common people of Bangladesh were mobilised behind the liberation struggle they did not expect that their rulers would preside over the emergence of an unjust social order as well as a malfunctioning system of governance. The sense of anger and frustration which permeates our society originates in this sense of disappointed expectations that we have failed to honour the hopes and spirit of the Liberation War. Bangladesh, thus, owes a blood debt to those who fought for our liberation to build a more just, inclusive and genuinely democratic society which enables us to live with dignity, as a sovereign nation, in the global community.
The writer is Chairman, Centre for Policy Dialogue.