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A resourceful collection

Asjadul Kibria
Jatiyatabader Orthonity O Onnannya (Economics of Nationalism & Others) by Muzaffer Ahmed
Cover & Illustrations: Qayum Chowdhury. Publisher: Prothoma Prokashan; Pages: 188 (offset); Price: Tk250
WHEN economists write about economy, many of them skip the sociopolitical interrelation mainly due to complexity of analysis. But, by skipping such interrelation, they ultimately narrow the focus of their writings and make their works difficult to understand. Moreover, economics has close interrelationship with politics, society as well as culture. Sticking to hardcore economics is not always enough, rather sometimes misguiding. It may be good enough when the talks are all about monetary policy or trade policy, but it is not helpful when one needs to discuss the momentum of growth in detail.
In this context, the book written Professor Muzaffer Ahmed, an economist, can be a classic example. The identity of Ahmed cannot be confined as an economist. He is more than an economist; he is an educationist, a social thinker and finally a philosopher in our time. His in-depth observation on our divided-discriminated society in the context of development and democracy reflects his wide range of valuable thoughts. The book 'Jatiyatabader Orthonity O Onnannya' (Economics of Nationalism & Others) contains such a reflection. This is basically a collection of eight essays written and published in different periods of last three decades mainly as lectures in Bangla. Relevance of all the pieces is still very strong to our country and this is the strength of the author.
In the theme-essay (Economics of Nationalism), the author nicely illustrates the emergence and continuation of protectionism in different economies and also discusses the consequences. With a lot of historical facts, although brief in nature, the author shows the long path of the nationalist approach in economics in Asia, Europe and America. The essay was written in a time when, under the Washington Consensus paradigm, poor and underdeveloped countries like Bangladesh were forced to adopt a free market economic policy without preparation.
Ahmed also shed lights on different theories of free market economy and pointed out benefits and limitations of these in his second essay. He draws examples from different incidents in Bangladesh to make the discussion lively. With empirical evidences and series of logics, Ahmed concludes: "Adoption of free market system without considering and adjusting the political, economical and social values is bound to be harmful for poor people and marginal farmers, who are the majority of the population (p-50).”
Although the original essay was written in July, 1998 and presented as a memorial lecture, readers can find it very relevant today as reflected in the conclusion. So, by reading first two essays one can get a broader context of market economy.
Ahmed's essay on consumption, savings and investment is basically academic but very strong as the author draws real experiences of some Asian countries along with Bangladesh. Undergraduate students can find it as a good reference piece.
The essay on military rule or regime and economic development is also a valuable one. The author delivered the speech in mid-1990, the last year of former president HM Ershad's army-backed autocratic regime. Here the author discusses different countries' experience during military regime. Before doing that, he goes through theoretical background very briefly. The author shows that it is not possible to establish any logical corelation between military regime
and economic development as both success and failure are there. But, his final observation is: "During a military regime, generally economic development can't be faster and effective." Our latest experience clearly validates the observation. The rule of army-backed caretaker government in Bangladesh for two years (2007 and 2008) distorted the development route to a large extent. For the last couple of years, global financial crisis as well as recession brings Keynes in the limelight. The free market philosophy comes under severe criticism and Western governments' intervention to fix financial market raises question. Ahmed's article on John Maynard Keynes is a nice piece to briefly understand Keynesian economic philosophy as well as life and works of the great economist. It was written in 1983 as a tribute on the occasion of his birth century.
The diversity of Ahmed's thoughts is reflected in the essay on health. He lucidly analyses conditions of health system in the third world countries along with Bangladesh through the lens of global political-economy. This is an unparallel write-up illustrating commercialisation of health where multinational companies take the lead. He shows how such multinational companies move to undermine the efforts ofWorld Health Organisation (WHO) as fully profit-driven commercial interests of the companies face obstacles due to different initiatives of the WHO.
The article further illustrates that the World Bank actually forced Unicef to support privatisation of health services in the poor countries and thus has made health service costly for the poor. In this article, the author also discusses problems of drugs and medicines as well as the unscrupulous role of pharmaceuticals companies. The article was written in 1998 as a memorial lecture on Muhammad Ibrahim, a pioneer in diabetic treatment in Bangladesh. At that time, Ahmed categorically predicted that the adoption of the health policy prescribed by the WB was meant to strengthen the nexus of private players and so 'health for all'
would not be realised.
More than a decade later now, the scenario of the country's health sector endorses the truth. The poor people of the country are highly marginalised in health care as state intervention is distorted to provide more space for the private players.
In his seventh essay, the author discusses the philosophy of university education in line with the thoughts of Edward Schills, an eminent scholar and educationist. Through the discussion, Ahmed argues that learning and researching in the university need to be linked with intelligentsia-discipline and free-thoughts among the teachers and students. Otherwise, quality education and superior knowledge cannot be achieved.
The last article is Nurul Motin memorial lecture on 'Ethics in Banking.' Here Ahmed sheds light on different dimensions of the development of our banking business. With the help of academic theories, series of international evidences and essential logics, he strongly argues that operation of banking with strong ethical standard creates foundation of dynamic development, while doing opposite puts the economy into crisis. He also discuses philosophical aspects of the ethics and linkage of ethics with professionalism.
Overall, the book is a resourceful collection with some timeless pieces. All the articles are very well written. Arguments and counter-arguments are presented very systematically. It requires good attentiveness of readers to realise the depth of the thoughts and ideas presented by the author. We expect more such collections in future.
Asjadul Kibria is the deputy business editor of the Prothom Alo and can be reached at asjadulk@gmail.com.