Political parties should assist Bangladeshis in doing more with less

Firstly, the country is yet to harness its full HR potential for local, national and global developments. The mode and outcome of the present day HR utilization in the country is not apparently adequate and highly productive. Further, the aggregate role of the political parties in facilitating the over all progress and prosperity of Bangladesh through a continuous improvement of national productivity often lacks the desired aggressiveness and high result-orientations. Those and other related factors are inter alia and in varying degrees responsible for promoting societal stress, law and order situation, intolerance, and anti-development (in the country); affecting the efforts (at local, national, regional, global and other levels) towards a rapid transformation of Bangladesh into a developed country. In addition, the ramification of those factors has been instrumental in converting one of its developmental advantages (in a sense, the population of Bangladesh) into a developmental disadvantage;

Secondly, the gap between the country's usable, as well as affordable resources and its developmental needs has been widening. Further, the outcomes of its recycling effort towards regenerating useful resources have not so far led to a sizeable increase in the resources available for developmental activities. The minimization of the wastage of resources is a formidable challenge; it is yet to become a comparative advantage for the country's development. Also, the efforts towards generating additional resources in the short term (through the exportation of gas and other means) for advancing, among other things, sustainable development (in the country) have not yet culminated into a reality; and

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Thirdly, the country's development has, relative to time and space and among other things, been suffering from environment related deficiencies such as, insufficient commitment, inadequate political will and weak developmental transaction. Besides, the costs of anti-people and anti-development activities have been taking a toll of the scarce national resources (per se) on a continuing basis. A cost-benefit analysis of those activities would reveal inter alia the magnitudes of the resultant impact on the country's economy, its base of usable resources and its people, particularly, on the life and living of poverty stricken Bangladeshis.

What messages all those developments have (so far) for Bangladesh, Bangladeshis and the development partners? One of the messages is: do more with less.

Taking cognizance of the above, Bangladeshis should now decide: whether they would like to continue to maintain the status quo, largely characterized by the above developments - or to work for more with less as the country's committed citizens in the pursuits of promoting inter alia individual and collective well beings through the present and for the future generations - or otherwise?

If Bangladeshis opt for the status quo and unless a development breakthrough overtakes that, there is a possibility - they would have to tolerate inter alia and on a continuing basis the consequences of the above option, such as: continuing poverty; degradation of the quality of life of common Bangladeshis; and allowing the anti-people, as well as anti-development aspects of hartals and strikes to take control over their life and living.

But, on the other hand, if they take the matter of the country's, as well as individual development more seriously and realistically and decide to work for creating more within the existing resource constraints, they should start that now in their homes, at their work places and in other areas of human endeavours. In that event, they would be required, among other things, to withstand the pressure of political parties for election votes in order for them to be able to cast their votes in favour of the candidate(s) and for that matter the party(ies) of their own choice in the national and other elections.

Given its contemporary development challenges and opportunities, Bangladesh is virtually left with no other viable options than working for more with less. The political parties should be able to motivate and support Bangladeshis in their effort towards cultivating and sustaining what I will call 'a culture of optimization through eliminating wastage for common good'. In that respect, the political parties would be required inter alia to bring about positive changes in their mindset, commitment realization modality, organization and activity in the pursuits of truly people centred politics and people centred outcomes in currently resource strapped Bangladesh. For ensuring those changes, a checklist of the measures is presented below:

The political parties should: stop those activities that hurt Bangladesh, Bangladeshis and their developmental effort; compete for the future election votes on the strengths and the competitiveness of their missions and objectives; eliminate the gap between the election promises and the outcomes of those promises; make necessary adjustments in party structures for improving the services to Bangladeshis, particularly to those at the grassroots level; afford the party officials continuous retraining opportunities for retooling; improve party discipline; enhance intra and inter-party dialogues and feedback particularly, when it comes to the matters of critical national importance; intensify party-people communications and promote transparency in transactions; strengthen and expand the party constituencies through inter alia helping Bangladeshis in education, health care and income (as required). In that respect, the political parties should compete for, say, donor, as well as civil society assistance for materializing pertinent development programmes and projects; promote confidence of the people in them through say, enhancing their accountability to the people; improve intra and inter-party accountability; enhance the effectiveness of their decisions in times of peace and crisis by becoming more objective, forward looking and innovative, while avoiding, as far as practicable, naïve realism and tunnel visions; act as a strong force for unifying Bangladeshis and not otherwise especially, when it comes to protecting national interest and promoting the country's image; assist Bangladeshis in election decisions and not impose or force those on them; upheld the country's constitution; gain political mileage by encouraging constructive criticism of, and proffering the best solution to, national problems; explore continuously the avenues for peaceful resolution of disputes; promote tolerance and understanding between and among the members and supporters of different parties through helping them to internalize the fact that they may differ on political ideologies but they are not each other's enemy; help prevent political and extra-judicial killings including the killing of the journalists; defend, support and recognize the constructive work of the media and help them to improve further their role as a society's watch dog; mobilize, as well as harness the people's support for promoting, say, human rights, the right justice, equity, equality, respect and peaceful co-existence in the society; and ensure that no one is above the law of the land. The bottom line is: the political parties should, among other things, work more aggressively for eliminating all forms of wastage and accelerating national developments with low costs, optimal ownership and high quality impact on the maximum number of Bangladeshis.

Conceptual, as well as operational synergy, result-orientation, innovation, as well as invention, partnership and future making should, among other things, form the core bases and capabilities of the effort of Bangladeshis towards meeting, in a productive manner, uncertainties of the 21st century. The political parties should help initiate and facilitate initiatives for ensuring and sustaining those capabilities in the country's think tank and its operation domain. They should be more willing and innovative in designing and implementing, for example, their intervention strategies for maximizing just-in-time and quality public service at a minimum cost.

A comprehensive review of the country's civil service would be required to bring about a drastic improvement in its mission, structure, function, operation mechanics (such as, coordination and networking), physical plus non physical operating environment (such as, ergonomics, work culture, employee motivation and result-orientation), successors' arrangement (such as, devolution of pertinent activities in the foreseeable future) and in other areas with a view to reducing the per unit cost of the public service, increasing the number of beneficiaries, improving the quality of the service and making it more relevant, as well as responsive to the needs and expectations of Bangladeshis including those at the grassroots level and those who live in rural areas.

The political parties should be able to provide more meaningful assistance to the country's development partners in order to optimize the return on their resources that are currently in use or to be used in the future for developmental purposes. An effective role of the political parties in enhancing the outcome of say, donor resources in the country could inter alia help promote the image of Bangladesh as a reliable and dependable partner in world development and that could brighten the prospect of Bangladesh as a lucrative destination for future FDIs.

The political parties should strengthen its partnership with civil society inter alia for: supplementing and complementing the effort towards advancing sustainable human development in the country; helping them (= civil society) to be more effective in delivering development support and services to communities at the right time and costs; designing and implementing (with them) joint programmes for, say, educating the rural people and the poor about their rights, obligations and entitlements; promoting local innovations and inventions; and improving bottom-up transactions in the country's governance - all in the pursuit of eliminating the wastage of scarce resources and lowering the per capita costs of enlarging the development choices for Bangladeshis and other world people, to mention a few.

The last word: the political parties must change for good at the soonest.