'Failed state' and Bangladesh

There is a need for extreme caution in using such expressions. If we have a state which is failing, then what do we have left? In one sweeping and all encompassing expression, we negate the country, everything we have fought for, everything we have tried to stand for, everything we have ever gained. We also make a mockery of our Liberation War, which is the biggest, the brightest and the most precious jewel in our crown of national achievements.

I am firmly of the view that those who have used such expressions have really not meant it in the way I have described above or as it has generally been understood. I think what they meant to say is that Bangladesh has a failed government and many of its institutions are falling apart. There could have been a confusion in the choice of words between 'government' and the 'state'.

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Regardless of whether we agree or not I think a verzy strong argument can be made about Bangladesh having a failed government at the moment. The way fundamental institutions of the state have been and are being distorted and politicised (more about this below), many of us can quite legitimately conclude that we have a failed government and that failure is actually leading to severe erosion of the effectiveness and efficiency of the state. But to equate this phenomenon with that of a 'failed state' is something I refuse to accept. Suffice it to say that in spite our corrupt, inefficient, insincere, short-sighted, highly partisan and self-serving leadership and destructive political culture, we as a state and as a people have come a long way. Don't let our considerable failure cloud our hard-earned successes, and our just criticism of a government lead to a negation of something far greater and deeper.

While I refuse to accept the argument of a 'failed state' it would be unrealistic for me to deny the fact that, due to the failure of our successive governments, our social fabric itself has been put under severe strain. We cannot escape the fact that serious questions are now being raised about which way Bangladesh is heading? Why are our politics, society, and daily living becoming so violent? Why we are unable to solve any problem and only create new ones? Why is the country getting more and more divided? Why is there a rise in religious intolerance? Will the parliament ever function at the level and with the effectiveness that our constitution envisaged? Will our political party ever be able to institute internal democracy so that its bosses become 'leaders' and not dictators?

Are we not festering old wounds in a manner that turns a small problem of yesterday into an intractable one today? The very fact that the question of 'failed state' has arisen, in however a limited circle -- in the background of the fact that such a question was never asked before -- is in itself a statement that deserves serious attention.

What has perhaps raised doubt about the effectiveness of our state is its failure to provide the most basic service of guaranteeing security of life and property. Though this can be termed as a law and order issue, its existence over an extended period and the obvious failure of the government to stem it in any fundamental sense, have created the suspicion that the government has become structurally incapable of doing anything about it.

Insecurity coupled with ever increasing corruption, especially in the area of law and order, has further added to the perception that not only has the government failed, but it is unwilling and unable to mend itself.

The way our country has been run in the last 13 years has not helped to strengthen our faith either in our state or in our future. On the contrary it has considerably eroded our faith in both.

From the autocratic government of Gen. Ershad we did not expect much except corruption, exploitation, and personal aggrandisement. We knew it was an illegitimate government springing not from the people's mandate but from a constitution-breaching coup, and that nothing good can come from such a government.

With the restoration of democracy, our expectation totally and justifiably changed. We felt that after a lapse of a decade and half we got our democracy, elected government, and representative parliament back and as such we were on track for establishing the 'Sonar Bangla' of our dreams. We all felt that given two or three genuinely free and fair elections, ten to fifteen years of representative parliament, and successive elected governments with direct mandate from the people, we would be well on our way to having a truly transparent and accountable administration. All this could have easily been ours, only if our leaders were a bit more sincere and committed to the people and to the nation.

Obviously we are far from achieving our dreams. In fact in many ways instead of going forward we have moved back. We have criminalised our politics, made bureaucracy partisan, literally turned the police into party 'thugs'(whose primary tasks seem to be to beat up the opposition and pamper the ruling party), made all utility services sources of rent seeking, turned almost all big business deals into sources of accumulating illegal wealth for the party high ups, and have turned the whole mechanism of governance into a structure of extortion.

It is a matter of supreme regret that neither of our two big parties gave the parliament a chance. The ruling party of the day always distorts its privileges as the majority party and tries to twist the procedures of the parliament to its imaginary advantage (because ultimately those advantages turned out to be meaningless as both the BNP and the AL saw later), and the opposition always tries to suck the very life out of the parliament by their unthinking, immoral, unethical, and politically suicidal open-ended boycott of the parliament.

So we have a lot of reason to feel deeply disillusioned. Our leaders, especially the present ruling group, seem to have no idea how deep, how pervasive, and how all encompassing our sense of disappointment is. And it is growing everyday because we see no sign of any fundamental shift for a positive change in the offing.

My esteemed colleague and editor of daily Prothom Alo questioned whether Bangladesh was becoming a 'dysfunctional state'. This must be read as distinct from the term 'failed state'. The former is an expression of a passing condition while the latter is that of the end result. While the former serves as a warning and wake up call. The latter consigns us to the dust-bin of history.

Let the issue of 'failed state' be rejected as it deserves to be. But let not the underlying message contained in it be ignored. For if it is, then we seriously run the risk of proving our worst enemies correct. We may actually become tomorrow what we vehemently and sincerely reject today.

Mahfuz Anam is Editor and Publisher of The Daily Star.