Hartal: Purpose and prosecutor

One reason for this disappointing outcome of the public debate is that the hartal analysis has hardly examined the issue from the perspective of citizens' right and authority in democracy. This paper, in order to inject some fresh ideas in the debate from that viewpoint, addresses the issue anew by raising two questions: First, who are imposing hartals in Bangladesh? Second, what is the purpose of these hartals? Why are the ordinary people being asked to suffer harsh personal and socioeconomic hardships that often accompany this political power game?

These questions must appear stupid. For, their answers are known to virtually anyone interested in Bangladesh's current affairs: First, the opposition parties execute hartal. Second, the main purpose for executing hartals is to 'protect and promote welfare of the people or nation'.

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The above answers, although appear quite intuitive, are overtly oversimplified. They are, therefore, elaborated below to divert the query to a different direction, i.e., to inspire a different tone in the hartal analysis.

Bangladesh's political battleground is soldiered by several dozens of political parties. All of them, however, do not call hartal. This is not because they consider this partisan protest as a wrong political move. Such kind of political wisdom is fabulously foreign in this land of democracy. The main reason is, these parties are too small to benefit from this so far effective and popular political weapon.

Over the past fifteen years -- the so-called golden period of democracy in Bangladesh -- two political parties, Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), are alternately ruling the country. This means that when AL forms government, BNP becomes the main opposition and vice versa. Thus, when BNP forms government, AL rejects the election outcome complaining 'cute' conspiracy, boycotts Parliament and executes hartals demanding the resignation of government. In their turn, the BNP follows AL's footprints when people return them to the opposition position.

This is the truth, and the whole truth, of the hartal democracy in Bangladesh. AL and BNP execute hartals when they fail to form government, i.e., they become the main opposition. More specifically, when either party fails to form government, boycotting Parliament and executing hartals become their constitutional right.

Both AL and BNP argue that hartal is a political right that is guaranteed in our constitution! And we, the citizens of Bangladesh, seem to have tacitly accepted this explanation.

But what does this really mean? In democracy, people are the sovereign authority of the state and by this sovereign right, they choose a political party to manage the government machinery for a given period of time. This principle is followed all over the world. However, we, the Bangladeshis, seem to follow another principle that is unique in the world. Along with appointing the government, we also authorise the political party becoming the main opposition to reject the election outcome, boycott Parliament and execute hartals. And this they do with the full knowledge that the opposition will disrupt their normal life, and might even bring about untold hardships in their personal and social life.

With this knowledge, we can now investigate the answer to the second question, i.e., the sole purpose with which AL-BNP make people suffer.

Politics is a public affair, which means that anyone involved with this activity must claim that the sole objective of their actions are targeted to improving public welfare. This was indeed the perception when the term was originally conceived. However, politicians around the world have played the game so badly that this denotation has virtually vanished and been replaced by an acrimonious and satirical connotation.

Thus, no matter what AL-BNP politicians say, people know that they are after one target and one target only -- capturing the state power. And they pursue all political manoeuvres to achieve this objective, no matter how mean that may be. They do not give a damn about what happen to people, whose welfare they are pretending to protect and promote. They do not care if their actions humiliate the nation before the world, make her a laughing-stock and give the impression that people living here must be uncivilized since they do not know the simple rules of civilized society.

To illuminate the idea, let's evaluate how hartals 'enhance people's welfare' by examining their effects in public and private universities.

Individuals peopling universities can be classified into two groups -- students and non-students including both teachers and employees. The manner and magnitude by which hartals affect the members of these educational establishments depend first upon this classification and then are determined by the nature of the establishment.

In public university, students definitely suffer, because their course calendars are disrupted. For example, in the past, four-year curriculum used to take eight years to complete. Any way, the disruption of course calendar again inflicts two types of effects. First, it imposes heavy fiscal burden upon the parents, particularly those who are poor. This is something most obvious and often lamented in private as well as in public media. However, the most critical cost of hartal, which can never be recovered, is of non-monetary nature. By disrupting the course calendars, hartals cause havoc to young life.

University students are supposed to take up independent life after completing their degrees. They are expected to support themselves, and if required their families, get married and plan for starting their own families etc. Since hartals delay this process, this loss in young life is painfully permanent.

The hartal impacts on the non-student group, however, seem diametrically different. First and foremost, they are assured of their salary no matter how long hartals continue. Since their means of living are guaranteed, hartals should not appear unbearable to any significant degree. In fact, hartals are welcomed in all public and semi-public institutions, because they privilege them with a sort of bonus holidays.

The picture turns out to be very different in case of private universities. The universities are kept open during weekends in order to make up classes lost due to hartal. Thus, except the ordinary inconveniences imposed by hartals, students of private universities are little affected. All the costs of hartals, therefore, fall on the non-student group. Their regular family routine is disrupted. They pass lazy times at home during the hartal days and then work seven days of the week as the university authority reschedules class routine to complete the programme calendar on time.

This kind of inconvenience and discrimination is certainly known, but nobody cares. Perhaps, the main reason is that the victims have little complaint about their inconveniences. The question then is, why? Why our private university teachers do not raise their voices against this injustice? To understand this peculiar phenomenon, we must see who are teaching at private universities? This is a different issue and will hopefully be dealt sometimes later.

But, there is something very serious about the effects of hartal on private and public universities that deserves our sincere attention. Students of private universities are getting degrees on time, but those of public universities do not. Thus, in addition to creating monetary and non-monetary hardships discussed above, hartal originates a process of life-long inequality between students of two types of institutions for higher learning. Are the victims aware of this kind of life-long loss created by hartal?

The effects of hartals can be substantiated with many more examples. That is perhaps not necessary. It seems quite obvious that hartals create both beneficiaries and suffers. Employees in public establishments definitely benefit from hartals. But people in private sector clearly suffer and the degree of their sufferings varies inversely with their economic position. Those who need most supports from society are worst hit.

We can sum up the whole situation relating to hartal with one overwhelming proposition: This so-called political culture in our society is a sinister source of social injustice. It is a virulent violation of the fundamental principles of democracy and unacceptable infringement in citizen's right and authority. And AL and BNP, whom we have entrusted with the responsibility of institutionalising democracy in our country, are carrying out this undemocratic political activity!

Khandakar Qudrat-I Elahi, a former Associate Professor of the Bangladesh Agricultural University, currently teaches economics at the BRAC University.