What will this election solve?

Really? Who cares? Powerful institutions certainly do care. You and I do. But what about the non-newspaper reading public? The vast majority of this country, including farmers (male and female), fishermen, most transport and industrial workers, and the rural youth.

Will the starvation of "monga" disappear if the BNP-Jamaat alliance is removed?

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Will literacy, primary health care, and corruption all dramatically improve?

Will women find real emancipation?

Will water launches stop sinking?

Will traffic jams, pollution, and noise become tolerable?

Will land-grabbing stop and master plans for cities be followed?

Will six million slum dwellers in Dhaka live in a decent environment and obtain clean drinking water, proper sanitation, gas and regular electricity?

Will mastans (hoodlums) go on a ten-year world tour, leaving our shopkeepers alone?

Will farmers be able to make a decent living and receive fair prices for their grain?

In turn, will food prices in the cities and small towns come down to within the limits of most people's budgets?

Will personal security improve so that women can walk in the streets in the evening without looking over their shoulders?

Will garment factory owners pay their workers on time, including overtime and sick leave?

Will we combat river erosion and build alternatives for the half a million affected people, year in year out?

Will our modest natural gas and coal reserves be utilised to produce electricity for all and fuel new industries?

Will we create one million new proper jobs every year?

Will we revamp our public universities into safe, flourishing centres of learning, rather than allow them to decline as we have for the last two decades?

Will we treat our Non-Resident Bangladeshis as partners in development?

Will we construct solid relationships with China and India and figure out where our place is in the world, finally?

Whichever alliance comes into power will not turn any of the above into a positive answer. Perhaps we should reflect on that. All that noise. All those rallies. All that newsprint devoted to the "showdowns," "gheraos," "hartals," "long marches," accusations, counter-accusations, speeches, invectives, and street violence. To what end? Nothing that does any good for the people.

Democratic parties have been, are presently, and will be completely unsuccessful in catapulting us into the path of real development. We have a generational problem.

So what are some of us doing then? Looking for short cuts, clutching at straws. Seeking easy answers to complex problems. Very few commentators (and self-styled leaders) analyse power and explain just how they are going to make a difference.

So the latest wheeze is to find "clean candidates" and somehow get to "clean politics." This is all meant to be accomplished within six months! One has to admire a section of the middle class when they believe a little trickery here and there will solve the enormous challenge of rescuing 140 out of the 150 million people. Perhaps we should nominate these magicians to lead the UN. No major political figure or organisation is offering any credible road map that will make a difference to the lives of ordinary people.

Let us say, the ugly, speeding, honking, spitting drivers of the BNP or Awami League were replaced by clean, polite drivers of the X NGO party, would it matter an iota if they continued to travel in the same direction? They would still drive us on the wrong road, to the wrong destination. Smiling all the way to Valhalla, not Nirvana.

Beyond electioneering, no doubt there are other conspiracies being hatched. If the Young Turks on the government see defeat in the offing, they might do their damnedest to scupper the election and push the cantonment to become involved. Rather no lady, than the other lady.

Or maybe some enterprising embassy staffers will encourage a formation I implied in my article: Which way to Mauritania? (DS March 3, 2006). A score of civil-society gray-haired-soft-spoken-NGO/cuddly political yes-men front, backed by steel bayonets.

Even if we did have an election, and the Awami League won a landslide (they should, by the way), the changes will be cosmetic and minor. This election is not going to solve very much and we should not be raising our hopes. Disappointment will set in by the time Pahela Boishak arrives in 2008.

If you prefer to stick to election timetables, and cannot contemplate the breakdown of democracy, I would say we are looking at the wrong election. Prepare for the one after next.

Farid Bakht, an NRB, has written a book: "Arrival or Departure: Bangladesh in Dangerous Times."