Going Deeper
Bangladesh on the horns of a dilemma
The paradox facing Bangladesh today is whether elections would be able to arrest the economic slide by passing the baton of power to the elected representatives of the people, many of whom have sullied the name of electoral democracy, particularly during the kleptocratic rule of the BNP-Jamaat alliance government.
The history of Bangladesh since 1975 and that of Pakistan since 1947 are not too dissimilar, in the sense that extra-constitutional powers on various occasions intruded into the domain of civilian politics.
But if one were to go deeply into the history of the world in the light of its cosmic age, that would stretch into billions of years, and even if one were to delve into mankind's history in pre-modern times, when Hobbesian life was nasty, brutish and short -- then the Renaissance, the French and American Revolutions, and the emergence of western liberal thinkers would be seen as only a very recent phenomena.
So recent that even the post-1945 period, when the Cold War divided the world into the Manichean structure of good and evil (western capitalism being "good" and the communist world being "evil") and gave rise to a struggle in which the "good" had to be victorious over the "evil" (President Reagan once described the then Soviet Union as an evil empire), would be considered as yesterday's event.
This dualistic approach was reflective of imperial thinking that, unfortunately, had not gone away with the end of colonialism as the then superpowers had their own interpretations of sovereignty of nations that fell under their respective spheres of influence, and arrogated upon themselves the authority to correct "aberrations" when they felt these nations were "straying" from the path chosen for them.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, ushering in a period of uni-polarity, encouraged Francis Fukuyama to declare that mankind had reached "the end point of ideological evolution."
After experiencing imperialism, nazism, fascism, absolute monarchy, dictatorship, etc, people have assembled under the banner of liberal democracy and market economy that Fukuyama describes as the "final form of human government and as such constituted the end of history."
Though the thesis has been revised since, as having been prematurely arrived at, the general consensus remains that democracy and market economy are constant factors in human development.
One may recall that both Alfred Marshall and Karl Marx had in principle a common thread in their thinking, that the ultimate aim of the capitalist class is to reap maximum profit and, therefore, public regulatory mechanisms have to be installed to rein in the runaway horses of inflation, abnormal profit and a host of defaults that accompany economic activities, a task in which the present administration in Bangladesh has been found wanting.
Bangladeshis are confronted by daily increase in the price of essentials that has gone beyond their means. It is sad to note that the authorities are directing the governmental agencies now to find out the reasons behind galloping rise in prices when our media and the general public have been complaining for months that the people are unable to make both ends meet.
Almost everyone is aware that syndicates and cartels are mainly responsible for the abnormal rise in the price of essentials. To quote The Daily Star of March 12: "A commerce ministry survey has found that the price of edible oil increased on grounds of price hike in the international market, although no new consignment of edible oil reached the country between February 25 and March 9. The price of edible oil rather decreased in the international market last week but it had no effect on the local market."
It is incredible that the authorities are still weighing options like reducing duty on oil import, and allowing TCB and BDR to import the commodity when the lives of the people are in such dire straits.
The burden of guilt of rice scarcity has been shifted to the Indian government's decision not to allow rice export at prices less than $650 per ton. It is not readily understood why the authorities, even after two floods and Sidr, failed to anticipate the food crisis that was looming on the horizon.
The interim government should be well aware that popular acceptance of this unelected group of people has been mainly due to people's disgust at the mal-governance by those they had elected before.
It is, therefore, logical to expect of the interim government that has earned the people's appreciation for cleaning up the mess in the Augean stable left by the previous administrations to primarily devote themselves to the welfare of the common people whose share in national income dropped from 6.5% in 1992 to 5.3% in 2005.
Had it been a regular caretaker government of three months duration, whose only task would have been to assist the Election Commission in holding a parliamentary election, then the people's expectations mentioned above would not have been relevant. But the circumstances under which the interim government had to take over the reins of administration, albeit with the tacit approval of the people, are so different that the people's expectations are not limited to casting ballots in the elections but to seeing the establishment of the foundations on which democracy can be sustained in future.
For sustenance of democracy the country has to prosper economically, not only to bridge the widening gap between the rich and the poor but also to make the fruits of development available to that class of people who are not only marginalised but are also non-existent because they have no power to make themselves heard by the rich and powerful.
We in Bangladesh are like Alice in Wonderland, where we have to run all the time to remain in the same place. Unless we increase our pace of growth (at the same time ensuring that the path to higher growth does not lead to economic exploitation), Bangladesh, created at enormous cost, will remain an insignificant dot in the history of mankind.
Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador
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