Open economy, not corridors and transit
THROUGHOUT economic history, particularly recently, nations and people have found more benefits from free and open economies than from closed and isolated ones. Nevertheless, such economic knowledge seems to have been rejected in Bangladesh.
A significant number of people are unbending against the opening, or liberalisation, of our economic borders and ports, fearing that such an opportunity will benefit India's political economy. It will cripple, as they say, our infant industries and threaten our national security. They refuse to consider the benefits the people of Bangladesh will miss, or sacrifice, if their dreadful campaign succeeds in blocking economic progress.
After the 1965 war, General Ayub Khan, Pakistan's dictator, had closed our water, air, and rail connections with India. Before that war, the people of Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, had enjoyed easy travel and trade with India. Many believe that the closing of socio-economic links with India indirectly heightened people's support for Bangabandhu's economic agenda that he made in 1966.
The shutting down of links between India and East Pakistan may have obliquely affected our socio-economic interest that quietly turned into a rising resentment against Ayub's rule and, eventually, sealed the fate of one Pakistan in 1971.
Napoleon Bonaparte met his Waterloo when he, to wreck England's economy, imposed his Continental System, barring English ships from docking at continental European ports. That imperial decision had an opposite reaction. It impoverished the people of the continent by depriving them of their trading opportunities. Napoleon soon became unpopular throughout Europe, the Europe that had once greeted him as a liberator. Such is the consequence of politics that dares to disrupt natural socio-economic interests and linkages of the people.
Erecting economic borders not only exacerbates poverty but also creates suspicion and hatred between countries. Neighbours like France and Germany had fought each other for more than 1,100 years. Mutual fear and acrimony triggered their wars, and no war was the last, or solved anything.
Friendship and trust between France and Germany only developed through economic interdependence when the "Monnet" concept, after Jean Monnet of France, dismantled the economic borders of France and Germany after World War II. France and Germany had fought more than 200 battles in the past, but wars between them became impossible with open economies that initially began with two of their most important commodities steel and coal.
The European Union (EU) is built on the "Monnet" concept and, today, has more than twenty European countries constituting a borderless economy in all products and services.
The late Chinese legend Zhou Enlai had said that China and Japan had "a 2000 year friendship and 50 year antagonism." Japan and China re-established their economic ties in 1972, and Japan now replaces USA as the number two trading and economic partner of China. Vested economic interests brought peace and understanding between those who had once despised and fought each other. Similarly, economic interdependence between China and Taiwan strengthened their relationship despite unfinished political issues between them.
Many people in Bangladesh abhor neighbouring India, or distant Pakistan. Monnet's borderless economies can turn hatred and suspicion into friendship, and deliver far- reaching economic benefits for the people of Saarc. How to End Wars Forever, a book by libertarian Aslam Effendi of Pakistan, asserts that the existing condition of suspicion between India and Pakistan would only disappear if their economic boundaries were abolished. As a defence policy, it is not guerrilla warfare, militarisation, or a continuous campaign of hatred, but a policy of economic interdependence that is unfailing and supreme.
Bangladesh's bilateral relation with India is without the big military factor, as with Pakistan and India, but there is a deep suspicion and hatred. Bangladesh's failed rendezvous with socialism and the unworkable government economic control that continues until today, never promoted sound domestic economies or natural economic interdependence beyond our borders. We were, and are, a closed and controlled economy; therefore, suspicion, distrust, and conspiracy theories are widespread.
People are fearful, or had fear instilled in them, of having open economies, believing that Indian goods would flood our markets or, as a bigger military power, would swamp and plunder our country for economic gain. Such apprehension will only go when borderless economies between the two are unfurled. Bangladesh can become as prosperous as any nation in EU, but only if politicians and think-tanks cast off their fears that they invent, or exploit.
Liberal economic borders with India would be beneficial but have to be negotiated by the government. Transit or corridors would be difficult to manage and will not remove hatred and suspicions, but may increase them to newer heights. Borderless economies do not mean that Bangladeshi people would have no businesses. Firstly, only those goods for which there is a demand or a preference would enter.
In order to buy Indian goods, the people of Bangladesh must produce something the Indians require, or else we will not have the purchasing power to buy any goods of our choice. Maybe, we will buy Indian goods with the income of what we sell to Pakistan, or to the US.
Furthermore, a deficit in trade does not necessarily mean it is a bad state of affairs. As a household, we are in perpetual deficit with our grocery stores and with our utility service providers. We are happy to spend our money in the shops and to pay for the services provided. But, what do the shops or the supplier of electricity buy from us? They buy nothing, yet that is sound economy for every household. The same is true for a country. No country, household, or person is independent but, by nature, interdependent. Economic interdependencies will not jeopardise, but promote and safeguard, our national interest. An open economy will largely satisfy our demands.
Bangladesh's seaports are its great economic strength. A busy, modern port would generate numerous economic activities, hence, national wealth. The use of our roads, rivers, air, and rail by India, Bhutan, or Nepal is in our national interest, as that would give us the income to consume goods that would be cheaper or better, or simply to assert our right to buy something foreign.
Economic freedom, property rights, rule of law, environmental laws, least taxes, sound money, and limited government regulation are the underlying conditions for national prosperity, investments, enterprise, employment, production, and the competition with imported products or services in Bangladesh, or in markets abroad. In such an arrangement, the people of Bangladesh will not lose, but thrive and stand to gain enormously.
During the War of Independence in 1971, Bangladesh's border with India was completely open for almost a year. Anyone could cross over and migrate to India. However, despite the war in progress, only 10 percent of the population crossed over to India, and that, too, temporarily.
People simply do not cross a border because it is open, unless they have something to exchange, or offer, on a voluntary basis. Only militaries cross and plunder, and they do, when borders remain shut. Think of EU, and how people there live in peace and prosperity without borders and without fears. It is time Bangladesh realises this truth, and opens its economic precincts to the world for our prosperity. Let us be the first to do so in Saarc, for others to follow.
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