Perspectives
Rotten at the core!
The poverty is our invention although we are also not an affluent nation. It is the question of extracting out the hidden money from those dirty hands through an innovative social engineering -- and not only by penalising the poor innocent common folks. If it is so done then you never have to mercilessly put your burden-bearing yoke only on the shoulder of the poor as has been done by the decision of fuel price hike that hurts most the poor...But are our politicians who specialise at the most in chicanery and mealy mouthed mendacity, equal to the task! There are few signs that they are.
The government has suddenly increased the fuel prices by almost 14 per cent with effect from 5 January last. This is the fifteenth such increase in fuel prices since independence and second after the BNP-led alliance took the helm a year before. The reasons advanced are patent and we all are familiar with them: the higher prices in international market, making up the losses incurred by the BPC (Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation), discouraging its smuggling across the border where the prices are still higher and, of course the augmenting of revenue earning. Blah, blah, blah. We heard these excuses from the government of all stripes without being really convinced. Even this time the state minister for energy took pain to give detailed reasons for an apparently arbitrary decision ostensibly to placate at the public anxiety over this unusual price increase of the fuel at a critical time of acute dearness. But there seems to be few takers of his explanations.
Because the government seldom lowered the prices of fuel when its price plummeted in international market. It rarely showed concern about losses which its shows now for BPC -- whether in case of bank loan defaulters, tax evaders and identified smugglers.
And about the smuggling? While there are so many lucrative items to be smuggled about, only the ones lacking gumption would resort to cumbersome operation of fuel smuggling. Neither could the state minister himself produce any specific data on petroleum smuggling. "On the question of BPC losses the minister was far from depicting the true picture." In fact BPC, the state run agency, remains the greatest source of revenue for the government, paying more than Tk 3500 crores to government coffer in duty and value added tax (VAT). The BPC's predicament, if any, stems from poor management and high taxation. Indeed, the reasonings put forward by a government that feels no compunction in maintaining a motely collection of as many as 60 ministers with their concomitant perks and privileges bear little credibility as far as their concern for public interest goes.
Yet whenever there is a crunch, the cash strapped and revenue hungry establishment conveniently puts its scathing knife on the jugular vein of the people treating them more as sacrificial lambs. They are the people made to bear the burden of filling in the state's exchequer. It knows that they are unable to resist and will, at the worst, grumble in private before resigning to their fate. Doesn't the government know that the common people of middle and low income groups are worst-hit by the fuel price hike and they are the ones to bear the brunt of its consequence? Does the government then consciously punish the people most of whom voted it to power with the hope that the change would bring them some succour? It will not do the same with the affluent class who apart from subsuming the ruling elite can well bare its fangs.
There is already a price hike of all essential goods and the common people have been gasping to cope with it. The government has so far failed to curb the upward trend in the market. The increased price of the fuel will only add to the miseries of the dispossessed and destitute and will raise the cost of living several notches upward. Even without the increased fuel price the cost of living went up by 8.52 per cent during the last year. Now it is any one's surmise what shape the market would assume after the new prices take effect.
At national level both agricultural sector, the mainstay of our economy and the nascent industry which is yet to take off in true sense will suffer setback as the production cost of both is bound to shoot up as a result of increased fuel price. The price of the agricultural product will go out of the reach of the ordinary consumers because of increased cost of both production as well as transportation. While the growers of the perishable products like vegetable etc in the country's far-flung areas will be deprived of the just prices of their products, the bulk of the consumers of these will have to buy the same items now at a much higher price. Worse still, there is persistent disincentive for the growers to cultivate the country's few cash crops like jute etc having an international market. The growers are, even under normal circumstances, deprived of the proper price of jute the cultivation of which has tremendously slowed down. Now with the higher prices of fuel for the power tillers and pumps they will no more find the cultivation of cash crops cost effective.
As regards industrial products they will not be able to capture even the domestic market with their higher price tag and the people lured by foreign trade mark would tend to buy at the same price the smuggled goods finding access to our market through myriad illegal channels. The entry of Bangladeshi products to export market had already been difficult. Now they will further lose their competitiveness. It will take long for our industry -- still a non-starter -- to recover from the repeated such shocks.
Particularly the industries in the North Bengal, bereft of gas, will be hard hit by increased furnace oil price.
It is feared that the current price hike will be inevitably accompanied by inflation further reducing the purchasing power of our money. It will seriously affect the people of fixed income groups. As they will be hit hard the corruption will inexorably flourish to make good of the losses incurred because of price hike. Those who have no job to thrive on bribes will naturally gag others' throat to extort money for compensating their losses. It is an irony that on one hand we are trying to curb corruption and terrorism but on the other actually creating conditions where people affected by the problem of making both ends meet will in desperation resort to the means they themselves abhor.
It is a paradox of our society that inspite of abject poverty there is no dearth of money to change its face. The way our affluent class lives, behaves and indulges in reckless hedonism disproves the theory that we are indeed poor. This is apart from hundreds and thousands of crores of taka squandered away through unpaid bank loan, tax evasion, smuggling and kickback in official purchases. The poverty is our invention although we are also not an affluent nation. It is the question of extracting out the hidden money from those dirty hands through an innovative social engineering -- and not only by penalising the poor innocent common folks. If it is so done then you never have to mercilessly put your burden-bearing yoke only on the shoulder of the poor as has been done by the decision of fuel price hike that hurts most the poor.
But are our politicians who specialise at the most in chicanery and mealy mouthed mendacity, equal to the task! There are few signs that they are. Their narcotic dependence on official largesse and their avarice will seldom let them take that bold step, lest their own interests are compromised. They would rather favour status quo to safeguard their entrenched privileges.
In fact, when the politics degenerates and is no longer sustained by any great ideals, morality and an ethical mooring it is left with mundane ministerial berth, government largesse, an odd residential plot or a consolation job to offer to its ranks. It then produces bootlickers, favour seekers and sycophants only in the garb of politicians. A great socio-economic transformation of a historical dimension is certainly beyond the capability of this class. Their pettiness can be gauged from a treasury bench law maker who, is one of the earlier serious of the present parliament unabashedly demanded the price of their being the representatives of the people. He asked for increased pay and allowances of the MPs. Their affairs and residences and of course a duty free car every five years, and what not. Remember the chilling wish list of the MP representing some of the world's poorest lot? Will they change own fate or bring about a social revolution to rid as from own recurrent miseries? Isn't it an absurdity!
Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.
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