Recapturing the spirit of the Liberation War

Are we in a position to recapture the vanishing spirit of the Liberation War? Can we build a democratic order which responds to the needs of the people rather than the greed of the powerful? Can we recapture autonomy over our policymaking process? Can we build a tolerant, plural society where all faiths are respected? Is there any escape from this growth and perpetuation of injustice? The search for answers lies in our ability to build a democratic order where each citizen assumes responsibility, individually and collectively to question those in authority above them and to eventually demand accountability from their political leaders and elected representatives. If we wait upon our leaders to voluntarily make themselves more accountable we may wait for ever. Thus the building of a democratically accountable society becomes our personal responsibility and more so for those with some education and political consciousness. Many more citizen's must seek this accountability more directly by joining political parties and participating in the struggle to democratize our political parties.

This, assertion of individual responsibility must translate into collective action by a civil society which need to remain committed for 365 days in the year to recapturing the spirit of the liberation war rather than just limit themselves to ritual observances on February 21, March 26 and December 16. Civil society should not be seen as a part-time task left to NGOs. In the vacuum left by a non-performing parliament and a casualized civil society full time terrorists and commercialized mastaans will continue to undermine the sustainability of the democratic process.

A more accountable system may minimize the injustices of the existing system. But it will do little to moderate the injustices created by the policies and institutions which create and perpetuate such injustice. We thus need to rethink both our policy agendas and to restructure the institutions which perpetuate such injustice. Policy and allocative regimes have to be put in place which prioritizes the ending of poverty by emphasizing justice and inclusion so as to give a stake to the less privileged in Bangladesh's development process. Such an agenda would need to prioritize more equitable access to educational opportunities and health care so that the children of the deprived face the same opportunities in life as those of the elite. We need to provide resources to the deprived to acquire productive assets in the way of land, water, and technology so as to enable them to compete more equitably in the market place. This would include opportunities to own corporate assets through access to credit from the banking system and the building of institutions which can help them to acquire and manage such assets.

I would hope I live long enough to see a Bangladesh where the deprived majority own a major part of such corporate giants as Grameen Telecom, Lafarge Cement and the Tata enterprises, whilst the women whose labour sustains 75% of our exports eventually own at least a third of the shares in the enterprises where they work. I would like to see bustee dwellers own apartments in multistoried buildings built for them in Dhaka and Chittagong and the landless own homesteads throughout Bangladesh. I would like tobacco, jute and sugarcane growers to own shares in the factories which process their produce, tea garden workers to own shares in the tea companies where they work, whilst fruit and vegetable growers should own shares in agro-processing and cold storage enterprises which buy their produce.

We will need to develop a system which rewards work, skills and production rather than rent seeking intermediation. We will need to build a system which puts employment generation at the centre of our policy agendas rather than as an afterthought of our development plans. We will need to invest in upgrading the skills and productivity of our farmers, artisans, our rural industries, our garment workers. We will need to give the deprived majority an investment stake and price regime which enables them to capture more of the gains from their labours and improved productivity. We need to develop a system which directs resources and rewards to those who use this competitively whilst sanctioning those who misuse these resource and default on their fiscal and financial obligations.

Above all, we need to rediscover a sense of community where we not only make ourselves more accountable but we fulfill our social contract with the less privileged segments of society, whose labour and sacrifice have underwritten our elite status.

We will accordingly have to restructure our political and development institutions to accommodate this more inclusive policy agenda where the stake of the deprived classes is institutionalized by law rather than at the whims of our policymakers.

This rediscovery of a sense of community will hopefully move Bangladesh towards a search for more indigenous solutions, where externally driven policy agendas will be superceded by policies which originate from our domestic felt needs, expressed through a more democratic consultation process articulated by our indigenous expertise and underwritten by a democratic political consensus.

In conclusion, it must be stated that the emergence of two societies remains in violation of the social contract which has underwritten Bangladesh's struggle for liberation. When the common people of Bangladesh were mobilized behind the liberation struggle they did not expect that their rulers would preside over the emergence of an unjust social order as well as a malfunctioning system of governance. The sense of anger and frustration which permeates our society originates in this sense of disappointed expectations that we have failed to honour the hopes and spirit of the Liberation War. Bangladesh, thus, owes a blood debt to those who fought for our liberation to build a more just, inclusive and genuinely democratic society which enables us to live with dignity, as a sovereign nation, in the global community.

Rehman Sobhan is Chairman of Centre for Policy Dialogue.