Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
Related Articles
The December election will decide whether Bangladesh can protect its socio-economic advance, democratically From the outside, Bangladesh appears a country where democratic stability has ushered economic progress and shed the ‘basket case’ tag carried since its birth in 1971. Bangladesh no longer makes news for mass deaths from famines, cyclones and floods, and is ahead of neighbours India and Pakistan on human development, including life expectancy, maternal and child mortality, rural poverty and food security. The eighth largest country in the world by population, Bangladesh is shedding the least developing country (LDC) label and is within striking distance of middle-income status. While grassroots development, the readymade garment industry and the phenomenon of mega-non-governmental organisations deserve credit, so does the stewardship of Sheikh Hasina and her two consecutive five-year terms as Prime Minister since January 2009. She is applauded by the world for providing refuge to the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar pogroms, by the West for serving as a bulwark against Islamic extremism, and by India for the dismantling of camps of Northeast militants. The run-up to the general elections announced for December 23 is an opportunity to observe Bangladesh from the inside, and the view is unsettling. The Prime Minister has moved progressively from autocracy to authoritarianism, and fears are rife in Dhaka of oncoming political calamity. With Ms. Hasina and her Awami League party expected to return to power assisted by well-oiled poll rigging, the only recourse thereafter for want of political paths of dissent would be self-igniting agitations. Dhaka today is a city of guarded whispers. Given the brittle polity created by manifest intolerance, Ms. Hasina seems to have calculated that she simply cannot afford to lose at the polls. The daughter of ‘Bangabandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman rides a tiger, fearful of dismounting for what she has wrought. With the political opposition weakened, the people’s release is through outbursts that tend to snowball. This happened with the Shahbag movement which sought to rekindle the spirit of Liberation, an agitation against excessive quotas (56%) in public sector employment, and this summer’s uprising of youngsters demanding road safety.
Ms. Hasina deftly rode out these agitations, but in the absence of a democratic release through free and fair elections, a spontaneous combustion in the future may go outside her capacity to manage, engulfing all Bangladesh. A faint hint of compromise appeared in the first week of November, when Ms. Hasina readily agreed to a meeting request from the Jatiya Oikya Front, an alliance formed on October 13 which includes the BNP and four other parties. Kamal Hossain, elder statesman and framer of the 1972 Constitution, leads the Front. The Front’s seven-point demand included a neutral government to run elections and release of all political prisoners including Ms. Zia. The Prime Minister has turned a deaf ear to the demands, and instead elections were announced for December 23, denying the opposition alliance time to organise. The intolerance and crony capitalism exhibited by the Hasina regime today colours the entire state structure of Bangladesh and jeopardises its journey towards middle-income country status. The very person who has worked to usher socio-economic advance seems ready to sacrifice it all. Ms. Hasina must try to get off the tiger, and others must help her do so. Kanak Mani Dixit, a writer and journalist based in Kathmandu, is the founding editor of the magazine, ‘Himal Southasian’
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/riding-the-tiger/article25471377.ece
