Available literature indicates that the term "civil society" was perhaps first used by the great philosopher Hegel in the first half of the nineteenth century. By civil society, Hegel meant a set of institutions designed by the citizens to regulate their economic life and their private affairs. These institutions were meant to operate based on values and reasoning.

The idea was further elaborated by a famous Italian political and social thinker, Antonio Gramsci, in the early part of the twentieth century. Gramsci was the first thinker to make a distinction between civil society and political society. By civil society he meant a group of people who come together on the basis of voluntary and non-coercive affiliation to pursue certain institutions based on universal values. Schools, families, and trade unions, among others, were mentioned by Gramsci as civil society institutions.

If he were alive today, he would have perhaps included NGOs, think tanks, environmental groups, etc as civil society institutions. The political society, as defined by Gramsci, pursues power and domination of state institutions like the bureaucracy, police, armed forces, and also domination of economic institutions. Political society in a country pursues it objectives based on prevailing laws and the Constitution of the country.

The "Citizens' Group" formed under the joint sponsorship of the CPD, the Daily Star and the Prothom Alo represents a wide spectrum of interests and concerns, not necessarily identical or uniform. Otherwise it will look like another political group or party. The members of the group have come together and agreed to associate themselves voluntarily bringing varieties, and it is, thus, a civil society group.

Politics in any country should be guided by the Constitution and the prevailing laws, but it is important to recognize that a Constitution or laws cannot be cast in stone. These have to evolve on the basis of the evolving needs of the society and evolving values. Otherwise society cannot progress and move forward. The international community today considers adoption of the Universal Human Rights declaration of the United Nations a must for all nations. As we can see, it will not be easy for every country to reach this goal within any given timeframe. Many countries have gone through phases of dictatorship and remain under dictatorship (military or otherwise) even today. Historically, it has never been easy to establish basic human rights in most societies, even in advanced societies. An important human right, gender equality, is now universally accepted, and has been established in a large number of countries. But it was not guaranteed or accepted even in advanced societies like the United Kingdom, France and the United States, as late as the first two decades of the twentieth century! The reason? Laws of the lands prohibited voting rights of women! So laws had to be changed and this was done mostly by civil society movements, led by the suffragettes.

Our own Constitution has been amended, some would say tempered with, on many occasions, through measures not based on consideration of human rights or values. Debate on these is an ongoing phenomenon in the civil and political societies. Some of the amendments undermined democratic values and principles, others were made by dictates of martial law authorities, some are perceived to have undermined the welfare concept by opting for a market-based economy, and some have definitely undermined the concept of inclusiveness of all religious groups of our society. Needless to say that while some of the amendments have been reversed, others need serious review, and new ones should definitely be in view in the light of the evolving political, social and economic developments.

Our political process has two very glaring deficiencies: lack of inclusiveness, and lack of a national consensus on our relationship with the rest of the world. The "minority" groups of all religious denominations have not found or been given their due place in our political process. Healthy politics is not possible, I repeat, not possible, without inclusiveness.

The political process and the economic development process are intimately linked in our society. The Citizens' Group would like to emphasize, I believe, without exception, the need for the political process to be based on ethics, honesty and transparency, or in other words, the need for restoring healthy politics. This is the most important precondition for the desired development process and economic growth, and the Citizens' Group will highlight this repeatedly.

Our political process has failed to establish a consensus based economic development policy cutting across party lines, a truly bipartisan, or better still, a national policy. That is why the development process while delivering a reasonable growth rate, has been unable to deliver a fair and equitable economic order in our society, has failed to meet the needs of the major section of our people and to unlock their potential based on a participatory process. A common national approach, verging on a unified approach on development policy is absolutely essential. This should be open to dialogue with all sections of the civil society, business community, professionals, as well as the political parties.

The Citizens' Group will organize activities to make the citizens aware of their constitutional rights -- political and economic. The Group will encourage citizens to participate in movements for taking the development process forward for economic growth and reduction of poverty, ensuring human dignity and human rights as enshrined in our Constitution. It will work to make the society conscious about the need for an "Accountable Development Process." With this objective the Citizens' Group will prepare a social and economic agenda, which has been called a "Vision Paper" by the sponsors of the Group. The vision paper is expected to articulate a set of objectives and strategies about our medium term social and economic goals up to 2020. All sections of the society will be engaged in a dialogue process to bring out a consensus on the goals of the vision paper.

This initiative for mobilizing the civil society to work for an "accountable development process" is in the context of the national elections, 2007. The Group will organize activities and dialogues to bring together the views and to establish a consensus on the major development issues facing the nation. This is not a new thing. The CPD took a similar initiative before the elections of 2001 to seek the advice of the civil society on different development issues. Reports and recommendations were prepared on sixteen issues by Task Forces organized by bringing together experts from the civil society. In 2003 a review was undertaken by expert groups drawn from the civil society to evaluate how many and how much of the recommendations were followed or implemented by the government. The current initiative focusing on preparation of a "Vision Paper" for Bangladesh's economic development up to 2020 envisages a similar process of Task Forces and Dialogues. The process is expected to make significant contribution in identifying and seeking acceptable solutions to many of our national problems. The political parties will be under pressure to reflect many of these in their election manifestoes.

Societies have to be run on the basis of rule of law, and values and ethics should be the basis of all laws in any society. This is why it is important to elect the right people as our legislators who will enact laws and oversee the development process. Prof Yunus, a member of the Group, has elaborated his ideas on electing the right people, and has given detailed guidelines which voters may consider in the context of the coming general elections. The detailed mechanism described by Prof Yunus may or may not be possible in all constituencies. But it captures the basic objective of the Citizens' Group to ensure that all eligible voters are free to cast their votes for the best candidate of their choice, and that their votes have to be counted. Civil society groups all over the country will be encouraged to demand a credible election where all eligible voters can vote and have their votes counted. Such groups will be encouraged to participate actively in "clean candidates campaign" in their respective constituencies.

In the next step, the citizens' movement will charge the politicians, elected members of the Parliament, and the government, with implementation of the economic and social agenda included in their election manifestoes. The civil society will be encouraged to exercise constant vigilance for ensuring good governance and an accountable development process. The objective will be empowerment of the people to demand an accountable development process based on equity, justice and transparency. The Citizens' Group envisages organizing and providing support to dialogues, dissemination of information on citizens' rights, and on "clean candidate campaign" at different levels within the country.

Examination of the election manifestoes of the political parties in 1991, 1996 and 2001, will show how successive governments have completely ignored their promises for good governance, reduction of corruption, strengthening of the administration, separation of the Judiciary from the Executive, appointment of Ombudsman, setting up of a Human Rights Commission, independence of the public media, setting up of a strong and effective local government system, etc -- let alone fulfillment of promises on improvement of the infrastructure, energy and gas sectors, improvement in the quality of primary education and basic health services. Instead of taking meaningful initiatives, on many of the issues the governments have only reacted to external pressure from time to time, to get foreign aid, or worse still, gone through the motion of reacting.

I would like to illustrate one thing on which we need a national consensus: the issue of foreign aid and foreign private investment. We should realize that aid is given by bilateral and multilateral donors to the people of Bangladesh, not to the government of the day. It is, therefore, incorrect for political parties to lobby with donors, as has been done on some occasions in the past, to stop giving aid to a particular regime by mounting protests at home and abroad. The level of public investment as share of GDP is shrinking, and we need foreign assistance to supplement our national savings to raise the level of investment, particularly public investment, for development of infrastructure of all kinds and expansion of the social sectors. The important thing to decide, therefore, is what type of aid we should accept and on what conditionalities. Conditionalities have multiplied over the years because of our growing inability to implement agreed programs and projects and growth of corruption in the public sector. Foreign aid and private investment which help to promote basic facilities and growth, should not be rejected outright because conditionalities are politically "uncomfortable" to a particular regime or government; which in many cases means discomfort in not being able to exercise a free hand in procurement, in allocating public resources, and in reforming institutions which hurt political power. Ironically, successive governments have put "politics in the command" on the plea of "interest of the people" when conditionalities were uncomfortable for them. This is dishonest politics. What is needed is to build up capability within the administration and the bureaucracy, to professionally examine every offer of foreign aid and investment, and to negotiate them with the donors effectively. Only those should be accepted which are in the interest of the nation and of the people, not to be determined on the consideration of comfort or discomfort of political parties running the government. I believe this position will be highlighted in the Vision Paper.

M. Syeduzzaman is a former Finance Minister.