Very recently BBC ran a report on Bangladesh in which a village woman, when interviewed, said that there was little value in elections while she and her children were going hungry.

Political scientists find democracy accompanied by extreme poverty as flawed, and are not in agreement about the role of developmental democracy defined as a "stage in the evolution of liberal democracy characterised by particular concern for individual self-development as a universal right."

One argument would state that democracy, particularly in countries where supportive institutions have not been developed fully, would conflict with the pace of development (economic growth and its distribution into individual and social welfare) because, under a democratic set up, politicians have to satisfy different interest groups, which in the long run may not accord with the kind of development that would meet the measure of social justice and lessen income inequality in the society.

This school of thought would state that democracy indirectly promotes economic development because it is based on market economy, which has traditionally outperformed non-market forms of economy. Albeit examples of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore are cited by supporters of the conflict model, i.e. where the pace of economic development conflicts with the necessity of seek broad agreement of a large number of people.

But the great majority of the people of the world do not agree, both in the East, and certainly not in the West, with the comments made by Lee Kwan Yew that "in the East the main objective is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedom. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state, and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy."

It is true that Athenian democracy had flourished long before the introduction of Islamic Caliphate. It is equally true that European renaissance and the industrial revolution gave the West an irreversible edge over the East in its quest for modernism, which was coterminous with the emergence of Euro-centrism.

It would, however, be wrong to ascribe the democratic values as having been borrowed from the West, which till the middle of the twentieth century had been engaged in internecine struggle, and if Queen Victoria is taken as an example then the wars between Germany, England and Russia were wars among cousins.

Yet, it is incontestable that the European renaissance, reformation, and Christian missionaries as fellow travellers who accompanied the discoverers of the new world, had sown the seeds of democratic values in countries that for centuries had only known autocratic institutions.

But the democratic values were sown by both secular and religious ethics. Professor Joseph Runzo (of Chapman University) dispels the common perception that has grown at the beginning of the twenty first century, that religion is against human rights.

He states that world religions advocate rationality and moral responsibility, but oppose the egocentric secular claim to human rights and rule of law. Secularism needs religion as the most widely accepted guidance for the political community, while religion needs secularism as a mediator between various shades of opinions inhabiting the same political space. Democratic values, therefore, are not the exclusive wealth of any particular community or civilisation.

Albeit, some are better acquainted with the workings of democracy than others because they posses the ingredients to sustain a democratic way of life. Some of the essential ingredients are the state and the stage of the economy, and the richness of the human resources that a country possesses.

In case of those yet to reach the threshold of sustainable democracy, disguised paternalism, however, well intentioned should not be welcomed.

President Bush's crusade to bring about the fifth wave of democracy in greater Middle East (if we accept Samuel Huntington's description of East European democracy as the fourth wave) is well known, despite his inevitable defeat in Iraq as predicted recently by Lt. Gen Sanchez, former US commander of allied forces in Iraq, and the reported advice to be given to Gordon Brown by the British chief of general staff as soon as Brown takes over from Tony Blair.

There is wide spread scepticism about the possibility of any success that can be achieved by President Bush, given the absence of essential conditions necessary for transformation from autocracy to democracy in many of the countries of the Middle East and Africa.

For countries like Bangladesh, having transited through extra-constitutional rule for many years and having suffered because of gross misrule by an elected government for the last five years, democracy may have a different place in the schedule of the people, which may not be readily understood by the developed and mature democratic countries of the world.

One would expect the interim government to stay its course without being influenced by external pressure. In the ultimate analysis, the compatibility model of democracy that promotes economic development coupled with social justice would be the optimum solution for the woes facing the country.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is former secretary and ambassador.