Bangabandhu’s vision for a just society: promises kept and promises to keep

The scope of the presentation

The commemoration of the Bangabandhu centenary year and the celebrations centred around Bangladesh's fifty years as an independent nation state will be reaching their conclusion at the end of the calendar year, 2021. My Bangabandhu centenary lecture is, thus, appropriately sited as a presentation at this public event which brings all of you together to address the journey of Bangladesh at 50 in order to reflect on the road already travelled and explore the challenges which confront us in the journey ahead. My presentation will look at this journey through the lens of Bangabandhu's own vision for an independent Bangladesh which he promised would evolve into a just society. I will explore how far we, as a nation and people, have so far moved to realise Bangabandhu's promise and what parts of his promise remain to be kept in the days ahead.

The presentation is structured under three themes:

Bangabandhu's vision for an independent Bangladesh

Promises kept: The vision realised

Promises to keep: The journey ahead

Bangabandhu's vision

Bangabandhu epitomised his vision for Bangladesh before the people of Bangladesh at the conclusion of his epic declaration of 7th March 1971,

Ebarer Sangram Amader Muktir Sangram,

Ebarer Sangram Shadinater Sangram

Many people have pondered on the distinction between the struggle for independence (shadinata) and the struggle for liberation (mukti). Bangabandhu was perhaps clearer in his mind about the distinction. He visualized the struggle for independence as a struggle for the establishment of a sovereign nation state, a more readily understood goal which inspired the struggle by other nation states seeking to emancipate themselves from colonial rule. But his call for liberation was a more nuanced and hence more far reaching call. It extended the struggle beyond the realization of independence toward the more transformatory mission of liberating the people from not just the unjust bondage of Pakistani rule but from injustices inflicted on the common people of Bangladesh over centuries. Years of subordination denied the people not just their democratic rights but held them captive within an unjust social order.

Bangabandhu's commitment and struggle for self-rule was ultimately realized through the emergence of an independent Bangladesh. Bangladesh survived the trauma of our bloodstained birth and moved forward over the next half century to significantly elevate its economic fortunes, experience a remarkable social transformation and to reconfigure its place in a more globalized world order. Little of this would have been possible had we not managed, in the immediate aftermath of liberation, to resurrect ourselves as a people, from the ashes and debris of the liberation war to construct a nation state, build its institutions and establish our presence in the commity of nations. That such a resurgence could be realized within three years of our national liberation, owes in no small measure to the inspirational leadership of Bangabandhu supported by those who worked with him over long hours, with limited resources, under the most adverse circumstances, to build a nation state.

In the course of building a nation state Bangabandhu projected his vision for realizing amader muktir sangram through the four foundational pillars incorporated in the Bangladesh constitution, presented to the nation within a year of our national liberation; Democracy, Nationalism, Secularism, Socialism.

Bangabandhu's life long struggle for self-rule for Bangladesh, followed by his heroic endeavor to transform a movement for self-rule into a functioning nation state, did not go in vain. When the assassins bullets cut short Bangabandhu's life he could take comfort from the awareness that he had realized the most cherished part of his life's mission, the emergence of an independent Bangladesh. Furthermore, within the short span vouchsafed to him on earth, he had created the structure of a fully functional nation state. But all his achievements remained a work in progress. The struggle for amader muktir sangram remained unfinished. It would, thus, be appropriate to proclaim, as his epitaph, the words of the poet, Robert Frost, which so inspired President JF Kennedy.

I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep

Bangabandhu's journey in this world abruptly concluded on 15 August 1975 but his dreams and hopes lived on to inspire Bangladesh's journey over the next 46 years. His unfulfilled dreams required the continuation of amader sangram muktir sangram. My paper will focus on Bangabandhu's kept promises and those of his promises that remain to be fulfilled through a continuing process of struggle.

Promises kept

At liberation Bangladesh was well behind Pakistan in most areas of the macro-economy, had experienced levels of poverty and lower levels of human development in such areas as education and healthcare. Over the course of the next fifty years Bangladesh has moved well ahead of Pakistan in most such areas, particularly in the last 25 years and more so in the last ten years. Higher rates of growth have moved Bangladesh's per capita income, which was 61% below that of Pakistan in 1972, to exceed Pakistan's PCI in 2020 by 62%. Such rapid rates of growth have been realized through Bangladesh's higher rates of savings and investment as well as its higher level of exports which were all well behind those of Pakistan's in 1972. As a result, today, Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserves are more than double those of Pakistan while our external debt/GDP ratio is half that of Pakistan. We are no longer an aid dependent country. Our aid/GDP ratio is now around 2% whereas Pakistan has required periodic bailouts from the international community. Bangladesh's infrastructure development, which lagged far behind that of Pakistan in 1972 has also moved ahead in such areas as power generation where our capacity, which rapidly expanded in the last 10 years, is nearly double that of Pakistan.

In the area of human development Bangladesh's human development indicators (HDI) were below those of Pakistan in 1990 but are now well ahead. Bangladesh has managed to lower its population growth rate compared to Pakistan so that today our population levels are lower than that of Pakistan whereas in 1969/70 we accounted for 53% of the undivided Pakistan's population. At the same time, due to better health provisioning, Bangladesh's life expectancy which was well below Pakistan in 1972 is now 5 years above that of Pakistan's. Similarly, in the area of education, in such indicators as years of schooling and literacy rate, we once lagged behind Pakistan but have now moved ahead. As a result Bangladesh's levels of multi-dimensional poverty, which was once higher than that of Pakistan is now well below it. Perhaps the most dramatic advances have been registered by the women of Bangladesh whose gender development index has not only moved well ahead of Pakistan but is also ahead of India.

All these indicators of Bangladesh's progress, compared to Pakistan, have served to validate Bangabandhu's vision that an independent Bangladesh, in full command of its own destiny, would be able to move ahead more rapidly than under the dominance of Pakistan. In the course of these 50 years Bangladesh's progress may have exceeded Bangabandhu's expectations.

Bangladesh's progress is not merely measurable in statistical terms but is manifested in the major structural changes in the economy and social transformation which have taken place as a result of our liberation. Bangladesh has transformed itself from a largely agrarian society, exclusively dependent on growing paddy for subsistence and jute as a cash crop, where agriculture was the principal source of both GDP and household income. We were once industrically backward, dependent on a single industry, jute and a single source of exports, jute products. Today the GDP contribution of industry exceeds that of agriculture and even in the rural areas more than 50% of household income derives from non-farm sources. Our exports, now largely dependent on manufactures of RMG, rather than jute products, have grown exponentially while remittance from overseas migrants have emerged as our largest foreign exchange earner which has strengthened our balance of payments.

These remarkable changes in our economy have been driven by the emergence of a dynamic entrepreneurial class which is represented not just by the RMG entreprenueurs and corporate business houses but extends across a much broader social spectrum. This, inter alia, includes medium, small and micro-entrepreneurs, women from poor rural families who have participated in the micro-finance revolution or have travelled to the urban areas to contribute their services to fuel the rapid growth of the RMG sector, the NGO's who have promoted more inclusive growth, the migrants who have taken great risks to travel across the world in the service of their families and a new generation of IT entrepreneurs.

Promises to keep

While Bangabandhu's expectations from shadinata may have been realized, his expectations from amader muktir sangram, which would take us towards his vision of a just society, remain part of the promises that we, as a nation, need to honour in his memory. Here my presentation argues that while Bangladesh's economy has registered impressive growth and poverty has been reduced, income inequalities and social disparities have widened. This represents an unjust distribution of the gains from our development and an inadequate recognition, in terms of policies and public support, of the larger constituency of social forces which have also driven our progress.

It is suggested that this widening of social disparities owes not just to policy and allocative deficiencies but to unjust governance in various spheres, where laws already enacted are not decisively acted upon, policies are not fully implemented and regulations are weakly enforced. Such deficiencies in governance originate both in the incapacity of the government to discharge its commitments and in the emerging political economy where an increasingly powerful business elite, patronized by the state is empowered to influence policies and public action. Such tendencies are manifested in the growth and perpetuation of the default culture, the weakness in enforcing government regulations related to such areas as road safety, building codes and environmental protection as also the inability to ensure that conflict of interest rules are applied so as to ensure that competitive forces operate in all public procurement and development projects. In consequence, public policies, in the way of fiscal policies and subsidies, along with public expenditure priorities tend to favour the business elite at the expense of less privileged social groups.

Economic and social injustice, originating in state actions, are compounded by the depreciation in the quality of our democracy, manifested in the weaking credibility of our electoral process, the erosion in the freedom of the media, unfair access to public services and inequitable protection under the rule of law as well as from law enforcement.

The capture of our electoral institutions by the business elite, the dominance of money and force in our electoral contestation have further moved us away from Bangabandhu's vision of a just democratic order where the voices of the less privileged members of society could be clearly heard in our institutions of governance.

At the conclusion of my presentation I suggest that much can be done towards bringing greater justice to the governance process if the ruling regime remains committed to realizing Bangabandhu's vision of a just society. Ensuring the rule of law for all, implementing policies and enforcing regulations, remain within the domain of a well-intentioned government and do not require revolutionary upheavals.

The move to realize more substantive advances towards a just society may need structural changes which require new legislation, even constitutional amendments, supported by changes in the balance of power which accommodates the needs, rewards the contribution and gives voice to the less privileged segments of society. Here too the reforms suggested in my presentation of broadening access to the ownership of assets, ensuring more equitable participation of the less privileged in the market place, delivering quality education and health care to the less privileged and continuing Bangabandhu's struggle for the greater democratization of both the institutions of democracy and the institutions of governance, can remain achievable goals. But such moves in the days ahead towards a more justly governed society, underwritten by policies for structural change, demand from both state and society a total commitment to carry on and sustain the struggle to realize the historic vision of Bangabandhu for a just society.