Aren't ordinary people extra-ordinary?

DEVELOPMENT in Bangladesh is both an enigma and a miracle. The more you think, the more you marvel at it. We have graduated to 6% plus GDP growth rate since 2005. When the population was 70 million at independence the growth was 2% per annum. Now with 160 million people we are having a sustained growth rate of above 6%.
Relative to growth of population, the rate of increase in GDP may not look spectacular. But it is substantial given the challenges we have been through all these years.
We are capable of meeting 95% of our food grain requirements; from 80% aid-dependency we have become self-reliant up to at least 70% in terms of self-financing; and from an aid-dependent country we have transformed into a trade-dependent nation. The per capita income has increased by over four times the pre-independence level.
Seen through the lens of political economy, we made an important choice between alternatives rather early in the day. From premature nationalisation without inventorying and necessary preparedness including ready availability of management resource we moved over to a mixed economy and then on to a private sector-led growth stratagem. Consequently, private enterprise has grown.
So far as the science part of political economy, which entails making the right choice between alternatives goes, we have done the job well. But in the art part of political economy we have failed to give a human face to development. Severe income inequality, regional disparities and concentration of wealth in few hands provide examples of this.
The corporate hold on the US, British and Indian economies and administrations is not only confined to those countries; the corporate lobby is peddling influence in policy and decision making areas in Bangladesh as well. This may be the other side of the coin of the business class's predominance in the composition of parliament. All this leads to tribalism and syndication.
Thus the growth rate is astounding; for, it has happened in spite of a litany of failures in state management, politics and administration together with a series of natural calamities.
We have had 14-15 years of autocratic-cum-presidential rule through subversion of democracy. Large part of the remainder 25 years of the four decades since independence saw elected governments, parliamentary only in form. This phase was interspersed with less than three years of caretaker rule reflective of the major political parties not trusting each other with an interim role prior to an emerging national election, a standard practice everywhere in the democratic world. Hardly an inspiring legacy that.
Actually, politics has been more of a liability than an instrument for development and growth. Political corruption, abuse of power and financial corruption conspired to undercut growth. But the tide for it wouldn't be deterred by the odds.
How the growth trend held its own is clearly demonstrated by the awesome data on hartals. A Chittagong University journal of social sciences in a study revealed: 5 days of hartal during 1972-75 Awami League government; 59 days during 1981-87 Ershad regime; 266 days during 1991-96 BNP regime; and 215 days during 1996-2001 Awami League regime.
Then at the law and policy-making, transparency and oversight levels, the opposition parties in the parliament had boycotted nearly half of the total number of sittings in the last three parliaments. Add the recurrent quorum crises to the one-sided parliament, the dysfunctionality cycle is completed. Half way through the present parliament the opposition boycott is shaping into a replay of the past.
All praise to the human material of the ordinary men and women in Bangladesh. Their ingenuity, entrepreneurial drive, self-development motivations, spirit of adventure and basic intelligence have turned them into gifted workers. They are not even conscious of their worth; unsung and unrecognised, they are doing patriotic service to the country making up for what we as educated people are failing to do. Our growth is the handmaiden of the ordinary men and women working overseas and especially women in the garment sector who altogether garner for the country around $20 billion every year.
What is jelling here, despite the country being politically divided in the middle and politics ignoring the primacy of the economy? The NGO impetus is part of the story, but in large part it is the human material of ordinary folks that is making the difference.
Without any meaningful effort for human resource development we have had 2.5 million workers, mostly women, in the RMG sector; and 7 million Bangladeshi expatriate wage earners at any given point of time all over the world keeping the national economy rolling.
But even this is only part of the 160 million pairs of hands, of which half are women. So, the remainder, especially the 15-25 year olds constituting 40 percent of the population and generations senior to them are just waiting to be turned into manpower. For this to happen, we will have to effect the much-needed switch over from the two items centered export to a more diversified economy.
In a way we are already getting a demographic dividend without even trying; imagine, how much more we can derive from the population if we have the right mix of plans and policies to engage them in pursuits linking them to regional and global economies?
The way to jump start the economy to a leapfrogging state lies in associating the people in a participatory role from the grassroots upwards. This is only possible through making the entire local government system elective, powerful and decisive, divorced from over-centralised state of affairs.

The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.