There can be no argument that the most respected, talented, and accomplished of people in Bangladesh today are members of civil society and not in government.

In Prof Yunus, for instance, we have the pioneer of micro-credit, an authentic Bangladeshi innovation that has transformed thinking about the potential and capacity of the poor the world over, and in Fazle Hasan Abed, we have the founder of the world's largest and perhaps most effective non-governmental organization.

It is not entirely true that all civil society leaders have kept out of politics; after all, it was Prof Zafar Iqbal who spearheaded the opposition to the government's ill-advised initiative to reformulate the educational system. But, by and large, civil society has kept in the background politically. Until now.

Bangladesh is in many ways a unique country. I cannot think of another country which owes so much to its non-government sector (more the NGO sector than the private sector, but the private sector has also played its role), or of any other country that has achieved so much despite the shortcomings of its government.

It's funny, really. The government is always trying to point out that things are not so bad and trying to take credit for all of our achievements. Well, perhaps things are not all that bad and we certainly do have achievements of which to boast.

But the point is that almost everything that Bangladesh has ever achieved has been achieved in spite of the government, not because of it. It is for this reason that government officials' plaintive pleas to the media to develop a more positive story line for Bangladesh together with their concomitant sneering at NGOs is something of a bad joke.

I think it is fair to say that Bangladesh has perhaps the most well-developed and effective NGO sector in the world, providing services to and improving the lives of tens of millions. Be it education, family planning, nutrition, infant mortality, women's rights, you name it, to the extent that pretty much anything is going right in Bangladesh, we owe it to this sector.

In many ways, the role of the NGO sector in Bangladesh is a revolutionary concept, splitting the difference between the public and the private sector in ways that other countries would do well to emulate. We have understood that the government often is unable to provide services efficiently, but that we cannot necessarily always rely on the private sector to provide a market-based solution either. The solution has been to develop a sector that combines the best of both worlds: the NGO sector. In this, Bangladesh leads the world.

The NGO sector has developed largely as a result of the continual failure of the government to deliver over the years. Rather than dirty their hands and try and climb the greasy pole of corruption, cronyism, sycophancy, money, and muscle that is politics in Bangladesh, many a public-spirited individual has sought to make his or her contribution in the non-governmental sector.

And they have succeeded spectacularly. Prof Yunus is a man of immense genius and foresight. There can be no one who could contest the statement that a man of his vision and acumen would have made a fantastic finance minister or chief executive for the country. We would have been lucky to have him, indeed any country would be lucky to have had a man of his ability in their government.

But surveying the governmental landscape in the mid-1970s, Prof Yunus made a different decision. He opted instead to become a banker to the poor. And who can argue with his choice when we see how much he has been able to achieve.

Today there are literally millions of people in Bangladesh who are better off because of the Grameen Bank. Not only that, but from GrameenPhone to the recent food deal with the Danone Group, Prof Yunus continues to do more to develop and advance Bangladesh than any mere politician.

A similar case could be made for Fazle Hasan Abed. BRAC is the largest NGO in the world and benefits the lives of tens of millions. From education to handicrafts to cottage industries to health to legal rights to banking, there is no area that BRAC has not touched. There can be no question in anyone's mind that Mr. Abed can count himself, not only as one of the foremost humanitarians in the world, but also as one of the most accomplished chief executives as well.

There is no question that had Mr. Abed chosen to go into government that he would have been an immense asset to the country. However, there is also no arguing that the path he has chosen to tread has also yielded Bangladesh immense benefits and will continue to do so far into the future.

The same could be said, though to a lesser extent, for the private sector. The garment industry, for instance, was born out of the sweat and toil of millions of workers, but also out of the ingenuity and insight of thousands of intrepid entrepreneurs, small and large.

So it is not as though civil society has sat on its hands and played no role in the development of the country. Far from it. As I have said, almost everything we have achieved as a nation is due to civil society, and not the government.

But there has been one down-side to this path to development, and it is this down-side that we are seeing more and more evidence of today in the year 2006. The down-side is that if you are content to leave politics in the hands of the crooked and the corrupt and do not wish to dirty your own hands, then this is where you end up: a kleptocracy in which tens of millions do not even have access to safe water and everything from cabinet seats to justice is up for sale to the highest bidder.

Bangladesh has taken the model of a country that operates despite a dysfunctional government as far as it can go. As good as the NGO sector and the private sector may be, we are finding out that there are limits to what a country can achieve with an endemically useless and corrupt government.

It is government that builds roads. It is government that provides sewerage system and water and electricity. It is government that must maintain law and order and provide justice. Even if we outsource services such as education, we nevertheless still need government to set up a curriculum and ensure that standards are maintained.

But in Bangladesh we have handed over the reins of government to the lowest common denominator. We have left things in the hands of the crooked and the clueless, and allowed affairs of state to be run by the absolute worst among us. And so as we enter the election season, we see that we are reaching the point of no return.

This is why for the first time we are seeing civil society truly engage in electoral politics and this is why I support this engagement.

Some might argue that civil society shouldn't take the focus off of the issue of clean elections by focusing too much on clean candidates.

Others might argue that the formula proposed by Prof Yunus for clean candidates is unworkable and that the citizens' group that has been floated to campaign for clean candidates will be unable to deliver.

These criticisms are all worth a hearing and are not wholly without merit.

But let us not lose sight of the important thing: at long last we have seen civil society get off the fence and indicate its willingness to get its hands dirty in politics.

Not partisan politics, though, and that is good. Nothing would split the movement quicker than if it were to be given a partisan sheen.

But to the extent that civil society finally appears willing to engage itself in retail politics, and has indicated that it will no longer sit on the sidelines as the politicians decimate the country, this is, to my mind, the best news the country could possibly have received. This new-found readiness on the part of civil society to wade into the muck of the political process is the key to better days.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.