It was however pretty clear from Dr. Bhattacharya's lecture that the task of defining the term, 'civil society,' itself is a troublesome one, let alone finding pathways for effective democratic reform. Even mere translation of the word into Bengali is quite problematic since all the corresponding Bengali terms tend to convey a misleading picture of what civil society should mean in the context of Bangladesh. However, Dr. Bhattacharya, anticipating this problem opted for an operational definition of civil society.

To paraphrase Dr. Bhattacharya's basic premise it may be said that the Bangladesh polity is now undergoing severe problems in its democratic front sprouting from the corrupt nature of politicians. Therefore, the Nagorik Committee, the public front of Dr.

Bhattacharya's endeavour to clean the political process decided to make politics free of corrupt and incompetent politicians. Hence, the solution is to force the political parties to post "competent" and "honest" personalities to run for national elections. This will eventually lead to the removal of all sorts of anomalies and corruption from politics.

Let me try to address some of the inconsistencies. Firstly, is it the corrupt politicians who are to be blamed for the dismal state of our beloved motherland? This practice of blaming politicians is quite similar to that of the military juntas who always discard politicians at the outset from the job of handling state affairs, consequently paving their way to capturing power. Even a few days back the notorious King of Nepal used this very pretext to appropriate absolute power. Fortunately, he has backed out in the face of immense public pressure, unlike the Pakistan junta. The point I want to make here is that these wrong conclusions emanate from erroneous analysis of social and political problems. Politics is a collective process having its root in the very nature of the social, cultural and economic systems. Therefore, any deviation in it must be seen from a systemic point of view. Individuals hardly matter in deciding the course of politics unless they are talismanic, or charismatic, figures.

The degeneration in Bangladesh's political field implies the organic inconsistency that is now prevailing in the country, which could roughly be attributed to the exotic elements introduced into it without correspondence with the capacity of the societal coping mechanism. It is almost impossible for some 'honest' and 'competent' persons to take up the uphill task and make politics clean. Professor B M Chowdhury, the Vice Chancellor of IUB, raised an important point that the problem is, to some extent, of the breaking down of institutions. It is our failure in establishing institutions that has resulted in the poor performance of democracy in Bangladesh. For example, the education sector is now in total disarray owing to the tendency of some of the influential teachers to get involved with power politics, holding their respective institutions hostage to their political and worldly ambitions. In the past, there were examples when our respected teachers strongly resisted any move from the government to interfere with the internal affairs of their respective educational institutions. Nowadays, this almost sounds like a fairy tale.

In a democracy politicians are supposed to be the representatives of the citizens of the country. Politicians come from within our society. They are no alien forces brought onto the stage by some divine, or satanic, power. One of my senior colleagues once made a very good point that the problem of Bangladesh is not the density of the population, rather it is the density of the evil doers that has plagued the country. When the society at large is fraught with ethical problems how could we expect some politicians to rise above that? The corrupt nature of our politicians only reflects the decayed nature of our society. As such there is no more a class called politicians. Politicians comprise people from all walks of society, ranging from businessmen to bureaucrats. I, therefore, feel that we should stop talking about corruption of political parties, instead we must turn our eyes on ourselves and see whether we are doing enough in our respective fields to make the country better for ourselves. When the whole lot gets derailed we can't expect a certain section to be on track. We must engage ourselves in building institutions which will ultimately safeguard against any unlawful intervention by politicians into the system.

What has been said so far about the problem is concerned with internal factors. But in the contemporary world any analysis, or explanation, without taking globalisation into consideration is bound to yield misleading result. Ironically, more often than not, the international factors are so much important in determining the course of national politics that it almost becomes the fate of the country, especially when it is a weak one. The present debate on malfunctioning of democracy essentially presumes the supremacy of democracy over other forms of political system. Democracy is being suggested as a panacea in itself without looking at the cost-benefit analysis, or suitability, of that system in the context of the particular country. And that democracy, too, is of proto-Western type. Recently, there has been a surge in debates over the curtailment of the role of state plausibly to make democracy functional. Even Dr Bhattacharya, that day, clearly stated that he wanted curtailment of state control and attributed the present problem, to some extent, to the tendency of the state to intervene excessively in matters which they view should be kept out of the purview of the state. They clearly feel pessimistic about the malfunctioning of the state, hence their decision of limiting state control comes forth.

Democracy has been equally malfunctioning in Bangladesh, but there is an optimistic tone among Nagorik Committee members about possible healing of the ailing system. This discrepancy is in line with the prescriptions of the WB-IMF and other donor agencies. I often ask myself whether the problems being faced by Bangladesh are exclusive in nature. But I am consoled since most of the developing countries that have followed the WB-IMF model of development are now on an equal footing in terms of malfunctioning of democracy, or other development indicators. This is the White Man's Burden that is taking toll on our political process.

In that perspective I think we must now rethink whether we should put all our weight behind democracy or search for any other suitable alternative. Across the world the validity of indigenous knowledge has been reaffirmed as a reliable source of knowledge. But depressingly enough the political scientists, for unknown reasons,' shy away from this task. As we know there prevailed various forms of indigenous systems of governance across civilisations. Political scientists should engage themselves in developing these systems which will fit into the demands of the modern age. I am not suggesting any reverting back rather my point is that every system develops out of the particular geographical, social and cultural needs. Any political system must therefore correspond to the peculiarities of the society. It is no good to try to mindlessly emulate a model borrowed from other societies because there remains the risk of inconsistency between the inherent structures of the model and the nuances of the object society. At least, what we can do now is to incorporate, or modify, some indigenous elements into the Western model of democracy to make it consistent with our values and ways of life.

I admire Dr. Bhattacharya for his outstanding achievements. I believe people like him have a truly patriotic mind and passion for doing well for the country. I request him to stretch out a bit more. He will then realise how weird it sounds when someone speaks only about cleansing power politics, from a comfortable distance, without focusing on other economic and global factors. We think that the country needs people like him to join politics and try to reform the politics from inside. May be it could be done by forming a mainstream political party and thereby capturing the imagination of people. With a truly patriotic force it is possible to manoeuvre things even within the strict control of global economic and political order. Once politics is back to normalcy then only the Nagorik Committee could work as the balancing factor between the rival interest groups. But unless these issues are carefully looked into I do not see any glimmer of hope.

Manoj Misra is Lecturer, Independent University, Bangladesh.