The 14-party reform agenda is not comprehensive but limited and focuses on those that will help them to win power. Their demand for reform, their accompanying violence, and their unlikely potential for structured discourse offers nothing to the people.

The weaknesses of Bangladesh's judicial system, its insufficient resources, and its improbability of becoming independent under any elected government give our politicians, in power, and in opposition, complete command to threaten the individual welfare of the people and collectively of the nation.

No shopkeeper or bus owners have ever gone to court to seek compensation or to protect their constitutional rights that hartals violate. Like the judicial system of the country, the common people are also weak and unable to seek justice.

Yet, the alliance leaders, many of whom are eminent lawyers, in their speeches, stubbornly declare that their street movement, unalterably associated with violence, is constitutional. It is hard to believe that our legal experts and leaders defend violent political movements as democratic and tout it as constitutional that downright denies the civil liberties of others.

Hitherto, we have never heard or seen any politician, other than those in the government, instructing their supporters not to burn or destroy properties during their hartals. They have never publicly regretted the violence or offered apology or adequate care to those physically and monetarily affected by violence, triggered by their street programs.

When state power is undemocratic and centralised, as in past unitary monarchies, competing contenders for power create civil chaos to oust the ruler to become the new master. Power in a monarchy then and now in so-called third world democracies is a win-lose state of affairs. Furthermore, as unlimited power vests in one hand or in one office, the political incentive is enormous for politicians to occupy that office, by any means.

However, by diffusing state power, by giving power to local governments, and by ensuring individual rights and security (Rule of Law), the political trend of a vicious power struggle that disrupt the whole country can come to an end. There may be regional or local political disturbance but the rest of the country would be normal unlike troubles in Dhaka that paralyse all parts of Bangladesh because economic, administrative, and political power is centralised in the capital.

Decentralisation is the key word in all true democracies where a check and balance on power is the fundamental political principle abided by all but no politician in Bangladesh is keen on decentralisation, as they would fail to hold and exercise maximum power.

Unchanged political organisations that do not pay utility bills or rents for their office spaces, and burn and destroy public services will not enforce property rights or create secure business conditions when elected to run a government. They will protect businesses of their supporters but may use absolute power to destroy those of their opponents.

It is also difficult for political organisations that are not accountable for their income and expenses, as a public body, to pursue the interest of others than of those who secretly, and sizeably, finance them. Political parties, NGOs, and budding think tanks can generate their required money directly from people instead of chunky sums from tycoons, foreign foundations, or donor governments. This would eliminate the common distrust within the society and other problems that money from outside sources creates.

Reforms of CEC are surely important, but a reform should also increase the number of parliamentary seats. The 330 parliamentarians, decided in 1970s based on population and geography, is too meagre a number for 150 million people, roughly one MP for every 500,000 people. Just as we need more doctors or more police, we need more MPs.

Increasing the number of seats in proportion to population and administrative boundaries will further diffuse power amongst greater number of people's elected representatives, and reduce the need for big money to contest elections, as constituencies turn smaller. It will also attract dedicated and honest politicians devoted to democratic values instead of the rich and the famous that crowd the political stage and meekly submit to the ugly politics of today.

Economic reforms are critical but none can rely on politicians to take on that job. Elected governments waste development funds to meet political ends. Our politicians welcome the role of large governments to develop the country as these bring them closer to big projects and expenditures. Consequently, a large government role has been the basic policy of all governments since independence.

This economic process has staggeringly enriched, particularly, those closest to the government or serving the government. There have been ripple and trickle down effects but the country has largely degenerated into a soaring state of unfulfilled want. Between the laudable macro figures of the development economists and the ground reality in Bangladesh, there is a horrifying mismatch.

Extensive government handling of economy have resulted in mass upsurges and innumerable deaths for electricity. It is because of government economic management, bound to err, people face sky high consumer prices, inadequate health services, and stay unaware of faulty agreements with foreign energy companies or investors. Complex government regulations cause rising labour unrest even in privileged export processing areas. The record of economic woes and government deceit is endless.

However, academics, the media, and intellectuals of Bangladesh favour economic development by government, and cite improper supervision, insufficient capital, political unrest, or corruption, for underdevelopment.

Genuine reform, however, must mean free and private initiatives of the people in agriculture, trade, or generation of electricity, as private entrepreneurship offers the highest form of personal freedom and economic efficiency that no government can achieve. The Bangladesh government is no different from any other, only worse. A government should no longer block free enterprise but, at best, compete with liberalised markets for the greater good and prosperity of the people.

Entrepreneurs are natural and do not need centralised planning by educated elites but property rights, low taxes, personal security, and the freedom to interact with buyers, sellers, and investors, foreign or local, to unleash their industrial and commercial talent.

The exporters and producers who presently form the private sector in Bangladesh are not entrepreneurs but active economic partners of the government. Their partnerships with governments, and friendship with politicians, build a tremendous force, an entente that endorse economic growth with a maze of government rules and regulations, exemptions, protected markets, cheap loans, and other mandates.

In the US, large businesses unjustly benefit from government regulations and political connections. Michael Rozeff, Professor of Finance, at The Mises Institute, in his recent article Who Captures Whom? The Case of Regulation writes that: "The Chicago School of economics favoured and still favours the theory of 'regulatory capture.' Under this theory, an industry or some portions of an industry cultivate government to obtain laws and rules that favour the industry. Politicians gain political contributions, side payments and the industry captures the regulators."

Bangladesh's business houses operate no differently. They talk of free market economy but liaison actively with governments and politicians. They do not want free market but markets managed by the government in consultation with them. They are a tiny minority but powerful enough to keep off the vast majority from economic gains that come with liberalisation and non-intervention by the government.

"Many of the pretending defenders of 'free enterprise' are in fact defenders of privileges and advocates of government activity in their favour," wrote Austrian economist and philosopher Dr FA Hayek, the 1974 Nobel laureate, in his book Individualism and Economic Order (University of Chicago Press).

Decentralising power will free the country from central regulative control of the economy. It will bring power to the people not to the elite, to every individual, and to every home with government in the back seat to keep guard that none grabs that power in the name of democracy and development.

However, our politicians and their collaborators are in no rush to undertake wide-ranging reforms as being without power over others would make them ordinary mortals like the rest of us. It is for the open, civil, and the free society to seek a referendum, a direct democracy, for widespread reforms if the present constitution and indirect democracy of parliamentary representation will not permit.

Nizam Ahmad is Director, Liberal Bangla, UK.