A vision for a more equitable and just Bangladesh

Photo: Star Archive

Rehman Sobhan

I have, for many years, been writing and speaking about the need for constructing a more equitable and just society in Bangladesh which is more consistent with the vision of our founding father's and the spirit of the liberation war. Whilst considerable progress has been registered in Bangladesh since liberation in the way of economic growth, spread of education, some improvement in health indicators and even some reduction in levels of poverty, there is no debate that Bangladesh has become a more unequal society. In this time we have evolved from being held captive within two economies into two societies divided between a privileged elite and the excluded majority of the population.

Many others, apart from myself, drawn from political and civil society and from the academic community, have pointed to the widening of social disparities in Bangladesh. However, few have come up with any clearly defined agenda for challenging these disparities within the prevailing political system and market dominated economic philosophy which has guided the policies of successive regimes in Bangladesh. Most attempts to address the problem of poverty, whether in Bangladesh or across South Asia, have sought to improve budgetary allocations which may help to reduce poverty through expansion in expenditures in various social safety net programmes. All such policies are to be commended and even expanded in the absence of more effective policies. But social safety nets essentially serve to alleviate the symptoms of povertyhunger, destitution, lack of work, inferior education, poor health carethey do not address the sources of poverty which originate in the injustices of society.

In a recently published work by me, Challenging the Injustice of Poverty: Agendas for Inclusive Development in South Asia, I have identified some of the sources of poverty and injustice as:

* Inequitable access to productive assets;
* Inequitable participation in the market;
* Unequal access to education and health care;
* Unjust governance.

In my book I advance concrete suggestions about what may be done, in the near future, to challenge these injustices, which constrain the excluded majority of South Asia from achieving their full potential. Rather than elaborate on my proposed suggestions for challenging the injustice of poverty let me briefly spell out my vision for a more just society in Bangladesh which may be realised if some of these measures proposed by me are put into effect. I do not spell out any time frame for the realisation of my vision but feel that any democratic regime in Bangladesh, genuinely committed to establish a more just and equitable society, could bring about a din bodol for the excluded, the disempowered of Bangladesh, locally known as dukhi manush, by the time we commemorate the 50th anniversary of our independence in 2021.

Empowering our small farmers:
In our rural society, where 70% of our people still live, I would like to see that all those who till the land should be made either owners or permanent tenants of the land they till. It is largely these small farmers, cultivating 2-3 acres of land, who have, since liberation, tripled Bangladesh's foodrain production through their immense capacity for hard work, their willingness to adopt new technologies in the way of irrigated agriculture, use of fertiliser and improved seed varieties. The foreign exchange saved by Bangladesh through the enhanced productivity of our farmers far exceeds the inflows of foreign aid or private foreign investment coming into Bangladesh. All these gains have been realised in spite of declining levels of public expenditure in agriculture and drastic reduction in subsidies. Only in recent years has some effort been made to redress this injustice through enhanced subsidies and increased credit to our farmers, including barga chashis, but the support to farmers still falls far short of their needs.

It would not be enough to simply enable farmers to own the land they till. There is not enough land to accommodate the hunger for land from millions of landless rural households. Many of these landless households could be made owners of the ¾ million acres of khas land to which they are legally entitled. Such a process could be initiated tomorrow by this government if it genuinely aspires to serve the deprived. All that is required is to enforce the law enacted during the tenure of Bangabandhu's government declaring that all khas land would be distributed amongst landless households. This law is still on the statute books but has rarely been enforced. As a result, most of these khas lands have been illegally appropriated by rich and politically influential people.

We need to further equip our hardworking farmers with all the attributes of bigger farmers and give them opportunities to share in the value added through the marketing and processing of their produce. In my vision, small farmers would be grouped in cooperatives which would jointly purchase their farm inputs, own irrigation and other farm equipment such as power tillers, jointly procure, store and process their produce to ensure a better return from the market. Such cooperatives or even companies would be exclusively owned by groups of small farmers with no scope for capture by elites, which have given the cooperative movement in South Asia a bad name.

Today, procurement by the Food Department at official minimum support prices is usually made from the rice mills and traders and not the growers. Now that rice mills are being automated and have greatly increased their capacity, such investments can only be made by very wealthy businessmen. If the grain market is not to be monopolised by these large rice mills, I Would envision a strategy whereby cooperatives of small farmers would be funded to become the shareholders and even the eventual owners of the rice mills, cold storage plants, agro-processing companies and dairy or milk processing enterprises. In this way the small farmers would be able to share in the much greater profits accruing to the middlemen and the modern agro-industrial sector which appropriate the lion's share of the profits in the agriculture sector.

Photo: Jashim Salam/ Drik News
 
 
Photo: Star Archive

Transforming workers into owners:
In my vision, our rural areas would not just be areas for agricultural development but would emerge as the new industrial hubs of a din bodol Bangladesh. Household and small enterprises in the rural areas would be flourishing not just through enhanced flows of credit but through creation of opportunities for collective action which would enable them to upgrade their technology and access the upper tiers of the market. Such groups of small enterprises could be organised as cooperatives or even corporate enterprises which could also become the equity partners of bigger corporate businesses producing shoes or readymade garments for export. The corporates would outsource production to these collectives, help to upgrade their technology and oversee quality control. In such an order the rural production sector would become full scale partners in the modern sector, catering to national, regional and international markets.

In the digital Bangladesh envisaged by our prime minister, many RMG enterprises could be relocated to rural areas where women workers would be able to work in these factories without leaving their village homes. Such an industrial order would be possible once we ensure that all our villages are connected to the urban centres by all- weather roads, and all villages are electrified and are IT connected. For such rearrangements in the systems of production new business and management practices would need to be put in place. For rural based factory workers to give off their best work and improve productivity and quality, they would need to be made partners in the RMG enterprises for which they work.

The most important partners in the growth sectors of the economy, such as the RMG industry, are their work force, who are mostly women. It is their low wages combined with their hard and efficient work which significantly contributes to the global competitiveness of the RMG sector. It is the profits generated from the surplus value created by these workers which enable our RMG owners to enjoy first-world lifestyles. In contrast, the women who create this surplus value have to live under intolerable conditions, work long hours and face constant insecurity in their employment. Such a social dispensation is unsustainable because it is neither efficient nor just. It is breeding social tensions which are manifested in daily street disturbance in the RMG areas.

In an enlightened and just society we may envision that by 2021 the working women, first in the RMG sector and then in all other sectors, should be made shareholders in the enterprises where they work so they can share in the profits created by their labours. Under such a system workers would be motivated to work more intensively, creatively and responsibly to enhance productivity so they can share in the increased profitability of the company in which they are shareholders.

Democratising education:
As long as we have an unequal education system where a narrow elite is educated in expensive private institutions or well-funded Cadet Colleges, while the majority of our population receive a sub-standard education, our social disparities will widen. In an increasingly knowledge based world unequal access to education will emerge us one of most powerful sources of inequality. To correct this injustice my vision for the future would be to see a massive increase in investments to raise the standards of public education.

Empowering the disempowered:
In a social order where workers and farmers have emerged as partners in all the dynamic sectors of the economy we can envisage that many such enterprises, whether of farmers or workers or collectives of excluded people, would eventually emerge as fully owned enterprises of the excluded classes. In this more just society rickshaw drivers in each city would come together to form large transport companies where drivers own their own rickshaws, own workshops to build and service the rickshaws, employ lawyers and accountants to deal with the police, the municipal authorities and the banks as well as have access to a system of health insurance.

Another source of collective action is our millions of migrant workers, who pay large sums of money to secure work abroad, are often cheated, work under difficult conditions and may even end up losing their lives. In spite of their great contribution to our economy, their worth is barely recognised and their social and economic position in society hardly reflects their contribution. In a more just world of tomorrow I would envisage a new order for our migrants where large groups of migrants would come together as owners of professionally managed labour exporting companies. These professionally managed enterprises would negotiate delivery of services with overseas service users as well as work contracts with overseas employers. The migrant enterprises would organise and finance workers' travel, upgrade their skills, and look after their welfare in countries where they work. Eventually the enterprise would, with the consent of their migrant owners, invest part of their remittances to acquire shares in the more profitable industrial sector and even set up their own large enterprises or real estate projects. In such a world, dozens of such migrant owned labour exporting companies would emerge as one of Bangladesh's largest export industries where, instead of being helpless individuals, at the mercy of exploitative adam beparis, our migrants would be collectively empowered to establish themselves as part of a new corporate elite in Bangladesh, but drawn from an entirely new social class. These groups of migrant investors could join hands with millions of low income households to also become shareholders in large infrastructure projects such as the Padma Bridge, the Elevated Expressway in Dhaka and the prospective Deep Sea Port.

An economic order where our migrants, farmers, workers, small entrepreneurs and groups of the excluded could become the owners of large sectors of the economy, thereby enabling them to directly participate in the development process, would serve to reduce inequality and poverty while enhancing economic growth. In such a society the disempowered classes would be able to interact with our elite, not as supplicants for jobs, better wages or welfare patronage from the budget but as their political, economic and social equals. This would represent a true din bodol for Bangladesh which would strengthen the roots of our democratic order. Today our electoral democracy is largely a rich man's game from which ordinary people feel excluded. In contrast, in my vision of democracy in Bangladesh, I would envisage larger numbers of women, working people and minorities, represented in our national and local electoral institutions, in numbers which are more commensurate with their share of the population.

My vision for Bangladesh 2021 may, in the light of what is happening in Bangladesh today, appear as a dream. But I believe this is a dream shared by millions of Bangladeshis. Interestingly enough, some elements of this dream were presented before the world by none other than the prime minister of Bangladesh in her recent address to the United Nations, where she committed herself before the international community to build a more just and equitable society which would bring peace to her country and the world. May we hope that she will actually give substance to our shared dreams by taking concrete steps towards bringing about a din bodol for the disempowered of Bangladesh.

The writer is Chairman, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD). This is a shortened version of an article which first appeared in the editorial page of The Daily Star on November 13, 2011.


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