At 50, Bangladesh needs to reduce inequality, improve democracy
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • COVID-19
    • Bangladesh
    • Splash
    • Videos
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Infograph
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Thoughts
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Archive
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
    • Supplement
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Wednesday
July 06, 2022

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • COVID-19
    • Bangladesh
    • Splash
    • Videos
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Infograph
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Thoughts
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Archive
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
    • Supplement
  • বাংলা
WEDNESDAY, JULY 06, 2022
At 50, Bangladesh needs to reduce inequality, improve democracy

Bangladesh

TBS Report
06 December, 2021, 10:05 pm
Last modified: 07 December, 2021, 02:03 pm

Related News

  • Strengthen and decentralise IMED: CPD
  • Proposed budget provides no relief from soaring energy prices: CPD
  • Budget won’t protect middle class: Debapriya 
  • Budget identifies people’s problems, offers no solution: Experts
  • Yunus got highest opportunities from AL govt but betrayed people of Bangladesh: PM

At 50, Bangladesh needs to reduce inequality, improve democracy

 “We want to discuss not simply our achievements, we also want to note our shortfalls and mistakes so that we can learn lessons from them for course correction in the future”

TBS Report
06 December, 2021, 10:05 pm
Last modified: 07 December, 2021, 02:03 pm
At 50, Bangladesh needs to reduce inequality, improve democracy

While celebrating achievements in this golden jubilee year, Bangladesh needs to take steps to reduce economic and social injustice and improve the quality of democracy so that people get fair share of development, an international conference was told yesterday.

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) is organizing the four-day event to tell the story of Bangladesh's developments in the last 50 years since independence and challenges that are lying ahead.

 "We want to discuss not simply our achievements, we also want to note our shortfalls and mistakes so that we can learn lessons from them for course correction in the future," CPD Distinguished Fellow Prof Rounaq Jahan said.

"Most importantly, we want to identify the challenges that lie ahead particularly in the post-Covid changing world order when competition for survival and domination will be more intense," she said, elaborating on the theme of the four-day international conference.

The CPD is holding the virtual event on the occasion of the golden jubilee of Bangladesh's independence and "Mujib Borsho."

CPD Chairman Prof Rehman Sobhan made a keynote presentation titled "Bangabandhu's vision of a Just Society: Promises Kept and Promises to Keep."

He said economic and social injustice are compounded by the depreciation in the quality of our democracy.

The dominance of money and force in electoral contestation have "further moved "us away from Bangabandhu's vision of a just democratic order," the senior economist pointed out, suggesting that greater social justice can be brought by ensuring the rule of law for all, implementing policies and enforcing regulations.

"All these remain within the domain of a well-intentioned government and do not require revolutionary upheavals," Prof Rehman Sobhan said.

He stressed reforming the Election Commission to ensure free, fair and participatory election and redeeming the weakness of electoral democracy.

"If we want to realise just democracy, we have to free institutions of democracy and operate on just principles," said Prof Rehman Sobhan.

The virtual international conference, co-sponsored by the South Asia Program of Cornell University, is bringing together 47 participants from different countries. Twenty papers will be presented in 8 different sessions.

On the first-day session on Monday, convenor of the event Prof Rounaq Jahan said, Bangladesh today is vastly different from what it was fifty years ago when it emerged as an independent state.

She narrated how hard struggle, entrepreneurship and innovative actions unique to Bangladesh brought steady progress in key human development and economic indicators during the last half century of our independence, drawing the attention of international agencies and the Western media.

She cited global observers' doubt about Bangladesh's viability right at her birth in 1971, some calling it "an international basket case."

The country is now being called by some as a "development miracle" and by some others as a "paradox" which refers to Bangladesh's record of sustaining high economic growth despite deficits in good governance, she added.

"These brandings by western media, whether positive or negative, are usually based on a superficial understanding of the enormous changes that have taken place in Bangladesh over the course of the last fifty years," Prof Rounaq Jahan said on the inaugural day of the event.

Dr Mirza Hassan, senior research fellow at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), analysed the evolution of state-society relations in Bangladesh during the last five decades.

In his paper, Evolution of the state-society relations in Bangladesh: An analytical narrative, Dr Mirza Hassan explored how the relations between the political elites and other elites as well as non-elites have changed during the last five decades. He explained how the global politics of the supply chain industry dictates the state-business-labour relations. The paper also examined how "dysfunctional electoral democracy" impacted the governance of Covid-19 lockdown and relief management. It also reflected on future trajectory of liberal democratic governance in Bangladesh

Dr Ali Riaz of Illinois State University, USA focused on both political parties and social groups that pursue the agenda of Islamization of society and state. In his paper on Islamist politics in Bangladesh, he argues that Islamism as an ideology has gained traction as a bottom-up process – a view that is contrary to the conventional wisdom that the emergence of the Islamist politics is a mid-1970s phenomenon exclusively as a 'state project.'

Dr Arild Engelsen Ruud of University of Oslo examined how violence is used as a tool of political rivalry in Bangladesh. The paper presented by Dr Arild argued that local political leaders in collaboration with the state apparatus have created a situation of "polyarchy."

Top News

Democracy / development / inequality / Bangladesh to improve democracy / CPD

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • China-led trade bloc holds promise, with some caveats
    China-led trade bloc holds promise, with some caveats
  • British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak listens as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson addresses his cabinet on the day of the weekly cabinet meeting in Downing Street, London, Britain June 7, 2022. Leon Neal/Pool via REUTERS
    UK Johnson plunged into crisis as Sunak, health minister quits
  • Representational Image. Photo: Pixabay
    Load shedding the best course of action for now: Experts

MOST VIEWED

  • Padma Bridge from satellite. Photo: Screengrab
    Padma Bridge from satellite 
  • Lee Hyun-seung (third from right), head of Korea Expressway Corp.'s Overseas Project Division, shakes hands with Quazi Muhammad Ferdous, head of the Bridge Authority of Bangladesh, after signing a contract on June 29 (local time).
    Korean company to oversee N8 Expressway in Bangladesh
  • Build Dhaka East-West Elevated Expressway, relocate kitchen markets: PM
    Build Dhaka East-West Elevated Expressway, relocate kitchen markets: PM
  • Photo: Collected
    Road accident kills student near Shikkha Bhaban
  • Hundreds of motorcycles, cars, buses and other vehicles were in a queue at the toll plaza of the Padma Bridge on Sunday as the bridge drew a massive number of visitors on the first day after its inauguration. PHOTO: MUMIT M
    Padma Bridge: First day sees over Tk2cr toll collection
  • Photo: TBS
    BRTC bus breaks two barriers of Padma Bridge toll plaza

Related News

  • Strengthen and decentralise IMED: CPD
  • Proposed budget provides no relief from soaring energy prices: CPD
  • Budget won’t protect middle class: Debapriya 
  • Budget identifies people’s problems, offers no solution: Experts
  • Yunus got highest opportunities from AL govt but betrayed people of Bangladesh: PM

Features

The OPEC+ group of 23 oil-exporting countries met virtually on Thursday. Photo: Bloomberg

OPEC+ did its job, but don’t expect it to disappear

12h | Panorama
Mirza Abdul Kader Sardar with AK Fazlul Haque, Chief Minister of Bengal, at Haque's reception at the Lion Cinema, Dhaka, 1941. Photo: Collected

Panchayats: Where tradition clings to survival

13h | Panorama
Illustration: TBS

Universal Pension Scheme: Has it been thought through?

15h | Panorama
Last month Swapan Kumar Biswas, the acting principal of Mirzapur United College, was forced to wear a garland of shoes for ‘hurting religious sentiments.’ Photo: Collected

Where do teachers rank in our society?

1d | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

Sheikh Kamal Business Incubator to be inaugurated at CUET Wednesday

Sheikh Kamal Business Incubator to be inaugurated at CUET Wednesday

3h | Videos
Tejgaon becoming uninhabitable for illegal rickshaw garages, truck stands

Tejgaon becoming uninhabitable for illegal rickshaw garages, truck stands

3h | Videos
50 companies plan to invest big in South

50 companies plan to invest big in South

5h | Videos
Alal, Dulal sell for Tk30 lakh

Alal, Dulal sell for Tk30 lakh

5h | Videos

Most Read

1
Photo: Collected
Africa

Uganda discovers gold deposits worth 12 trillion USD

2
TBS Illustration
Education

Universities may launch online classes again after Eid

3
Meet the man behind 'Azke amar mon balo nei'
Splash

Meet the man behind 'Azke amar mon balo nei'

4
Build Dhaka East-West Elevated Expressway, relocate kitchen markets: PM
Bangladesh

Build Dhaka East-West Elevated Expressway, relocate kitchen markets: PM

5
File Photo: BSS
Energy

India pulls out of LoC funding for part of Rooppur power transmission work

6
Illustration: TBS
Interviews

‘No Bangladeshi company has the business model for exporting agricultural product’

EMAIL US
contact@tbsnews.net
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2022
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab
BENEATH THE SURFACE
Workers ready a passenger vessel with a fresh coat of paint to the deck ahead of the Eid-ul-Azha at a dockyard at Mirerbagh in South Keraniganj. The vessel getting the makeover plies the Bhandaria route and will take holidaying people from the city to their country homes. Eid will be celebrated on 10 June this year. The photo was taken on Monday. Photo: Mumit M

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - oped.tbs@gmail.com

For advertisement- sales@tbsnews.net