Where do we go from here?

You have scaled the walls. You have captured the castle. You have controlled the traffic during the day and seen off the robbers at night. What do you do now? What is the agenda?

It might be wise to move forward along three axes. Each would be given equal priority: industrialisation and development; external orientation; and, repair of the political/legal infrastructure.

Already, the majority of the discourse is on the third axis. New constitution, election monitoring, ejecting the political appointees in the major organs of state, chasing the corruption of the “ancien regime”, seeking justice for victims — all these dominate the airwaves, as it were. These are essential but the clear and present danger is that all the energy will be consumed in these narrow fields.

Here is why.

Let me make an unpopular observation, intended to be helpful, not spiteful. Students are a minority. Young people are not. The mass uprising sprang from this wellspring. 1952 and 1969 also saw small numbers of students lead the street struggle. In more illiterate, less connected times, they led the way, on behalf of a mostly rural population. Things are more balanced today. The 2022 census shows that there are 47 million young, aged 15 to 29 years old. Roughly one in four Bangladeshis are young, in this definition. There are 4.7 million university students. In other words, one in ten of this young cohort are university students. 

Progressives will look back at the Paris student revolt in 1968 with pride. Like Dhaka today, it was a scene of unlimited hope, imagination of a free society and the end of state oppression. So, why did President de Gaulle go on to win the French general election a few months later? The short answer is that the students talked to their own kind about, essentially, philosophy. They did not meaningfully reach out to the sceptical workers and unions. The students assumed that workers would automatically follow the progressive ideals and leadership of the students. Well, no.

Comparisons have been made to Tahrir Square in Egypt. The difference in Bangladesh is that students and the young burst into Ganabhaban and the old regime collapsed. That did not happen in Paris, nor Cairo. As of now, barring two token representatives in the interim government, the participants do not have overt political power. However, they dominate the streets and social media. Momentum resides with them. State power is held by the “advisers” and military support. In a sense, this is a hybrid of aspects of 1/11 and 1990. 

Who is the constituency?

The critical issue is, paradoxically, not limited to the future of the students. That was true during the quota reform and anti-discrimination movement. Now, they are participating to some extent in the governance of the state. The leaders have hinted at a transformation into a political movement and even a political party. In either form, the constituency logically must expand to all the people. The farmers, the petty traders, the industrial workers, the drivers, the carers, the construction workers, the homemakers, the office clerks and peons, and lest we forget, the industrialists and business owners.

Most of these yearn for freedom of expression, personal security and clean elections. But they wish even more for freedom from hunger, from misery,  from underemployment, from unemployment, from exploitative bosses, from miserable wages, from expensive health care, from living in dilapidated slums, from pollution, etcetera, etcetera.

So let us revisit the three proposed axes.

Industrialisation and development

The worrying signs to date are the appointment of officials, to the gleeful approval of the World Bank and IMF. It seems there have been no deliberations about the form of economic management that might deliver freedom from want and deprivation outlined above.

The unsaid is that all we need is less corruption and more efficiency. Let the magic of the market do its thing, unfettered. Soon enough, you will see privatisation of your state assets. Biman is corrupt. It is. So sell it off to foreigners. Who needs Sonali Bank? Sell the shares. Do the same for energy, for health, for education. For everything. Take a chainsaw like Mad-Max Millei in Argentina.

Forget quotas. That logic will lead to culling of the civil service and bureaucrats.

None of this is being said today. Yet, the acceptance of current neoliberal economics (a term most are unaware of) leads to that conclusion down the road.

NGOs will proliferate to do some pain alleviation and good work. Yet, who is asking the question: How did East Asia industrialise? How did China defeat India in the war on poverty and leave Delhi gasping for breath while Beijing moved into high speed rail, 6G (not 5G) and clean cities?

We should explore this in more depth. But here is the secret that the IMF does not want you to know. The South Koreans in the 1960s to 1980s, the Chinese in the 1980s to today, the Vietnamese now, are all ahead of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by state-led development. Private businesses played, and play, a massive role — indeed the majority of wealth creation — but within the strategic direction of the state. The truth hurts to some. Let’s look East and find out more.

External orientation

This leads us to the foreign policy of the country. That is, if it is really about economic diplomacy to support job creation and industrialisation. Today, I will only pose the question: who out of China, India, and the United States could help Bangladesh develop the most? Or, let me put it this way: who else but China can turbocharge Bangladeshi industrialisation beyond garments? If you think it is the other two countries, then compare China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) output to that of India or the US in the Global South. As in, actual accomplishments not statements of intent.

Political and legal repair

If we now look at this, not as the end but as one of the means of moving towards the first and second axes, then the work will move in that way. If, however, we talk in a digitised version of “good governance” of 2006 and 2007, then you know where that ends.

The for-life “monarchy” called Bakshal garbed itself into an all-inclusive, all nation dystopia where it literally represented the farmers and workers à la Burmese General Ne Win fake-socialism hell.

The task is to represent the majority by allowing them entry into the machinery of the state, without the dictatorship of any one family.

You may be satisfied with free and fair elections. Not me. When there are 30 garment workers MPs  (rather than factory owners) drafting laws in the Jatiya Sangsad, across the classes, then you are talking. Right now, should everyone not be screaming: why are there no representatives from farmers nor labour in the interim government?

As the multi-billionaire Warren Buffet said, we live in times of class war, and the class of the 1% are winning. Everywhere. You call this the Monsoon Revolution? Make it so.●

Farid Erkizia Bakht is a writer and analyst.