Where are the missing modernisers?

Where are the plans, the strategies, the road maps for the urban and rural hinterlands? To date, New Bangladesh is enshrining rights on paper. No one should argue against the need for freedom of expression, religion and more. It may stem from a libertarian desire for reducing intrusion by the state (negative rights). But to talk about positive rights such as food, housing, public education, healthcare and decent standard of living, the East Asian development story reveals that the state is essential and at the centre of them. This is not being discussed in Dhaka and beyond. It is just not good enough to write into law promises about positive rights when leaders have zero ideas of or interest in how to implement them. Let us get back to reality.

Cheap labourers abroad, mainly female industrial workers in the cities, and tenacious, ill-served farmers in the countryside, saved and advanced the country. With help from many unknown NGO activists. That was the first-stage rocket. But there is only so far one can go in a world of automation, robotics and the internet of things. One where Trumpian betrayal of free trade along with the Rise of China are creating a New World. Bangladesh now urgently needs a second-stage rocket. No political force has designed or built this one. They don’t know how to, perhaps because advisers tell leaders not to. They will let the magic of the market do its stuff, like an unguided missile. That, however, is not the East Asia way, friends.

So, is this a call for revolutionary upheaval? Not the old style way. Rather for a shift to planning for transformational change? With a new coalition of modernisers? To realign the country in new geopolitical partnerships? To truly become a region tied umbilically to a more advanced China, and some in Southeast Asia? That chapter is waiting to be written. What is needed is an Industrial Party. No, not another political party. But a new way of thinking. To form a new common sense across the political spectrum. In China, the Industrial Party refers to one current of thought which is fighting and winning intellectual battles on social media and party committees, to ensure China retains its industrial edge and upgrades technologically. Where China becomes fifteen Germanies, and a hundred Singapores. Why is Trump so desperate? He may not read but he understands images. 

Jamuna’s sultans of spin and much of the elite in Dhaka really do not grasp this tectonic shift in global power. They continue to religiously read and recite lines from a couple of Western magazines. You know which ones. Thus, they are fifteen years out of date, just like their cousins in Delhi, whose validation they still seek. Before wanting to run, one must learn to walk. Bangladesh should set itself more modest goals, but that means being ambitious within the current context. Similarly, far more than a lobby for the pampered, demanding BGMEA, what is needed is a coalition to foment modernisation, diversified industrialisation, a strengthening of the state for economic strategic direction. This could only function by sharing the pie with farmers, the urban poor and women. Which means greater equality. 

One way is to say: Less state monitoring of Facebook posts. More detailed monitoring of project implementation, standards, strategies and commitments. One’s immediate reaction might be that everyone is promising this. All the sultans of spin, everywhere, promise the earth. Jamuna’s are no different. They have no reference or model to learn from. They have no real programme. They have no intention of changing things. Except to say, it is their turn. New politics so far is as culpable as old politics. Transparency needs to go hand in hand with monitoring. Muhammad Yunus may voice the elite consensus when he disparages the people of Bangladesh for lacking sophistication in front of his Chatham House faithful. But without the people seeing proof of the sausage being made, they will be forced to believe the sultans of spin. The cycle of resistance to change will be reinforced.

Seasoned media operators far more streetwise than I reckon that the BNP will stay in power for three terms. I wonder whether people will remain that patient. I would be surprised if the next government gets through all the episodes of season one, let alone seasons two and three. Is there a path which leads from the destruction of the Awami League for good, to the current demolition of the myth of NGO technocracy? To then give enough rope for BNP to hang themselves? All in short order. The latter supposes an unprepared and old-fashioned BNP. 50 million young people want more. Soon enough, they will figure out that something called neoliberal economics does not produce jobs. It is the same situation in India and Pakistan, and the smaller countries in South Asia.  

Diversify Industry? Never happens! 

Everyone moans about how Bangladesh cannot diversify away from exporting garments. Some are aware that this industry did not emanate from anything from the World Bank, or aid donors. Or Big NGO. It came primarily from South Korea – its buyers and factory owners. The story continues where Desh Garments gets set up, and then a whole troop of other entrepreneurs fly to Seoul to learn the tricks of the trade. Factories mushroom. Women rise in social standing, despite the daily cruelty, passed off as NGOised women empowerment. Banking, shipping, transport, services all develop. Proto-modernisation. 

The story is incomplete though. How is it that South Korea was able to start with textiles and garments, and then move on to other things in less than two decades? How did they diversify into other industries when Bangladesh cannot after 45 years, and may not after 50? Here is a clue: At the time, the World Bank-IMF cabal admonished the military-president. They told him Korea should not invest in chemicals and heavy industry. Stick to cheap garments, Mr. President. The general smiled politely and glanced at the report. Then he did his own stuff anyway. He had a plan. The state was active. He found the money. We should talk about how exactly, another day soon. 

South Korea diversified in the 1970s and early-1980s. It became an industrial giant. Where is the informed debate on this and other Asian examples? Leaving this to (neoliberal) think-tanks is dangerous. It sanitises a fraught, risky but necessary process. It also means revisionist history, garnished with a false neoliberal sauce. The true, somewhat messy, experiences should be central to the political discourse. And today there is China and Vietnam to look at for the 2020s and 2030s.

The current (temporary) leaders of new politics don’t seem to understand that the future of 50 million Bangladeshi young people lies in East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. China is invisible.  Parallel to this, their lads culture needs to recognise the economic and social debt owed to women, and the national potential being wilfully subdued. Bangladesh is fighting with one arm tied behind its back. Instead of reform, we are getting regression. It is intellectual dishonesty, if not outright dishonesty. This sounds like betrayal. And shortsightedness. Perhaps new youthful leaders will emerge soon. 

In sum, a broader strategic-industrial-young coalition needs to make a case for how Bangladesh prospers when strapped into an Industrial Sino-centric Asia – a reality that the country can no longer afford to wilfully ignore because the sultans of spin say so. This is not a time to be quiet, especially for women. The future of Bangladesh should not be merely in the hands of a blinkered political caste or spooky advisers. The current nonsense needs to be challenged intellectually, philosophically, and politically in the wider sense. February 2026 may end up being just another event, towards that journey. Autocracy has ended, for now. Technocracy has failed in a hail of incompetence and idiocy. Can electoral democracy deliver the missing modernisers?●