BANGLADESH became an independent nation-state in 1971. In its 53 years of Journey, Bangladesh has many success stories to tell, from being considered a bottomless basket to an emerging economy. Globalisation brought enormous opportunities for Bangladesh. Our economic successes have been pivoted on two footsolders: 4.22 million garment workers and 11 million offshore migrant labourers. Their sweats and bloods made Bangladesh the 35th largest economy in the world.

Bangladesh has three major advantages: The 21st century is the century of Asia Pacific, and Bangladesh has direct sea access to Indo-Pacific; its large population offers a market volume of 30 million strong middle class people, providing opportunities to develop economies of scale; and Bangladesh has a long history of higher education in fundamental material and social sciences. As a result, given appropriate policy support, it will be easy to develop a digital economy as well as a circular economy for climate adaptation.

The fault lines

Over the last fifteen years, while our GDP growths were going upward, our socio-political developments were going downward. The main irony of Bangladesh is that we went to the war of independence because our leader, Sheikh Mujibuar Rahman, had been denied the prime ministership despite his election victory. After 50 years, we were still unable to ensure the democratic transition of power and representative government. After several failed starts, Bangladesh had plunged into an authoritarian regime with de facto one-party, one-person fascist rule for the last ten years.

Root cause of the failure

DURING the partition in 1947, when the then East Bengal became part of Pakistan on religious consideration. India supported Bangladesh during our liberation in 1971. During these major political processes, our religious identity somewhat dominated the political negotiation. Most Bangladeshi people wanted independence to get rid of economic deprivations and political repressions. Instead of addressing those popular grievances, the ruling junta used Islam to suppress the people and their political aspirations.

Islamic parties made the historical mistake and sided with the regime. For them, the religious identity and their fear of India due to the peculiar history of two-nation theory were much bigger concerns than economic emancipation of common people. As a result, in our national conscience, our religious and cultural identities became antagonistic and a source of permanent divisions.

Despite their historical failures, Islamic parties became stakeholders in the electoral politics of Bangladesh. While the political left, who had been the genitor of our cultural narratives for independence, became electoral minorities. In Bangladesh, the political left, including the communist party, had allied with the centre-left Awami League and accused the Islamists as the collaborators of all the atrocities committed by the Pakistani army during 1971.

They wanted to criticise the Islamic parties for their role during the liberation war in 1971. But their narratives went against Islam. Thus, they failed to increase their electoral constituencies. Islamic parties survived. Now, the only way to keep the Islamists and nationalists away from the parliament was to maintain an authoritarian regime without holding any free and fair elections. At the end, our whole democratic electoral system was lost.

Outside these narrow self-serving power politics and political bigots, our broader constituencies had also been divided in two enemy camps: so-called pro-Pakistani centre right to right wing polity and pro-Indian centre left to left wing polity. Paradoxically, after twice separations, our mental fault lines seemed to remain in pre-1947. As both sides were in contempt for each other, our democracy became the ultimate casualty.

The GDP trap

OVER the last 30 years, our GDP has been growing steadily. Around the late 2000s, our macro-economic volume became large enough to start mega-infrastructural projects. Bangladesh became a rapidly growing economy in the world. It appeared that the absence of democracy and human rights, especially the right of demonstration, trade union, labour strike, and hartal, was a blessing for high-speed GDP (i.e., China-style) growth.

The GDP is a neutral measure of the monetised economic activities. It does not distinguish whether these activities are good or bad for societies. If we privatise our education and public health, the GDP will grow faster, but social mobility will suffer. The GDP will grow faster (in the short term) if there are more sweatshops than compliant factories with decent wages.

In the absence of representative government and rule of law, the GDP will be in the hands of a brutal capitalist force. It will create a ruling class of plutocrats and oligarchs who will decide the fate of the rest of us, about our lives and livings, our biodiversity, and our environment.

In yesterday’s Bangladesh, our GDP growth was in the hands of oligarchs and plutocrats connected to the regime. While the skylines of our cities were changed very positively, an astronomical amount of money was syphoned off the country. We had witnessed one after another mega-financial scandal in all sectors. All these scandals were not the disease but the symptoms of the same disease—a GDP growth in the hands of a brutal capitalist force in the absence of a political check and balance.

The mega-infrastructure projects were not the culprit per se. We needed them for our development and jobs. However, in the absence of political accountability, those projects produced a royal class in our civil-military deep state. Once it started, the government was no longer in need of their party activists to remain in power. Because of the vested economic interest, the civil and military bureaucracies organised the state-managed general election to keep the government in power. While the Padma Bridge and Metrorail provided the necessary development narratives for the government to legitimise their authoritarian rule.

The very GDP growth had created a Bangladesh where corrupts defeated the competent, the judiciary served the incumbent, the press praised the power, services were monopolised, banks were emptied, and common people lost their state, sadly, at the cost of all-inclusive massive public debt.

My Bangladesh tomorrow

THE student protest for civil service quota reformation, what was apparently a benign protest movement, suddenly turned into a mass upsurge and toppled the regime. A question is raised about why the opposition parties had failed previously to oust the government. Most probably, the main factor behind the success of the student-led mass uprising was that for the first time we were able to overcome our historical religious and cultural antagonism. For the first time, our broader constituencies left behind their political contempt for each other and came together to a single demand of citizen rights against discrimination. For the first time, we all became fellow citizens, leaving aside our political identities.

To harness the success of this revolution, we must overcome once for ever our historical antagonism between culture and religion. We must reconcile our conflicts between Islamic versus secular state. My proposition is for the larger constituencies, including nationalists, Islamists, and seculars, to agree upon a neutral citizen state, which will be champions of freedom of thought, belief, religion, and culture. I know my proposition can be a difficult pill to swallow for both secular and Islamists.

For the Islamists, I would like to make the note that there is a difference between a secular state and a neutral state. The secular states are often in practice hostile regarding divine orders. In my vision, a neutral state will be a facilitator state for the divine guidance to build up a socio-cultural fabric of the society based on family values, gender equality, and the common good. However, the secular must know that the political spaces in my neutral state will be always open for all ideas and exclusively dedicated to building and sustaining representative government and rule of law.

Globalisation will bring both opportunities and challenges. Meanwhile, the global climate crisis is falling upon us without our making. Our GDP will grow with or without democracy. But if we want to give the dividend to the common people, we must give the country back to its citizens by ensuring representative government and rule of law. There is no other alternative.

Dr Asrar Talukder is an Australia-based research scientist, working on energy transition toward a net-zero economy and climate adaptation.