Editorial Desk :
A distinguished CPD fellow, Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya, on Tuesday said what experts like him should have said long ago, because they knew very well than the others that the ‘development’ projects that the current government was taking one after another were but ‘a way of looting money’. Didn’t these experts also know that the present authoritarian government used to tell people the stories of development just to hide its illegitimate character? They knew, but did not tell that to the government or the people.
The condition of the country’s economy is fast deteriorating and is going to be inwardly hollow because of rampant corruption of officials and plundering of public banks and economic mismanagement, still they have not pointed out that here is an inept and corrupt government that have messed up the future of the country.
Curiously, as economists, they also did not find out that the government was bribing the bureaucracy, the police and the others involved by giving them unusual hikes in payment and other costly perks and privileges to remain in power, and in so doing, they were seriously weakening the economy. Even many developed economies of the world do not afford the luxuries men and women in our government enjoyed all through and they are still enjoying those when the country is frantically trying to borrow money to save the sinking economy.
Do not these things matter to an economy? They do. But these experts continued to ignore them, as if these things were not related to their sophisticated area of concern. Even now when the country is going through a severe ‘crisis’ and the government shook the whole economic system by its mindless price hike of fuel, they are stating, rather funnily, that the country’s overall economy is only ‘under pressure’, and not in a ‘crisis’.
Do they mean that only a famine-like situation is a crisis in an economy? People do not now believe in this government when it says that the central bank’s forex reserves still stand at $ 40 billion. It could be much less actually. Had the central bank now had $ 40 billion, it would not have approached the IMF for a $4.5 billion loan.
With the price rise of all essentials in the market, a greater section of people in the country are virtually struggling to survive, while a small few who have got filthy riches are making mockery of public sufferings by their gloating lifestyle. Such has become the unequal distribution of wealth in society in just over a few years!
After the fuel price was hiked abnormally by the government without holding a debate on it, it was these experts who suggested that this hike could be made ‘step by step’ so that people could bear the burden. What a cruel joke! These experts believe that the government can make the public suffer ‘step by step’ so that it remains in power.
Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya still believes the government has the competency to deal with the pressure on the economy if it takes proper steps in time, otherwise it will turn into a structural problem. He further said inequality has increased in one and half a decade despite the development of the country. Other than the plunderers, life is hard everywhere because of mismanagement. If the personal rule of inexperienced leaders can do well for the economy, then it is good that our competent educated ones have no place in administering the country.
There is no limit of falsehood and hypocrisy surrounding the governance of the present Bangladesh. That cannot change anything.
Our so-called educated people are to be blamed for the miseries and sufferings of our people now in a government-less situation. Our educated opportunists tolerated the intolerable for too long a time. The police power and police cases are the only strength of this government.
Now Dr Bhattacharya has asked the youth to learn how to form the state structure. From whom, will they learn? What examples have we set for them? Even now he will not say that we have no structural government. Sycophancy is not government.
The universities create future leaders but university education has also been destroyed. The public universities in particular are under the control and management of the government party’s student wing and the universities have been exposed as crime centres.
Prof. Farid Khan of Rajshahi University lamented in an article published in a national daily about the atmosphere on the campus. He said, in the educational institutions, might is right now. There is no respect for human values, ideologies or principles. Everything is valueless. In such a jungle, breathing really hurts.
The university teachers are busy either with party politics or NGO activities. They have no time to think of building future leadership and do something to make the universities the seats of higher education. The government must not be blamed, some want to say. But it is the government itself that has been systematically destroying the country’s education.
Transparency International Bangladesh issued a report on corruption Wednesday that showed the people were the victims of massive corruption prevailing in the entire administration. The people do not want to know the statistics about how much corruption exists, and in which area. It is no secret that the whole basis of the government is not election but corruption. It is a waste of time for our thinkers to tell us which sector is involved in how much corruption. They should instead tell us which section of the government is not corrupt and who are the corruptors.
We have to say sadly that the government we have is rightly deserved by our kind of educated people.
