The Occupation Of 1%, It's Time To Change The Direction
By Anu Muhammad
18 October, 2011
Countercurrents.org
It is highly inspiring to see new peoples movement spreading all over the world. Everywhere 99% is rising to reclaim their own space, property and lives, to occupy power houses to make real change in the world. I would like to present here the case of Bangladesh to identify 1% here, their links with global 1%, thus to insist for growing resistance in global scale, to strengthen we, the 99% around the world, to make real change. This is story of Bangladesh , but not special, becuase same story can be told for many other peripheral countries.
Bangladesh is now at 40 (1971-2011). What should we do in the 40 th year of our independence? Answer is not simple, not same for all either. The question itself is challenging since our narration of 40 years would not be the same for everybody . This is for a country that was born on sea of blood; people in millions either were killed by genocide or gave their lives to liberate the country. We should celebrate, what? What have we achieved in the last four long decades? Where do we want to take this country, for whom?
We must remember, we must keep our memory alive; we cannot and should not forget the horrors of genocide, heinous crimes committed by Pak army and its Bangalee collaborators, backed by US imperialist masters. We should not forget peoples' dreams either. Their dream, while they were joining war, when they were resisting incredible military forces, when mothers were sending their son to die for the country. We should keep alive those aspirations of mothers, sisters, peasants, workers, students. What was that? What did peasant's son wanted from liberation of the country? What the young girls waited for, when they were humiliated, tortured, raped? What the unemployed youth, students, women wanted from the new dream land? What aspiration, dreams were behind the highest sacrifice of millions of people? We must search the answer, we must remember their moments, we must keep asking.
In celebrating 40 years of independence it is our responsibility to raise questions, to revisit the time, to take a fresh look at the present, and also to scan the post-71 journey, to examine the appearance and reality of the country we have fought for. Where do we live now? How far it is from 1971? In money terms, GDP has been increased more than 100 times in the last four decades; food production has increased more than 3 times, higher than population growth rate. The economy is much bigger and stronger than in 1971. A simple arithmetic comes first in mind. Population of Bangladesh in 1971 was 75 million, now it is 150 million. What is the population living under poverty line in Bangladesh after 40 years of its independence? No, not less than 75 million! Obviously this poverty line does not include right to education, healthcare, safe drinking water, livable (not to mention decent) housing, security and above all dignity, nothing of these. This poverty line only considers living like animal, necessary food and related things to ensure not to die of hunger. Therefore even with this animal poverty line at least 75 million are living with hunger, with threat of premature death. If we consider human poverty index formulated by UNDP, the number of population living under poverty line would be above 120 million, 80 percent of the total present population, and 70 percent more of the population of 1971. So, how far have we traveled? What should we celebrate?
‘Development' programs in different periods
Period |
Programs initiated |
Significance |
1950s, continued after independence |
Foreign ‘aid', education and training programs. Flood control and water resource projects. |
Structures on rivers, canals, and khals. Water logging, flood. Waves of aid-consultancy. |
1960s, continued after independence |
HYV, chemical fertilizer, DTW, STW |
Mono crop, increasing import orientation of agriculture, environmental degradation. Arsenic. |
1970s and after |
Poverty Alleviation Programs. NGOs. |
Getting rich from poverty money. Civil society compatible with the philosophy of global capital. |
1980s and after |
Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) by IMF and the World Bank |
De-industrialization, de-regulation, privatization, trade liberalization and expansion of service sector. |
1990s and after |
GATT Agreement. Private sector power generation policy. Production sharing contracts (PSC) on gas blocks. |
Opening up common properties to the profit making activities. Grabbing of natural resources by MNCs, Bangladesh started purchasing its own gas with 30 times more price and with foreign currency. Price rise continues for gas and electricity. |
2001 and after |
Poverty Reduction Strategic Paper (PRSP).
2010-PRSP abandoned. Plan returned, outsourced to ex IMF world Bank consultants |
Sugar coated Structural Adjustment Program
Planning for further privatization and commercialization of public resources, utilities; more opening up the economy for global capital. Squeezing public rights of job, wage and security |
We cannot say that the successive governments of this country have not addressed poverty issue. They did. All five year plans so far had put poverty alleviation as ‘no-1' goal. But nothing happened to change that ranking. In the late 1990s, governments abandoned Five Year Plans, endorsed PRSP to do it more forcefully under WB-IMF instruction. Recently it was abandoned. However, the task of formulating five year plan has now been outsourced to an ex IMF-WB consultants firm!
Consultants from home and abroad have made enough money by studying poverty and by ‘working hard' to find poverty alleviating tools and tips in the last decades. Successive governments claimed that they spent major portion of budget money to alleviate poverty! What happened with that huge money? What happened with world famous poverty alleviation programmes in Bangladesh ? May be answer lies with shining part of the society.
Yes, we can not and should not ignore the shining face of the country. There are many changes in faces, social organizations, income and consumption heights. We have now more than 23 thousand billionaires in this country, where there were two or three in 1972. We have number of very big business groups. We have more luxurious cars in Dhaka city than many capital cities in the world; we have now so many cars in the city that people cannot move. We have more than 30 million mobile subscribers now, expanding service sectors. We have biggest shopping mall in South Asia , bigger than that is under construction. We have many high rise buildings showing prosperity of real estate business and also affluence of a section of people and rising middle class. Urbanization spread with higher flow of migration from rural areas. Road and road transport both expanded fast. Many things are there to celebrate who are beneficiary.
Moreover, Bangladesh have become a global model in NGO and micro credit, earned special expertise and attention. While Bangladesh has been dominated by multinationals and imperialist powers in different forms, country has also given birth its own global brand- Grameen, a specialized Bank of micro credit and BRAC, now an international NGO. We have the biggest NGO in the world; we have the micro credit institution, pioneer of micro credit in the world, all ‘dedicated to poverty alleviation'. One may feel proud to feel global recognition, these achievements. But fact remains, we have 50 per cent of our population who even cannot afford to buy their necessary food, 80 per cent of our population could not reach human poverty line. What is wrong? Something must be terribly wrong.
Although we have official two land reforms in 1972 and 1984, practically land tenure system and its administration have been unchanged. But that did not prevent commercializing agriculture, mechanization of production system, market oriented use of land and unprecedented increase of land price. We have seen growth of new generation of land lords in the making by grabbing land and other common property.
The process of becoming affluent, making of super rich class, the 1%, with increasing deprivation of the vast majority and by destructing nature, deserve further scrutiny. That would help to understand the nature of development we have seen during last four decades. I cannot go into details here, I can only point out some sources of wealth, ‘black' and ‘white'. These include: grabbing and looting of public property (land, forest, canals, factory, institutions), commission from international bad deals, huge corruption by taking advantage of state power, smuggling, child and women trafficking, drug and arms trade, share market manipulation, money laundering, default loans from state owned banks.
Achievements and Victims: What we celebrate?
Growing |
Falling or not available |
Shopping Mall |
Manufacturing enterprises |
Car Shop |
Machine Factories |
Hybrid seed, mechanization |
Local variety, bio-diversity |
Water resource projects |
Safe water, water bodies |
High rise building |
General housing |
NGOs and projects |
Local/National initiative |
Foreign investment in service sector, oil gas, power, telecommunication. |
National authority over its own resources. National capability and institutions. |
Religious institutions |
Library and science organizations |
Private English medium educational institutions including commercial expensive coaching centers and Madrasha |
Public schools/colleges/universities
|
People under poverty line |
Sustainable employment opportunity |
Urban population |
Real income/wage |
Working women |
Women's income/wage/security |
Private expensive clinics, diagnostic centers |
General health opportunities |
Degree holder people |
Scientists, Social scientists, Physicians.... |
Crime |
Security |
Rural-urban and outward migration
|
Capacity utilization of human & material resources |
Communication technology |
General scientific and technological foundation |
Consumerism |
Proportion of locally produced goods
|
Consultancy |
Independent research on science, technology & social science |
Road communication and transport |
Railways, waterways |
Micro credit |
Supportive financing for livelihood |
|
|
Criminal and hidden (‘black') economy |
Productive and sustainable initiatives |
In the last 40 years we have gone through different forms of government, elected, military, presidential, and parliamentary. They have their differences in names, promises, rhetoric, appearances, in intensity of corruption and repression. But the major policy issues show a linear direction irrespective of party in power or forms of government. There are common goals and practices, common dependence, common submission, common priorities across governments. World Bank, IMF, ADB, US embassy et al , common friend, philosopher and guide of all the governments have played instrumental role in building links among ruling groups and keeping continuity. Their policy framework rationalizes plunder, accumulation, private commercial control over public property, dismantling of public utility in favour of private business, rise of consumerism. Public education, public health care system have been systematically weakened or dismantled, only to give business to private ones, which prospered quickly since late 80s. But that made education and healthcare an expensive commodity for the majority. All these together created a primitive form of accumulating capital and wealth.
However, there is a section of people, less than 1% but very powerful indeed, have many reasons to celebrate the nature of development and the present direction of the country. They do not belong to the vast majority of the country, women and men, workers and peasants, uprooted and marginalized, students, young and old. For the people in general, there is no alternative than to look beyond present paradigm. This is not the end of history, should not be. People have not sacrificed their highest for this Bangladesh , to surrender their lives to local-foreign profiteers, to be dominated by lumpens and imperial powers. Therefore it is urgent to come out from sense of defeat, from illusion; it is essential to raise questions, questions to resolve, unity to fight, struggles to change the direction, to set the country on the spirit of liberation. We need to celebrate, not the present, but the potential future; we have to celebrate people's power to bring it near, to ensure power to the people, to change the present, to change the direction.
It is for Bangladesh , it is for the world. We are 99%, this World is for us, we cannot let it remain occupied by thieves, thugs and killers. To come out from destruction, war, plunder, cruelty and inhuman occupation we need to reclaim and occupy our world very fast.
Anu Muhammad is Professor of Economics, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is the author of several books
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