Have Bangladeshis really had enough?

Barrister Shah Ali Farhad:

On December 14, 2022 an “analysis” on Bangladesh’s recent economic and political developments titled ‘Bangladeshis have had enough…’ was published in Foreign Policy. Apart from the glaring absence of any comments from the government despite a number of allegations raised against it, the analysis is also incomplete and portrays a misleading picture, both economically and politically, of a country that has so far been a model for socio-economic progress in the developing world.

The problem starts at the outset with the title, ‘Bangladeshis have had enough’. Naturally, the question arises on what basis such a broad, sweeping claim is made. As far as I am aware, no recent opinion poll suggests so. And as for elections, those are at least twelve months away and we will have to wait and see its outcome. Earlier opinion polls have consistently seen Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina commanding majority approval ratings.

The analysis starts with a misleading account of what transpired in Dhaka on December 10. What was essentially a purely political event organized by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was presented as a spontaneous outburst against the government by the general population. In the run up to national elections, such events are nothing special, let alone spectacular, in Bangladesh’s political reality.

Not much should be read about the size of the crowd too. Bangladesh is a country of 170 million people crammed into an area slightly smaller than the US state of Ohio. Tens of thousands in attendance are nothing uncommon, let alone unique, in Bangladesh’s context. Only a week before BNP’s rally in Dhaka, at least a million people were in attendance during the Prime Minister’s rally at the port city of Chattogram.

Of the economic data presented, inflation actually came down to 8.85% in November from 8.91% in October. Additionally, there was no mention of the fact that Bangladesh’s principal foreign currency earning sources, remittances and exports, made a turnaround in November. Bangladesh exported goods worth more than US$5 billion in November, a monthly record, and earned US$ 1.59 billion from remittances, up by 4.5% from October. The first quarter of 2022-23 also saw FDI inflow increase to $1.16 billion, a 28% year-on-year rise.

Even though Bangladesh has reached a preliminary agreement for financial assistance from the IMF, it is unfair to compare its situation with that of Sri Lanka and/or Pakistan. As per IMF itself, Bangladesh’s current foreign exchange reserves stand at US$ 27.5 billion, enough to cover import costs for four to five months. If the US$ 7 billion export development fund (EDF) is included, then then reserves would stand at US$ 33.5 billion, which the central bank counts as a source of reserves. In comparison, Sri Lanka’s reserves stood at just over US$ 1.8 billion at the end of November, while Pakistan’s stood at US$ 6.72 billion.

Bangladesh sought assistance from the IMF as a precautionary measure, as opposed to a bailout situation akin to those of its neighbors. Additionally, US$ 1.3 billion of the agreed US$ 4.5 billion would come from the recently established ‘Resilience and Sustainability Fund (RSF)’ of the IMF in order to combat, among others, climate change and pandemic recovery, while the rest falls under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and Extended Credit Facility (ECF). The purpose of these funds is crucial and needs to be distinguished from the cases of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where the assistance came not from the RSF, but exclusively the EFF, meant for countries facing serious economic difficulties.

To say that “Even if the COVID crisis was not there, even if the Ukraine crisis was not there, Bangladesh was still sleepwalking into this crisis”, shows a lack of understanding of the challenges that the country had to face in order to reach its economic progress.

Following the peak of the pandemic, recovery was well underway. Bangladesh managed to secure 3.45% economic growth in 2019-20 and 6.94% in 2020-21, while many countries experienced negative growth. In 2021-22, the country picked up its growth momentum again by securing 7.25% growth. For a country with a large population, scarce natural resources, and limited space, one cannot afford to ‘sleep-walk’ while managing the economy.

Infrastructure development has also been one of the current government’s visible successes. While the author refers to a controversy regarding alleged corruption in the Padma Bridge project, she fails to mention that the matter was conclusively determined by a Canadian court, which found no evidence of corruption in the project. Same lack of context is evident when the costs of road constructions being higher in Bangladesh is mentioned. Factors such as the higher costs of acquiring land and the rehabilitation of affected populations were not taken into account, which naturally makes large scale construction more expensive in Bangladesh than India, its much larger neighbor.

The whole debate of ‘development versus democracy’ is a manufactured one. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina or the government she heads has never made democracy a trade-off for development. What the author calls an “obsession with development projects”, has been one of the key factors to uplift millions from abject poverty within a decade. They have served as a principal enabling factor which helped Bangladesh raise its per capita income from a little US$ 700 in 2009 to US$ 2,824 in 2022.

Notwithstanding Meenakshi Ganguly’s statement, there is no evidence to suggest that people, especially the opposition parties, are facing restrictions to conduct peaceful political activities. The evidence for this claim is the series of divisional rallies that BNP organized in ten cities within a span of a couple of months without any major incident, with the Dhaka one being the latest.

Unfortunately, western observers rarely acknowledge the many peaceful protests that regularly occurred in Bangladesh, but rather focus on the few instances in which law enforcement act to preserve public safety. Article 37 of Bangladesh’s constitution guarantees the right to protest. The only permissible exceptions occur when public safety is at risk.

Such observers also fail to either notice or mention the many instances of violence perpetrated on civilians in the name of political activities. For instance, the infamous firebombing campaigns conducted by BNP and its Islamist ally Jamaat-E-Islami in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

While the government has a duty to uphold freedoms of assembly and speech, opposition parties too have a duty to conduct their activities in a peaceful manner respecting the human rights of the civilians.

Writer: Bangladeshi lawyer, researcher, and political activist, He is currently working as senior political associate at the Dhaka-based research organisation, the Centre for Research and Information (CRI). Previously, he served as a special aide to the Bangladesh Prime Minister.