FLOOD AND GOVERNANCE        (for publication on Sunday the 8^th August 2004)  

By Kazi Anwarul Masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

Floodwater will eventually recede. Marooned people will eventually go back home or what used to be their home. But what will not change in the foreseeable future is the fragility of Bangladesh economy, our inescapable inability to effectively come to the rescue of the inundated and impoverished humanity. United Nations did not wait for approach from the Bangladesh government to call for international help for the flood victims. Why is it that Bangladesh, experienced with periodic flood every few years, is caught unprepared and seen unable to meet the looming humanitarian disaster? Despite UN appeal and the sympathy of the developed countries, displayed again and again, one has to be cognizant of the donor fatigue and also of the demands from other humanitarian disasters competing for the attention and the resources of the rich and the powerful.

Economic loss from Bangladesh floods is always colossal. Social cost in the form of social disharmony, intra-country migration from flood devastated areas to seemingly dry land devoid of economic opportunities, sharp decline in law and order situation etc are incalculable. Though the world has mercifully passed the stage of naiveté shown by Mary Antoinette who advised the revolting Parisians to eat cake if they did not have bread, the insularity of the governing class from the miseries of the suffering people, perhaps, has not vanished. Even after several decades of our independence Bangladeshi privileged class appears to be wedded to Scottish philosopher Robert Owen’s FIRST PRINCIPLES that included, among others, the notion that it is necessary for a large portion of mankind to exist in ignorance and poverty to secure for the remaining part a life of affluence and leisure. We also seem to ignore George Bernard Shaw’s observation that poverty is the greatest of evils and worst of crimes compared to which all other crimes are virtues and all other dishonor chivalrous.

Uprooted from the abode of forefathers by the cruelly hissing on-rushing water the extended hands for alms being inevitable supplication for survival remains dehumanizing. When Western political thinkers speak of personal security without which “the life of man (is) solitary, poor, nasty and brutish”, they are more concerned with the physical danger posed by violent men from within and without than with the existential inequalities in a given society caused not only by opportunities denied to citizens perceived to be “non-loyalists” but also by plunder of state resources by the very people who were appointed guardians. Thomas Hobbes seemed to assess, writes Robert Jackson (of Boston University), that a state which failed to furnish the general conditions of personal security would collapse and cease to exist giving way to a state of nature, could not foresee the emergence of a Societas of States and international instruments that would guarantee the continuance of failed governments.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by UNGA in 1948 specifically refers to the right to food adequate for the health and well being of a person.  The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) that expands upon the rights and freedom enshrined in the Universal Declaration also specifically refers to the right of adequate food and freedom from hunger. To the marooned millions and the starving thousands of socially marginalized people enumeration of such rights do not carry any meaning and would represent to them as reflective of intellectual madness should any one try to inform them of the existence of such rights. But had these Declaration and Covenant been adhered to by all nations, observes Melaku Ayalew (of Disaster Management and Food Security, Addis Ababa) the availability of food at the global level would have been one basis for food security in the proper sense of the concept which is the “access by all people at all time to enough food for an active and healthy life”(World Bank definition). Unfortunately in the real world surplus food (say in the US or Canada) can not be accessed by the food deficit countries as their economies can not generate the foreign exchange needed to purchase food from the world. In the case of Bangladesh neither a disaster nor a near-famine situation has been declared. According to government estimate up to thirty million people will need food aid for the next five months. Douglas Carson Coutts, the Resident UN Coordinator estimates that Bangladesh would need at least a year to recover from the flood inflicted effects on her economy. Grave food insecurity and acute unemployment are likely to follow the footsteps once the floodwater recedes. Ten percent funds from the on-going ADP is reported to be diverted to post-flood rehabilitation of thousands of kilometers of destroyed roads and railway tracks, thousands of meters of bridges and culverts, and thousands of schools and homesteads affected by the flood. Government functionaries claim that with adequate foreign assistance Bangladesh should be able to weather out the crisis. One hopes that such optimism is well founded. But if the preliminary estimate of loss from flood amounts to thirty thousand crore taka then it is not readily understood how the economy would be able to absorb this shock. The loss of standing crops, decimation of infra-structural facilities, reduction in export earning coupled with reduced project assistance due to alleged corruption and inefficiency are expected to reduce the projected growth rate of the economy in the current fiscal year. Additionally, the inevitable import of food grains by both the private and the public sectors will drain foreign exchange and put stress on the country’s balance of payment situation.

The nature of governance is inextricably linked with the pace of economic development in the post-flood period. As it is Bangladesh has been accused of excessive corruption by Transparency International, as the most unsafe Asian country for journalists by the International Association of Journalists, and for laxity in checking trafficking of women and children across the border by the US State Department. Besides, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the US State Department have repeatedly raised pointed fingers at Bangladesh for human rights violations relating to minorities and deaths in the custody of state agents. Image of Bangladesh as a tolerant Muslim country is now being questioned by some quarters as aberrant acts by groups of Islamic fundamentalists have gone unpunished; vigilante murderous actions of Bangla Bhai dubbed as a common criminal by the US ambassador in Bangladesh has been allowed to vanish from the radar screen of the public mind; numerous judicial inquiry reports into sensational criminal cases remain under wraps; cases relating to arms smuggling after fifteen minutes fame have remained unresolved. If good governance demands transparency, participation, responsiveness, accountability and the rule of law then Bangladeshi authorities may find it difficult to measure up to the acid test of good governance. In the post-9/11 era when global scrutiny is focused on slightest infraction of good governance lest the festering wound incubate contagion of deprivation and socio-economic exclusion leading to the birth of al-Qaedist replicants, establishment of good governance in Bangladesh is of utmost urgency. Dictation of state policy guided by selfish and parochial party interest may be satisfying temporarily, but Machiavellian machinations directed at the destruction of democratic institutions will ultimately lead to their collapse. Supreme Court Bar Association is insistent on judicial reforms, independence of the judiciary from the executive remains an unfinished business, the Parliament is generally known to be dysfunctional, politicization of the bureaucracy has reportedly caused considerable frustration among government officials including law enforcement agencies, and as already mentioned the fourth state—the press—is under threat of being muzzled. This forensic interrogation of the nature and style of governance is not to criticize for the sake of criticism only but because good governance is necessary to fight the grim triad of poverty, ignorance and disease and in the immediate term would help Bangladesh to successfully meet the devastating effects of the on-going flood.

It has already been established that the idyllic situation of surplus food flowing into deficit food areas does not happen not only because the needy does not have the power to buy the needed food but also because “the market” conventionally seen as perfectly competitive and as a supreme medium for the expression of individual choice does not exist. In Bangladesh the supply of goods, particularly of the essential commodities, from the agricultural fields/godowns to the market place entails an “extortion price” which is ultimately paid by the consumers. Longer is the route of transportation the greater is the levy extracted by the extortionists from the owners of goods and/or transporting agencies. Allegations of criminal gangs patronized by the ruling party engaged in extortion are common knowledge and the failure to prosecute them strengthens the suspicion people have of complicity of segments of law enforcement agencies and of political godfathers in the extortion business. Besides, once the goods have reached the market (after payment of extortion money) the bands of criminals controlling the markets determine the price of goods regardless of demand-supply equation. This complete distortion of market and price mechanism is made possible because the ordinary people is held hostage by an infinitesimally small number of criminals whose devilish influence has polluted the entire spectrum of politico-economic space of the country. 

Bangladesh sometimes described as a “landscape of disaster” with a “catalogue of woes” has an urgent need to put its governance back on track to relieve millions of honest and hard working people from being stigmatized as non-performers. So far as the flood is concerned it provides a golden opportunity to the authorities to prove their commitment to help the people now threatened with death, disease and deprivation.