ANARCHY NOT DEMOCRACY RESULTS FROM INJUSTICE                         

      By Kazi Anwarul Masud( former Secretary and ambassador)

            FOR PUBLICATION ON  20TH DECEMBER 2013

Oxford Poverty  and Human Development Initiative , a study on some developing nations of South Asia, has paid glowing tributes to Bangladesh for having done well in reducing  poverty. So have other international institutions. World Bank announced in June 2013 that Bangladesh had reduced the number of people living in poverty from 63 million in 2000 to 47 million in 2010, despite a total population that had grown to approximately 150 million. This means that Bangladesh will reach its first United Nations-established Millennium Development Goal, that of poverty reduction, two years ahead of the 2015 deadline. But all is not well as 49% of the population live below the poverty level. Poverty matters because it affects many factors of growth – education, population growth rates, health of the workforce and public policy. Poverty is most concentrated in the rural areas of Bangladesh, hence creates  disparities between the rural and urban areas. However, urban poverty remains a problem too. In particular, poverty has been linked strongly to education and employment. Research papers published by reputed research institutions  have shown that poverty acts as both a cause and effect of  lack of education, which in turn adversely affects employment opportunities. Having an unskilled workforce also greatly decreases the productivity of the workforce which decreases the appeal of Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) and thus impedes sustainable economic growth. In essence, education is an important contribution to the social and economic development of a country. Secondly, rising landlessness is also a consequence of poverty in Bangladesh. In March 2011 Paul Krugman in an op-ed in The New York Times wrote "It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That’s why, in an appearance Friday with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Obama declared that “If we want more good news on the jobs front then we’ve got to make more investments in education.” But Krugman argued that the US  needed  to fix American education. In particular, the inequalities Americans face at the starting line — bright children from poor families are less likely to finish college than much less able children of the affluent —  represent a huge waste of the nation’s human potential. "So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen". Equally Jeffrey Sachs advocating for "good society" speaks of sustainable development that aims at three interconnected goals: economic development (including the end of poverty), social inclusion (including the end of gender and ethnic discrimination, and real economic opportunity for all), and environmental sustainability, especially to address dire threats such as human-induced climate change and species extinction. In the establishment of good society and sustainable development the quality of leadership is of crucial importance. Since Periclean democracy is not possible in nation states due to sheer number of people living in a country the leadership that guides the destiny  of the people including that of the minority in a transparent manner has to be of a standard that can be  counted upon as honest and has wide outlook. It is always pertinent to remember James Madison's words written in The Federalist Papers: "It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part... In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger". Such words are of timeless importance and should be a warning to rulers who want to do otherwise. Albeit during the Cold War period then super powers supported military and civilian dictators to contain  the influence of the contender from increasing its sphere of influence.  Unfortunately the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union did give a chance to the US to play a role of a benevolent global hegemon.  Zbigniew Brzezinski gives  in his book Second Chance the first President Bush high marks for handling “the collapse of the Soviet Union with aplomb” and mounting an international response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait “with impressive diplomatic skill and military resolve,” but says he failed to “translate either triumph into an enduring historic success.” The senior  Bush,  Brzezinski says, neither used “America’s unique political influence and moral legitimacy” to help transform Russia into a genuine democracy, nor used the victory in the first gulf war strategically to press for an Israeli-Palestinian accord and help transform the Middle East. Furthermore Brzezinski warned President George W Bush while he was preparing to invade Iraq that  war “is too serious a business and too unpredictable in its dynamic consequences — especially in a highly flammable region — to be undertaken because of a personal peeve, demagogically articulated fears or vague factual assertions” ( Michiko Kakutani-NYT-March 6 2007- The Book of the Times). On Ronald  Reagan Jeffrey Sachs observes : Reagan’s statement in 1981 was extraordinary. It signaled that America’s new president was less interested in using government to solve society’s problems than he was in cutting taxes, mainly for the benefit of the wealthy. More important, his presidency began a “revolution” from the political right – against the poor, the environment, and science and technology – that lasted for three decades, its tenets upheld, more or less, by all who followed him: George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and, in some respects, by Obama in his first term( America's new progressive era-07-02-2013).These illustrations  highlight the hubris, leaders big and small, may suffer when they fail to see the after effects of their  actions that transforms a democracy into a "dictatorship". The New York Times' series on the Great Divide between the rich and the poor illustrates socio-economic stratification of the global society regardless of the developed and developing economies. Even in the most advanced economy in the world, the US, many economists believe that the great divide has come to stay because the leg up received by the children of the rich in education and skills from their parents give them a decided edge over the children of the poor.  Decades back Harold Laski had observed that the “mass of men” having captured political power providing enough solid benefit to these people has become of urgent necessity for the preservation of democratic system. But then some have wondered ( Francis Fukuyama for example) if there is proper sequencing of transition to democracy. Samuel Huntington had argued that transition to democracy should follow industrialization creating middle class and other institutions necessary to support democracy. Prominent economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Arthur Lewis, Milton Friedman, to name a few, hold the opinion that a certain degree of economic development is necessary before democratic system can be sustained. In other words procedural democracy or multiparty elections before ensuring substantive democracy or economic distribution may not be the surest way to retain democratic way of governance. One wonders, therefore, if the current situation prevailing in Bangladesh can be called procedural democracy where the peoples' verdict have already been secured  before the elections have taken place as large number of parliament members have been elected unopposed and their elections are legitimate as providing a way to substantive democracy.