4 Democracy and the politics of violence in Bangladesh Since the re-introduction of democracy in 1990, Bangladesh has held three parliamentary
Box 8.4 Democracy and the politics of violence in Bangladesh Since the re-introduction of democracy in 1990, Bangladesh has held three parliamentary
elections organized under caretaker governments, and recording very high voter participation. All three elections resulted in the transition of power from one party to another, and this was managed peacefully. Successive governments have introduced important administrative changes aimed at promoting a more inclusive political culture. Currently, there are four levels of elected government (village, Union, Thana and District), which are entrusted with a wide range of development and welfare responsibilities. Finally, Bangladesh has a vibrant civil society sector and one of the largest NGO communities in the world today, all of which have assumed important roles in public life.
Since 1990, the main political parties have actively sought to increase their support base by extending their presence to the grassroots of rural and urban communities. One of the ways they have managed to accomplish this has been to establish party-affiliated, interest-based organizations such as trade unions, farmers’ cooperatives, youth and women’s groups among communities, and to use these to recruit new members. However, despite not having formal roles in local government, party leaders have increasingly exerted considerable influence on decisions related to key activities, including the distribution of relief, the delivery of key public services and the implementation of development projects. In seeking access to these public benefits or goods, people reported that the support of party activists was more important than that of those elected to carry out local government responsibilities.
Politics in Bengali – rajniti – literally translates as the rule or custom of the king. Today, it is the rule or custom of the network linked to the party in power that imposes itself locally. For citizens, therefore, having the correct political affiliation or connection
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significantly strengthens entitlement claims or increases the chance of well-being needs being met. Equally, for those with the wrong political connections, the possibility of exclusion is high.
In Bengali, the term mastaan refers to a person involved in organized crime and with the criminal underworld. Mastaans are feared because of their use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of their own interests. While researching the dynamics of people’s access to government services, the term ‘mastaan’ frequently came up in interviews. There is considerable overlap and interaction between mastaans and local party leaders. Thus, political activists deployed mastaans in order to capture or retain control over populations in their constituencies. Mastaans, on the other hand, used the relationship to political parties to promote their own political careers, or protect and extend their different ‘enterprises’. This relationship effectively allowed mastaans to manipulate important aspects of the state and governance. The support of mastaans is also sought to deal with everyday events, such as accessing health and education services, dealing with law enforcement and judicial systems, and protecting business interests.
In seeking to improve their lives, poor people have to negotiate their way through this political terrain on a daily basis. This is the terrain of ‘real’ governance, a terrain that is as harsh as it is uncertain. While some poor people can benefit from the system, they do so on terms that they know ultimately will reinforce their dependence on those helping them. This is because the political terrain is organized to serve private or partisan interests, and to distribute favours instead of responding to rights or entitlements. Clientelism has long been recognized as a problem for development in Bangladesh and in many other developing countries. The irony of this case is that, while superficially governance has improved, clientelism has become more of a problem. Poor people in Bangladesh have not moved towards a status of greater citizenship, but instead have moved to a position of being even more tightly-controlled clients. For the majority (including those fortunate enough to benefit), therefore, the world of politics is a contaminated, exclusionary and potentially violent reality.
Edited extract from Joseph Devine, ‘Well-being and the rotten foundations of a development success’, WeD Briefing Paper 3, February 2008, available at: http://www.welldev.org.uk
A basic assumption of democratic theory is that respecting the principle of ‘one person, one vote’, and the respect of all civil and political rights, is a sufficient condition for meeting the requirement of political equality and for democracy itself to function effectively. However, this does not guarantee that all citizens will be granted equal participation in the decision-making process. Political equality is not only determined by political conditions, but also economic and social ones, as has already been alluded to above. One of the hallmarks of the human development perspective on democracy is to go beyond the political boundaries and emphasize the importance of social and economic conditions in determining how democratic political institutions function. These social conditions range ‘from educational levels and political traditions to the nature of social inequalities and popular organizations’ (Drèze and Sen, 2002, p350).
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They illustrate this with the right to vote. When people are not well-informed about different political parties and their programmes or when they do not have the educational level to understand their programmes or the policy issues that concern them, their vote may not reflect their best interests. They may vote for the politician that talked nicely to them during a political visit to the area where they live while not fully understanding the political programme of the party that the politician represents. Or they may vote for the politician that gave favours to a member of their family, or vote out of fear of sanction if they do not support the patron that protects their family. Drèze and Sen (2002, p351) also give the example of the Indian legal system to illustrate this lack of correspondence between the ideal of democracy and its actual practice. The legal system may theoretically be based on democratic principles, such as equality of all before the law but, in practice, those who are from lower castes tend to have their cases delayed, and cases that relate to domestic violence – rape is condemned by law – do not often lead to legal punishment.
The failure of democratic practice to meet its ideals thus has economic and social roots. Another important mechanism that leads to severe dysfunction in democratic institutions is that of the unequal exercise of power based on economic and social inequalities. Even if elections are free and fair, those who command more money have a large capacity to finance the political campaigns that will best serve their interests – such as the National Rifle Association, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee or the oil lobby in the US. Those who are better off economically will also tend to be better off in educational terms, and hence have a better grasp of political issues than less educated people, and will be better able to influence policies according to their own interests – for example, public resources destined to education going to the furthering of technology and science for a few at the expense of basic elementary schooling for the general population. In the case of India, Drèze and Sen (2002, p29) observe that the issues discussed in parliament tend to represent the concerns of corporate chambers and the defence establishment, in contrast to basic social issues such as primary education, health care and rural employment, which receive little attention in parliamentary debate. Those who command more economic resources also have a better control of the media and of what kind of ‘news’ goes into major national newspapers and television channels.
We therefore seem to reach a perverse situation: political equality is undermined by social and economic inequality, resulting in political decisions favouring those already enjoying an economically- and socially-privileged position, thereby deepening social and economic inequality, and ultimately political inequality itself. If economic, social and political inequalities reinforce one other, what hope is there of breaking this vicious circle through democratic practice? Here, again, the human development approach re-affirms the intrinsic value of democracy. After all, the unequal socio-economic outcomes of democracy do not justify authoritarianism. Rather, the solution lies in the strengthening of democratic practice. Drèze and Sen (2002) suggest two
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concrete ways for ‘overcoming this association between social privilege and political power’ (p10) and ‘enhancing the political power of the underprivileged’ (p29). First, the capability of the underprivileged for self- assertion must be enhanced by offering the marginalized incentives to organize in political organizations through which they can gain sufficient power to counteract the power of the privileged. The best example of this is probably the formation of the political party, Partido dos Trabalhadores (or Worker’s Party) in Brazil, which was created in the early 1980s and elected to power in 2002. Since the PT obtained the majority in parliament and took the reins of the country, Brazil has made considerable progress in reducing its levels of poverty and inequality. The second option that Drèze and Sen propose to break the vicious circle of economic, social and political inequality is to create
a sense of solidarity between the most privileged and the underprivileged (e.g. intellectuals and higher social classes speaking on behalf of the underprivileged and defending their interests). Drèze himself is one of the best examples of this,
a sharp and bright intellectual with in-depth experience of life at the grassroots and who is entirely committed to fighting injustices of all kinds in India – he has, for example, been a key player in the Employment Guarantee Act, which seeks to give the legal right to work for people in rural areas, and in the campaign ‘The Right to Food’.