Increased crime, poverty pull nation towards 'digital disaster'
M. Shahidul Islam
Our Prime Minister has had a dream; as do many who are involved passionately in the craft of politics, leadership and governance. The only difference in our PM's dream is that her thoughts are 'digitized' and she had dreamt of creating a digital Bangladesh since coming to power in early 2009.
Although her vision was timely-though lofty-as days went by, she had slowly but surely crept toward what now seems like a 'digital disaster'. After all, people are groaning under wrenching agonies caused by collapsed buildings, unprecedented tragedy of death from outbreak of fire and arson, chronic power outage, unbearable traffic jam, and the unreasonable rises in prices of the essentials.
Besides, PM's own party youths have turned into her Achilles' heel and enemy within. Chronic infighting among AL's student and youth cadres showed no sign of ebbing from the beginning while the instances of increased crime, poverty and economic miseries had exacerbated an already fragile political climate by igniting further anger lately, following closure of media outlets and censoring the gathering of opposition Jamat-I- Islam in the nation's capital.
Although the much-publicized meeting on May 5 between BNP chairperson and the JI leadership may not translate into anything substantive in terms of fashioning a serious anti-government movement in coming days, that hardly should sound as music to the government. A number of other 'troubles in the plate' may prove enough for the incumbent regime to stay on the defensive, for now.
Crime & poverty
Foremost among them are the increased instances of criminality. In the USA, researchers examined national crime rates between 1979 and 1997 and discovered much of the increased instances of criminality linked with falling wages and rising unemployment among men without college education.
Our circumstances may be different, but the fundamentals are more or less symmetric. We have an estimated 72.5 million labour force, roughly about 6.5 million of which work abroad. Among the rest, 45% work in agriculture, 30% in industry, and 25% in service sector.
A recently released report by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) found the rate of unemployed rising from 4.3 percent in 2006 to 5.1 percent in 2009. During those three years alone, number of unemployed people swelled from 2.1 million to 2.7 million. More alarmingly, numbers of day labourers (marginally poor) increased from 8.6 million to 10.3 million during the same period, indicating the prevalence of surplus manpower in agriculture sector.
That is hardly surprising. What surprised many is the fact that, by Jan 2010, some 68,000 Bangladeshis working in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia returned home, notwithstanding an increase in the remittance inflow, exceeding $10 billion for the first time, thanks to the imposition of tight remittance regulations by overseas governments that had compelled more official transfer of remittance and inflated the data to that level.
Decaying RMG sector
Unlike bad news, good news is few and far between. While the government busied in relishing the pleasure from increased remittance inflow, another bad news began to emerge. A sharp decline in orders for RMG products from abroad, especially since June 2009, had coupled with serious labour unrest and intrusion of market by Indian companies, resulting in the closure of nearly 200 textile and RMG factories.
Not only had another about 80,000 workers lost their job in the process., between July-December 2009, export earning fell 6.2 percent to $7.27 billion, reflecting subdued demand for readymade garments, which accounts for 80 percent of total overseas sales.
Consequently, the instances of heinous crimes were bound to hit a crescendo, as they did since September 2009, compelling Home Minister Sahara Khatun to candidly, but grudgingly, admit in the parliament that "Some 10 people were being killed on average each day" during the first eight months of 2009.
Sources say, roughly about from that time onward, aggrieved ruling party youths started receiving firearms from unknown sources, for unknown reasons. This fact is acknowledged by senior police sources, one of which said, "Although there are only about 25,000 legally permitted firearms in the country, there are over one million illegal firearms being used by misguided youths."
Two weeks ago, police and RAB recovered a huge cache of AK-47 ammunitions from Shilmuri village of Comilla's Barura upozilla, which too are linked with some misguided ruling party stalwarts of the locality, according to one source close to the investigation process.
Some observers claim, illegal arms are being used by armed cadres of other political parties too, and, by an estimated 132 criminal gangs, many of which are patronized by people in power. Recently, police admitted having recovered some 5,000 unauthorized firearms since June 2009.
All these have combined to create an environment which warrants strict law enforcement on one hand, and aggressive and radical public initiative to create employment opportunities for this vast army of unemployed, on the other.
Broken promises
Unfortunately, the reality belied such expectations so far. Despite the Finance Minister's declaration in June 2009 to introduce National Service program at upazila level by 2010, nothing much had happened to facilitate unemployment of the many listed, albeit controversially, from the ruling party's own cadre, to qualify for the perks. This and many other broken promises are piling up to sully government's record of performance further.
And, despite PM's assurance in September 2009 during an investors' gathering in New York's Grant Hyatt hotel that her government 'has set its sights on boosting FDI to $7 billion by 2015,' net FDI inflows came down to US$ 228 million in July-January period of the current fiscal, from $662 million during the same period a year earlier, registering a sharp, unprecedented, fall by 67.33 percent. This precipitous drop surpassed the previous record when FDI was seen dropping by a whopping 41 percent between Jan-June 2009.
In the same gathering, PM also said her government has earmarked $350 million for three public-private partnership (PPP) programs in an effort to draw foreign money. As yet, not a single project of the much vaunted PPP saw light of the day.
Added to the lingering uncertainty relating to having access to gas, electricity and other production inputs, the overall economic growth in the coming fiscal may slip far below 5 percent, sparking off further instability. There are fears of falling revenue earnings from corporate sources while the revenue from export and remittance earnings will certainly fail to meet their targets.
That should not stop the government from pursuing policies that might reverse this dark course through which this nation of 150 million strong is treading now. Governance being a matter of constant juggling and re-adjustment, the PM should digress from her 'failed strategy', change guards, and create a new team that can steer the nation from what seems like looming disasters in all fronts.
http://www.weeklyholiday.net/front.html#02
__._,_.___
