A betrayal of a national dream!

A webinar titled "Economic Dynamics and Mood at Household Level in Mid 2025" has explored a wide range of issues of national life including payment of bribes for official services and optimism about the country's future. The Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) arrived at mostly disquieting findings on the basis of responses from 33,207 members of 8,067 families. Contrary to the people's expectation, the culture of underhand dealings or extortion money has not ceased to be even when an interim government, not a political one, is at the helm of affairs. When one in every 12 households has to pay bribes for government services or 75 per cent of the families surveyed respond that without speed money, no official service is obtainable, the picture that unfolds is far from rosy.

Although the percentage dropped from 8.5 per cent before August 2024 to 3.7 per cent this April, the old habit has died hard with the government employees and officials leading the list of bribe takers from half of the respondents. The much maligned police accepted bribes from 39 per cent of service seekers followed by political leaders or activists who received extortion money from 33 per cent of the respondents. Deterioration of law and order is usually responsible for proliferation of official corruption or graft and no wonder that the governance concerns have troubled the urban and higher income groups most. The bureaucracy failed to live up to the spirit of the July-August uprising simply because of the interim government's overreliance on and appeasement of it.

The views, as expressed by different segments of society, are bound to vary for reasons understandable. If the low-income groups are unconcerned about some issues the rich and higher income groups confront alone involving their businesses, there is nothing to be surprised. Similarly, the poor and marginal segments are more concerned about their own burning issues such as survival and medical expenditure or educational costs of their children. Yet there is an underlying theme of common concerns when it comes to law and order, justice and official corruption.

If 41 per cent of the low-income groups have cited official corruption, 41.6 per cent of the rich households have found it disturbing. Again, 40.1 per cent of the low-income people have pointed accusing fingers at the law and order situation but among the rich 52.1 per cent expressed their dissatisfaction with this issue. Freedom of speech, a vital element of democratic rights for the educated and elite group, hardly bothers the common masses. The message is clear here: corruption and law and order go hand in hand making the social fabric unstable and unsustainable. A country that emerged independent after nine months of bloody war should have long settled some issues allowing the rule of law to reign supreme. But political circles and bureaucracy have joined hands together to serve their coterie interests at the expense of the well-being of the common people. All the ills follow from the collaboration ---both open and clandestine --- of the two. The interim government may have formed several commissions in order to establish some check and balance in governance but unanimity among different stake-holders and power brokers is yet to be reached. When there was a need for a consensus and national reconciliation, cracks are appearing threatening the process of returning to an orderly and peaceful democratic dispensation.

Socio-economic justice looks set to elude the nation once again. This sentiment was vented by frustrated respondents until April this year. There is every chance that the percentage of optimistic people has continued to dwindle after April and by this time it has hit the rock bottom. When people fail to meet their basic needs and become a witness to deteriorating administrative and socio-economic environment all around from absence of jobs to higher inflation, pessimism assails them in all its crude and cruel forms.

However, not all are pessimistic. Poorer people can hardly expect now that the dream of an equitable society they started to harbour after the uprising will ever come true. Only 1.6 per cent of such respondents expressed their confidence in a turnaround of the country. Even only 14.4 per cent of the richest felt optimistic about the country's future.  Younger people have been more optimistic with 33.7 per cent of them expressing a positive vibe. In this context both youth and their seniors have expressed their desire to eliminate corruption, establish good governance and make do away with political violence. The country has been held a hostage to 'mobocracy' instead of democracy with politically organised and motivated groups defying law and order. This anarchic social dimension has exposed the weakness of not only the interim government but also of a section of people with their doubtful past.

After so much blood-letting, sacrifice and expression of no-confidence in misgovernance, people at the bottom rung of society deserved better but even its most optimistic members now realise that rebellion against autocracy is one thing and accepting the challenge of cleaning the augean stables is quite another proposition. A researcher and columnist has put it succinctly that 46 per cent has given up hope largely because of instigation of revenge and hatred. The class divide also shows no sign of bridging in the absence of any effective socio-economic reform programme. There is every chance of ruing yet another missed opportunity.

nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com