umesh@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Umesh Thakkar) (03/09/91)
The Christian Science Monitor
New Hope for Democracy in Bangladesh by A. M. Counts
[Excerpts]
When a nation of some 114 million people makes the
transition to democracy everyone should take heart. Having
spent a year working in Bengali villages with a program
called Grameen Bank, I take particular joy in this political
breakthrough, the result of a popular uprising against military
government of President Ershad.
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has persuasively argued that
democracy is neither the absence of dictatorship nor the mere
presence of elections. Rather, it is a process of political
empowerment of the poor majority. The political agenda of
Bangladesh in 1991 must include decentralizing government,
strenthing the independence of local political institutions, and
reserving places on village councils for women, the landless, and
possibly youth.
Throughout history, wide access to productive resources has always
been critical in establishing de facto democracy. Take the case of
Morium Begum, a former beggar woman. A widow, Morium remembers often
been shooed away when tried to beg in front of the house of the local
porishod (council) chairman. But within five years she had received
five small loans (all under $150), with which she started a successful
mat-making business. While access to credit assisted Morium and those
in her borrowing group, access to land could help thousands of the
other Bengali families. This could be done by initiating a program
of land redistribution, an essential part of successful development
strategies in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Indian state of
Kerala.
Bangladesh could be the place where a world order based on true
democracy - democracy worth making sacrifices for - begins to take
shape. Furthermore, breakthroughs like these should provoke us to
embellish our understanding and practice of democracy so that one day
it can fully justify all the sacrifices made for it - whether they made
by students in the streets of Bangladesh, law enforcement officers
in L.A., or young men and women serving in our armed forces.
PS: What is this program of land redistribution that is so well
implemented in Bangladesh and in Kerala (a state in India)?
Umesh Thakkar