Conspiracy theories compound state of confusion
M. Shahidul Islam
Quacks and cliques, rendered as quips, turn into a combustible mix to make things confusing first and, deadly later. When a candidate before a selection board was asked to name one of the home made jantra (machine), he felt numbed and shot back at the board member by saying, "I'll answer your question on one condition: If you don't like the answer, you'll not ask me to name a second home-made jantra." Assured, the candidate wisecracked: "The only machine (jantra) invented in Bangladesh so far is shorojantra (conspiracy).
The board member was aghast by the audacious wit of the candidate and refused him the job. But who can blame the realistically-funny candidate when all preoccupations of the nation of Bangladesh are indeed propelled by throngs of conspiracy theories of one kind or the other and no one is willing to invent anything because getting things imported from abroad ensures hefty third party commissions to those loyal to the people in power. Many officials routinely conspire, at government's behest, to make that happen.
Tentacles of conspiracy
Lately, the PM had cried out loud that the RMG sector of the country faces conspiracies from within and without, as does the power of her government. The remarks came in the midst of an over-blown report that some retired and serving civil servants had met with the BNP chairperson, Khaleda Zia, at the dead of night to hatch a conspiracy against Hasina's government.
The BNP categorically denied the report of any meeting having occurred between serving government officials and the party's chairperson. But the smoke of a lingering conspiracy is smoldering in the mass media as well as in the living rooms of the nation's elites.
This bureaucratic conspiracy-mongering follows the army's official announcement earlier that it had foiled a conspiracy to overthrow the government by some disgruntled officers, among whom a highly talented two star General (who stood first in both the board exams prior to joining the army) commanding the army's 33 division in Comilla was the senior most one to face disciplinary probing and removal from the service, along with many others.
While the tentacles of conspiracy keep spreading, and, notwithstanding the reported ongoing probing against the 'unbecoming' civil servants and the removal of nearly 10 officers of the army on that alleged count of conspiracy, the AL regime feels more threatened now than any time before due to, according to reports and rumours, many more impending conspiracies whacking around to truncate the regime's desire to hold onto power indefinitely.
Causes and consequences
Even if one must believe the government's assertion that conspiracies are sprouting all around like wild mushrooms, one must also ask why? Isn't it the legitimacy crisis of the government that is central to such conspiracy-mongering?
Of course it is. Nearly 500 officers of the civil service cadre are on OSD, a euphemism for being on pay roll without doing any job due to 'suspected loyalty.' That suspicion is not for those officers not being loyal to the nation. Rather, it's for their lack of pro-AL tilt like many others for whom the party in power is sacrosanct and the nation is a mere offshoot of the ruling party itself.
That being the state of the nation's ethics and morality, one must look at some other reasons why conspiracies and under-ground activism may be on the rise to voice dissent.
One: For months, the entire world has been witnessing that the BNP and its allies are not allowed to hold any public meeting or rally in Dhaka. That may be the underlying dynamism of conspiracy-mongering within. The PM did not, however, mean that, as our investigation reveals.
Two: The PM's target was external. The USA and the EU, combined, spend over $22 billion to buy apparels from Bangladesh and had insisted many times on improving wage, labour rights, health and working conditions of labours in the aftermath of the fateful Tajreen and Rana Plaza tragedies in which thousands of workers perished. While much of those sought-for changes did occur, much more needs to be done.
Failed governance
Three: Combined with the issues like extra-judicial killings and kidnappings by law enforcers, and the political invalidity of theJanuary 5 election in which the main opposition parties did not participate, the conspiracy climate had vaulted into an alarming height. During her recent trip to Dhaka, the US's assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian regions, Nisha Desai Biswal, was asked by reporters what the US stand was with respect to the demand of the main opposition parties for holding an inclusive and credible election sooner.
"People of Bangladesh should decide," Desai responded. This assertion was interpreted in the ruling coterie, according to reliable sources, as instigation to people to come out in the streets to remove the government. Hence the hurling of so much of abuses and invectives against Desai, as well as the US Ambassador to Dhaka, Dan W. Mozena, by a senior ruling party leader and minister, Syed Ashraf (see Sadeq Khan, last week's Holiday), and the subsequent vouching by the PM in Ashraf's favour.
This undesirable and filthy diplomatic spat occurred at a time when the governance has all but collapsed. According to the rights group Ain o Shalish Kandra, as many as 137 people had been killed in 509 clashes among political parties in the first nine months of this year (Jan.-Sept.) while another 6,587 people have sustained injuries. The in-fighting within the ruling party due to quarrels relating to sharing of booties and windfalls had resulted into 23 deaths and 1,134 injuries in 88 such incidents. Another 17 died in police custody, mostly from opposition parties.
Since coming to power in 2009, the AL-led regime had turned the law enforcers and all other executive organs of the nation into its personal fiefdoms. Over 300 opposition activists have been kidnapped and reportedly killed in cold blood while over 4,000 have been shot dead while quelling demonstrations, according to various other reports.
The real conspirator
According to another rights group, the Human Rights Watch, "India, Bangladesh's most influential international interlocutor, remained largely silent on the human rights situation. ……..Bangladesh's donors were more vocal, pressing the government to end its crackdown on critics."
Meanwhile, as anecdotal evidence reveal, the big-mouthing of development too is turning to be a hoax. It is no secret that ruling party thugs have monopolized all economic activities of the country by extracting development works through unfair and coercive means. Millions of dollars of works went to the so called quick rental power producers without adhering to due process or open bidding of tenders. The companies involved in such unfair dealings were indemnified by law from future probing or prosecutions and their profit margins are about to be beefed up further with the slated increase in the retail price of gas and electricity from January 2015.
In the legislative arena, a hollow parliament boasts of a majority head count (154 in total) who never contested the January 5 polling. More intriguing and unprecedented is the doling out of ministerial assignments to a mock opposition party, the JP, and the random passing of laws many of which are often extra-constitutional and anti-people.
It's unfortunate that the PM sees the water, not the foundation from which it flows. She sees conspiracy brewing from the political opposition within, from diplomats and governments abroad, and from many other sources including the nation's only Nobel laureate, Dr. Mohammed Yunus. She seems incapable of understanding the basics that conspiracies are hatched by competitors, not by buyers of RMG.
Unique regionalism!
To the contrary, there is a distinct correlation between the gradual collapse of Bangladesh's RMG factories (over 500 since the AL's coming to power) and the commensurable increase in India's stake in the global apparel export. The entire area of Dhaka's Baridhara DOHS has been swarming for years with Indian buying houses who are here to stitch the 'Made in Bangladesh' on their self-made products in order to obtain quota and tariff free markets enjoyed by Bangladesh in the EU and many other destinations. This is part of a bigger conspiracy to gobble up Bangladesh's market share internationally.
The other part is taking place beyond the border. Over the years, RMG factories have been booming in the land-locked Tripura and the other neighbouring Indian states due to Dhaka's granting of corridor facilities to India to ferry goods across Bangladesh terrain from the Indian mainland and the inconsiderate granting of access to Bangladeshi ports of Indian goods.
Like in the manner the PM talks of democracy without having it, she also talks profusely about regionalism without knowing how it works. The just concluded visit to Bangladesh of the Bhutanese PM illustrated a major dimension of how the Indian lopsided policies are hampering Bangladesh's economic growths in many fronts. The visit also highlighted the misplaced uniqueness of the AL's grasp of regionalism that is anti-constitutional at the best and anti-national-interest at the worst.
Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh trade
For instance, a bilateral India-Bhutan agreement allows Bhutanese trucks to hit Bangladesh borders via India while Bangladeshi vehicles are not allowed to travel on land to the Bhutanese border. This has resulted in export stagnation from Bangladesh to Bhutan, which is yet to reach $10 million mark while the Bhutanese export to Bangladesh is likely to surpass $30 million this year. Due to same reason, Bangladesh's export to Nepal did not reach as yet the $10 million threshold despite the Nepalese export to Bangladesh overshooting $60 million.
Based on such realities, how nationalistic was the AL regime's decision to allow India the transit and port facilities without wrapping the proposition into a comprehensive regional package in order to obtain access of Bangladeshi road transports to Nepal and Bhutan first? More alarmingly, Indian state of Meghalaya had blocked coal export to Bangladesh almost a year ago, depriving Bangladesh's over 2 million metric tons of imported coal users from this essential energy supply and crushing to shudder hundreds of coal-based industries.
What bothers us most is that the AL regime granted such rights to a neighbor which kills hundreds of Bangladeshis each year at the border. The death count this year in the hands of Indian border guards has been 27 so far, with another 33 missing and presumed dead as well.
Democracy vs. development
Conspiracy is sprouting, if any, because absence of democracy offers windows to the free flowing of conspiracies. Democracy is also a sine qua non for rule of law and sustainable development. India often seeks refuse under the shield of rule of law, externally and internally, thanks to the legal foil it conveniently gets by being a functional democracy.
A handy instance is the lingering debacle with the Chitmahal enclaves. In good faith, Bangladesh handed over to India the Berubari enclave in 1974 and the deal was instantly ratified by the Bangladesh parliament, with expectation that Delhi too would reciprocate with similar alacrity. For four decades since, India played the federal and provincial cards and held back on offering back about 55 Bangladeshi enclaves by invoking court decisions and other constitutional hindrances.
The courts and the rule of laws are invoke-able by India because they have a functional democracy. In Bangladesh, the judiciary is constantly in the pressure to convict opposition politicians to throw them out of the political arena in order to entrench dictatorship of one kind or the other.
Amidst such indifference, another concluding quip might be worth and apt. This satire stems from a poor and lazy man who had failed to feed his wife and children and then stole a donkey. He told his son to sale the donkey and buy all the family essentials. The hungry son fell asleep in the market yard when the donkey was stolen by another thief. He returned home weeping and hungrier. When the father asked where the donkey was and how much he sold it for, the half dead son replied, "I sold it for same price you bought it for."
Mindful of the conspiratorial engineering involved in the AL's coming to power, we, as observers, are neither saddened by the news of conspiracy-mongering, nor are we bemused. But we are confused for sure.