What is the likelihood of a national unity government?

Civil society and politicians need to work together for change

There are growing murmurs of a government of national unity being formed. While not likely in the immediate future, students who led the uprising against Sheikh Hasina have demanded a ‘national government’. One can foresee the likelihood of the interim government being transformed into a government of national unity because elections will not simply bring democracy. Without real reform, it is dangerous to go back to the zero sum political culture of the BNP and the Awami League. Bangladesh tried that in 2008 and the result was fifteen years of entrenched authoritarian, illiberal politics. Political parties have no internal democracy.

For decades, Bangladesh’s civil society has filled the vacuum in social services which the government could not deliver. Primary schools, microcredit to expand small business and agriculture, and renewable energy in villages was promoted throughout the country by organizations like BRAC and the Grameen Bank. In doing so, Bangladesh’s civil society made a tangible impact on the lives of ordinary people by supporting income generation, education and social welfare. It was not just traditional advocacy work that civil society was pursuing. NGOs were spearheading the drive to integrate rural Bangladesh with the national and global economy.

Politicians have been suspicious and averse to civil society. Very few leaders from civil society have made it into public office barring the current interim leader Muhammad Yunus who was chosen by those who led the first mass uprising against the Awami League. In the past 15 years of Awami League rule, civil society was strangled. One of the key strangulations was to restrict external sources of funding which is a tactic used by illiberal and authoritarian regimes to muzzle civil society. This is ironic in Bangladesh’s history because NGOs expanded under martial law during the 1980s.

As former US ambassador William B. Milam notes in his book on Bangladesh, the NGOs proliferated the country during the military regime of the 1980s. This was because the military provided the space for NGOs to innovate in delivering social services in areas where the government was failing to deliver welfare to the public. Due to budget constraints and priorities in other sectors, it was not possible for Bangladesh’s government to deliver public services to the huge population because of a lack of resources, different priorities and funding shortages. The NGOs played a pivotal role in providing credit for small business expansion, expanding literacy through primary schooling, and promoting the empowerment of rural women.

Unlike many other countries, Bangladesh allowed NGOs and civil society to reach the far flung corners of its territory, be it the remotest villages or the poorest of its people. The benefits were given to a section of the most destitute of Bangladesh’s population. The NGO ecosystem has thrived into a system of diverse public services, ranging from health and education to income generation, banking, telecoms and renewable energy. Bangladesh’s success in reducing malnutrition and improving food production towards self-sufficiency and improved child nutrition is due to our NGOs.

Back in 2008, I undertook my life’s first internship at the Grameen Bank with mates from high school. Aside from clicking pictures with Dr. Yunus, we travelled to Bogra to see the activities of Grameen Danone. The French-Bangladeshi joint venture produces nutrition-rich yogurt for the destitute market. The business aims to improve nutrition among the population by selling its high quality yogurt. We also travelled to a Grameen Shakti operation on the outskirts of Dhaka to see renewable energy production. Grameen was promoting biogas as a means for both cooking and reducing emissions. We also traveled to Manikganj to see microcredit activities.

A year earlier, my school took us on a field trip to Mymensingh to see the microcredit activities of BRAC. We went to a remote Garo village in Haluaghat near no man’s land on the border with the Indian state of Meghalaya.

More recently, I have been monitoring the activities of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST). This is an indispensable organization for upholding human rights for citizens in the courts. BLAST is a nationwide organization. I observed its successful mediation of disputes in Faridpur District.

Our government and institutions can benefit if NGO leaders provided advice and leadership during this critical moment in the country’s history. Restrictions on aid and funding need to be rolled back. A potential national unity government should include the leading representatives of civil society.

What we don’t need is a farcical national government. In the past, politicians claimed to set up a national government by merely inducting opposition politicians into their cabinet. For a real unity government, we need political and civil society leaders representing all the major streams of political and intellectual opinion in Bangladesh. We also need millennial and Gen Z representation.