The Role of Civil Society and NGOs in the Democratic Transition in Bangladesh
Published: June 2002
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Publication Summary
Introduction
Let me begin briefly by saying how delighted I am to have this opportunity to return to my Alma Mater and participate in the speakers series sponsored by the Kellogg Center’s Latin American program.
It is always a pleasure to return to South Bend and see old friends and connect with this special place. I am grateful to Scott & Chris for making this visit possible.
Knowing that the Kellogg Center is renowned for its scholarship on Latin America, I feel particularly privileged to be a part of the series.
I confess to feeling a bit of an oddball as an invitee to your program as I am admittedly a Latin Americanist who bolted the stable.
After working for over a decade in Latin America, with both the Inter-American and Ford Foundations, I was offered the unique opportunity to move to Asia to assume the post of Country Representative for the Ford Foundation in Dhaka Bangladesh.
At the time, my decision was greeted by friends and colleagues as a bit mad.
Ford’s rationale for offering such opportunities to its Latin American staff are perhaps worth noting. Numbers of us had lived, worked and funded through several democratic transitions. We had learned, by dint of luck and circumstances, how to seek out important opportunities and in some cases create initiatives under delicate political circumstances in such areas as: Judicial Reform, Civil Military Relations, Agrarian Reform, Political Decentralization and the like.
Meanwhile, Ford’s Asia staff had over many years become entrenched in working with state structures in hardcore authoritarian regimes in Indonesia, the Philippines and Bangladesh. There was not a single program officer in the mid-80’s working for Ford in Asia on human rights or governance issues.
With the overthrow of Marcos in the Philippines, leadership at Ford decided that it might be strategic to move some of its staff experienced with working in such fluid reform environments in Latin America, into the Asia region, even if they might lack in depth knowledge of the social and political context.
For those of us offered this chance, it proved a wonderful opportunity that opened a world to us that has reshaped the way we see Latin America today. And as it happened, I moved from a Ford office deeply involved in supporting NGO and civil society initiatives in newly democratic Chile, to Bangladesh where social forces were brewing and resulted in the tumultuous overthrow of its authoritarian regime only two months on the heels of my appointment.
What I would like to try to do in my remarks today is share some impressions of the world I moved in, following that dramatic political transition in Bangladesh. I’d like to use that experience to illustrate the manner in which NGOs can, and are, playing critical roles in strengthening the capacity of civil society to participate more effectively in such transitions and in building important social institutions and accountability practices to sustain democratic reforms.
My central thesis is that NGOs are a critical resource for countries like Bangladesh, and that if nurtured properly, can substantially enhance the prospects for sustaining a fragile transition.
I’d like to make that case by providing illustrations of how NGOs in Bangladesh underwent a significant post-transition transformation from community organizers and service providers to shrewd organizational change strategists deeply involved in core transition issues.
My perspective and observations on this subject matter are those of a development professional, not those of an academic.
For the purposes of relating what I saw to the reality you know best, I will try to consciously reflect back on similar experiences in Latin America.
Notre Dame and Bangladesh Connection
Before beginning my remarks, I would like to make a parenthetical comment regarding Bangladesh and the very special relationship that country has enjoyed with this institution over the last 50 years.
One of my biggest surprises upon arriving in Bangladesh was to discover that the most prestigious secondary school in the country was Notre Dame College, operated by the Congregation of the Holy Cross here in South Bend.
It enjoys a status similar to that of St. George’s College in Santiago, Chile.
It has educated the nation’s Muslim elites, as well as many of its Christian minorities, for much of the last half of this century. But the links are further and deeper.
Dr. Kamal Hossain, the author of the Bangladesh constitution written after its Liberation War in 1971, is a constitutional lawyer and graduate of both the college in Dhaka and a former student of this university.
Richard Novak, a CSC priest who taught at Notre Dame College and was the brother of the well-known theologian Michael Novak---both Notre Dame graduates, was killed in communal riots in the 1960’s while assisting Hindu families flee the city.
Michael recently donated the major share of the prestigious Templeton prize, awarded to him for his theological writings, for the building of a library at the college in Dhaka in Richard’s memory.
And Fr. Richard Timm, a senior member of the faculty at the college, it could be fairly said that he is the founder of the human rights movement in Bangladesh and he has been honored throughout Asia for his role in promoting human rights throughout that region.
So while Bangladesh surfaces rarely as a subject of concern here on the campus, aside from during the Bengal bouts in the spring, there are some deep bonds that exist between this community and the people of Bangladesh.
They have developed as a consequence of the work of several generations of devoted CSC teachers and missionaries working in the most remote corners of this country.
They would, I know, be pleased to learn that we are focusing some time and attention to their home on the campus today.
Bangladesh Background
For most westerners, even those of us who think of ourselves as rather worldly, unless we have been there, South Asia is a place that exists on the back-side of the moon.
From scraps of information, we piece together a vague portrait and that serves us reasonably well. I was no different in this respect.
To most people, South Asia is India and little more. Meanwhile, the popular impression of Bangladesh is that of a desperately poor country that has suffered some of the worst natural disasters and famines in recorded history. The “world’s basket case” as Henry Kissinger is quoted as having described it in 1971. And oh yes, the country, George Harrison of the Beatles wrote a song about.
With this in mind, let me sketch for you a geopolitical and social portrait of Bangladesh, that might better enable you to understand what I encountered on arrival.
First, I’d like to offer some quick background:
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Bangladesh was, prior to the partitioning of India in 1947, part of greater Bengal, a region that is one of the largest and most significant in the history of modern India.
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Recall that the capital of the British East India Company, and later the British governor for all of India, was in Calcutta in what is today West Bengal.
Setting the Context for the Transition
Bangladesh achieved its independence in 1971 after a bloody civil war that resulted in the partitioning of East and West Pakistan.
The war was triggered by the victory of the majority Bengali party in the 1970 elections and a refusal to recognize the victory by the West Pakistanis.
Massive unrest followed and the West Pakistanis launched a massive military operation into then East Pakistan to crush the Bengali opposition. They killed some 2.5m people and sent another 3.0m fleeing into India as refugees. The killing continued until the Indian army intervened in support of Bangladesh liberation fighters and forced a quick surrender.
With that the Bangladeshi people found themselves free citizens in their own country for the first time in some 300 plus years.
Upon my arrival in Bangladesh in January 1991, the country had just completed a period of seventeen years of dictatorial rule under two successive military rulers.
In October of 1990, a popular insurrection exploded on the campus of the National University where students affiliated with the mass organizations of major political parties who have been the traditional weather vane of political discontent.
In the 1950’s and 60’s, the students originated several bloody insurrections in opposition to Pakistani rule.
In November of 1990, students began skirmishing with the military on a daily basis. As students were killed, the stakes got higher and the passion for change grew. The insurrection quickly spread to other universities and secondary schools. The military tried to quell the upheaval, but their actions only exacerbated the situation and mobilized other sectors.
Outlawed political parties suddenly saw an opportunity for change and brought their mass organizations out onto the streets.
Professional associations of lawyers, teachers, civil servants and finally religious leaders, organized their own rallies and marches. The NGO sector joined the many voices calling for change.
Suddenly, the military withdrew support from the head of state, declared its commitment to support a democratic transition and facilitated the installation of a transition government.
This entire process took a month and a half. The opposition brought down the government without firing a shot, but on the back of a massive civil society movement in its two largest cities. The rural populations watched from the sidelines.
I arrived in the months prior to the upheaval, watched as popular will asserted itself and shared, as I had in Chile and earlier Brazil, in the democratic euphoria that follows such momentous events.
As the dust settled, it became clear that there was much to do and much good will across all kinds of political and social boundaries to get on with the work of building a new democracy for Bangladesh.
Former enemies of the state were now heading ministries. Censured academics were now invited to join multi-party task forces to develop blueprints for building the new Bangladesh.
International donor nations---major players in the political and economic life of Bangladesh---quietly applauded and offered their support. And not surprisingly, they wasted no time in urging the new political leadership to take appropriate steps to move toward East Asian style market liberalization. This was their prescription for a rapid economic takeoff and integration into the exploding Tiger economies of SE Asia.
Reflecting on Transition
With only a limited contextual background in the region, I naturally fell back on my Latin American experience to interpret what was going on around me. While the final outcome felt and looked in many ways similar to what I had witnessed only a year or so before in Chile, there were many significant differences.
So who were the players in this change process and what were some notable differences?