The socio-political shock of the past two weeks has certainly opened a new chapter in Bangladesh’s history.
The apex court has issued a verdict in favour of the students’ demands, the government has rolled out its apparatuses to implement the demands, and a judicial committee has become operational.
The judicial inquiry has a tough path ahead -- it must address the truth, public perceptions, myths, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and politics. A robust inquiry will determine the nation’s political future and international confidence to sustain the country’s growth momentum.
The digital footprints and evidence of havoc are available in the public domain despite media and digital blackout, citizen journalism flourished during this time of turmoil, and most importantly the international community has monitored the situation to understand the causes of the shocking death toll that will haunt the nation for decades to come.
In this digital era, there is no place for selective omission. Indeed, barely anyone would disagree that fringe or rogue elements intruded into the student protests. It deserves to be thoroughly investigated. A friend reminded me, nonetheless -- a nation that counts its installation damages before loss of life of its young children is destined for a harsh future.
More than 140 painful deaths is not a result of mere protestor-police-political party clash -- it is far beyond that. The original nine-point (later eight-point) demands reflected multiple but complex issues.
What is worrying is the Dunning-Kruger effect among political and bureaucratic actors, and a display of declining political capital to address socio-economic demands. These deaths have left a testament to the fact that there is no alternative to the overhauling of our statecraft.
Among others, education and employment were the key sources of grievances.
There is a declining trend in overall quality of education, and the primary and secondary curriculum underwent not so successful experiments. We take comfort in numbers of construction of buildings, students enrolled, and teachers hired. But some might say it’s more about the politics of numbers and the widening of the public budget than improving education.
When we conduct admission tests, we feel the ominous heat of a declining secondary education despite expanding public expenditures. The quality of the curriculum developed by NCTB has been criticized. All these were repeatedly flagged by the media.
The costs of so-called good schooling and private tuition or coaching are beyond the reach of the masses. The rising cost of education amid inflation puts portentous pressures on household expenditures.
In addition, middle- and lower-income families put mammoth pressure on their children to secure a public sector job for a better future or to compete for a job that may often require underhanded dealing. And the cost of migration to the West or the Middle East is rising at an exponential rate. Frustration looms large.
We are now creating an unwritten class-based education in which the affluent get the best, and the rest go to suffer the iniquities of the employment market. It’s a system in which the richer kids will rule the market and the poorer will be left to struggle. This is not development; this is inequality. This was at the core of the recent student protest.
Technical education is still a second-class option in our society. Hence, the private sector keeps hiring foreigners for technical positions, perpetuating remittance outflow from Bangladesh. Who is to be blamed? Certainly not the public.
So where should we start reforms from?
It’s time to form a Higher Education Commission and reconstitute secondary boards to bring in solid reforms in tertiary, secondary, and technical education.
Simultaneously, a crucial constitutional body such as the Public Service Commission needs to undergo a massive reform too. The reforms should be geared toward the new generation of public service, education, demography, and to combat new forms of corruption in these sectors.
The recruitment of teachers is often considered as primitive, leaving space for undue interference into the process. The result is today’s growing intellectual black holes and the upcoming deep division between general students and the partisan-backed faculties.
AL’s history or national narrative-building project has proved to be lacking in the absence of critical, intellectual, and cultural societies. Indeed, all the political parties have their defined intellectuals, but I guess they have missed out the silent moral awakening of the apolitical youth. TikTok, Music fests, BPL or YouTube are not the determinants of progress.
Moreover, the fear of blanket labelling of constructive criticism as anti-government has made many intellectuals embrace self-censorship, some left the country, and some became silent.
Hence, the crisis of merit is often on display in social growth processes. Of course, we have seen an exasperating rise of non-academic PhD holders fleeing from Bangladesh recently, their handful number of supervisors were unreservedly rewarded. And equating these degree holders with genuine doctorates would be a miserable mistake.
I am not sure if the party intellectuals or their compliant clerks did much good to AL or other parties under the current real-time challenges. A stocktaking is a must for AL. It’s time for meaningful introspection for all the political parties if they seek to see stability in the future. The country simply can’t afford further instability.
After all, our history shows that rent-seeking structure will only curlicue in the absence of a vibrant intellectual society. A rent-seeking society is bound to be unstable, as history would teach. I may remind here; Pakistani military’s prime target was the university teachers and students on the nights of March 25 and 26, and they embarked on a terminal cleansing on December 14, 1971. The nation still feels the loss in every sector.
And I must remind the history of Iranian revolution too: it all started from the city of Qom.
The irony is, while the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his government continually dignified the public universities, this time the warmth to meet the demands of the faculty members largely eroded. I think the intertwining of partisan beneficiaries with the general teachers didn’t go well.
The issue is not about the pension scheme, it’s the separate pay-scale and overall welfare. Mind it, the public university teachers in Bangladesh, despite being at par with the first-class civil service pay grade, get the lowest of salaries compared to their cohorts elsewhere in the sub-continent.
The 1973 Acts of the autonomous universities have made the teachers liable only to their conscience and none other. Undoubtedly, the majority of the teachers follow their conscious duties to the nation. Their moral conscience is the foundation of the faculty-student nexus that has always created pulsating paths for the political history of this country.
But the lack of moral conscience can undo history too.
This time I was intrigued by the philosophical stand of our general teachers -- it is our duty to protect our students and not to resist their natural opinion.
The rest is history.
Shahab Enam Khan, is Professor in International Relations, Jahangirnagar University.
This opinion piece was first published in the print edition of Dhaka Tribune on July 23, 2024.