About 20 years back I was collecting interviews surrounding local views on politics and power in rural Sirajganj, for a doctoral study on citizenship. I had the permission of the union parishad chairman to do so and I initially felt optimistic. But after a couple of months, I returned to the UK and complained to my supervisor that this was impossible, nobody would talk, because wherever I went, the UP chairman sent an informer to follow me around, with the result that no one felt comfortable to express any sort of genuine opinion.
My supervisor, who had done similar work in the 1960s suggested that I employ his own strategy: “Go to the tea stalls, drink lots of tea, smoke cigarettes, talk about the weather, chit-chat about this and that and just be patient.” And surely enough it worked. The chairman’s informant eventually lost interest and would leave after a couple of hours. It was a research strategy of boring people to death.
And like magic it worked. All of a sudden everyone had an opinion. Around the tea-stalls, fierce debates would ensue and everybody wanted to chip in. To my surprise, the varying levels of literacy and fluency in political discourse was no object to discussion, since every morning the newspapers were read out loud at the tea stalls with commentary and explanation by students, teachers, and elders who could read between the lines and pick out the relevant stuff.
I felt like I had struck gold: I was awarded with local definitions of poverty, wealth, justice, marriage, divorce, children, gender roles, market competition and the value of scientific knowledge. No lecture I had ever attended could compare to the lessons I learned at the tea stalls.
There was a lot of satire surrounding national politicians and a lot of giggles at my own ignorance of their complete irrelevance to daily life. A fair amount of critique also was levied at development partners that constantly interrupted their work to assign them to a multitude of committees in the name of democracy.
The chairman became curious because this went on for months and he would eventually invite me over for dinners. He opened up. He admitted some of his shortcomings, the reality of budgetary constraints and mentioned some things he was proud of having achieved.
He suggested that if I was really serious about my work, I should inquire and report about crime among the 50 or so households I re-visited. And surely enough, among the poorer households everyone had a story of a crime that changed their family fortune. “We weren’t always poor I was told” and “my father had a fishing business but was robbed of all his catch, and so he became heavily indebted” and “after he died, we were left with nothing, just more debt.”
I spoke to a lot of women and asked “how come this and this family could manage (the relatively wealthy neighbours) and was told that they were lucky since they had “strong bothers.”
It occurred to me that having strong brothers was somehow synonymous with wealth and the ability to hold on to it. The absence of strong brothers, and indeed the distinction poverty and extreme poverty was expressed as a) I have nothing versus b) I have nobody -- signifying the extreme.
This made sense to me and was liberating since I had already read a multitude of articles on the subject beginning with something like “Bangladesh is a country of paradoxes” and “the established view is such and such” and almost always concluding that the reality is “more complex.”
This formulaic approach of academic writing was putting me to sleep. It reminded me of Gregory Bateson’s interpretation of Moliere’s play (The Imaginary valid, 1673) -- depicting medical students who were asked why opium put patients to sleep and responding: “Because there is, in it, a dormitive principle” (Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1976). Not much in terms of explanation in other words. Rather, a sort of agreement not to look into it any further.
Back then, in 2005, elections were on the horizon and the chairman and I discussed it. When asked who he and his people would vote for he promptly responded “the winning team!” and gave me a look that meant something like “have you learnt nothing young man?”
I felt embarrassed and tried to avoid his gaze, but he was a gentle type and didn’t care to embarrass me further by rubbing it in. The point was clear enough. Who in their right mind would vote for the losing team? There was no difference in terms of bottom line for his constituency. AL, BNP -- same difference!
In 2007, BNPs aspirations for another term in office was interrupted by a “military interregnum.” At the time I published an article in the Daily Star beginning with: “The current non-democratic interregnum has presented the general public with a glimmer of hope. So grand was the scale of public theft, neglect of law and abuse of power that many now support the current administration for its efforts to tackle corruption. Foreign observers may find it odd that citizens have given up their constitutional rights with so little fuss. This is because they take such rights for granted, whereas in Bangladesh, they never really existed.”
At risk of stating the obvious; in 2024, the full-circle-role-reversal is striking. But apparently the game is on and the parties are pressing for elections. According to Wikipedia we have had 29 coup attempts so far from 1975 to 2009. Most of them failed and others didn’t manage to bring about any change to rules of the game. Humayun Azad humorously noted: “President Ershad added many new dimensions to military dictatorship; he made military dictatorship multi-dimensional.” But speaking against the bastardization of religion into the realm of politics, he was assaulted in 2004 that led to his subsequent death.
Still, it is as if the lesson hasn’t really been learned. Will another face-lift be enough? This seems unlikely. The students of the current revolt appear to have developed some sort of allergy to lip-service and have thoroughly rejected the hypocrisy of our generation. They are aware that elections do not make democracy, and that the substance of democracy is that which occurs in-between elections.
Aspiring politicians would do well to contribute to the ongoing discussion of legal reform beginning with a) what is the meaning of the term “republic” and b) what did John Adams mean when he said that “we should build a nation of laws, not men?”
But the parties are perhaps banking on the idea that rural Bangladesh will still put them back in power regardless of the current urban outrage and dismissal of politics as we know it. “A nation of laws” implies giving a lot more weight to the judiciary, magistrate courts, and decentralizing the administration of rule of law. It implies that the Supreme Court should have the “power of review” to overturn parliamentary legislation. Also, that law be simplified, accessible and taught in schools. A jury of peers system would have to be considered, to counteract corrupt judges.
This is because rural Bangladesh, unlike the urban, has no obvious avenue of participation, representation or collective bargaining in-between elections. The idea of “jury duty” is a pre-industrial, indeed ancient concept, and requires no significant expansion of the national budget. But it does require a mental leap from master-servant (feudal) relationships to an idea that we are somehow equal before the law. Can we put our money where our mouths are or shall we continue the charade?
Jens Stanislawski is an independent researcher.