Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, professor of international relations at Dhaka University, has found that spreading fear without facts appears as a major problem in Bangladesh.
He suggests containing fear with evidence-based information, otherwise young people are not going to stay in the country.
“The fear is the first thing I will say you need to address. Dhaka is much safer than New York and Chicago. I can give you figures, believe it or not, you know the death figure of the United States every day in, you know, I have the figures of last year, every day 123 people were killed. Just imagine. But nobody knows that,” he said while speaking at a seminar.
Dr Manisha asks people to be vocal against govtEnglish daily Dhaka Tribune organized the seminar titled “Setting the agenda: What will the next 5 years bring?” with the support of the embassy of Norway.
Former state minister Md Shahriar Alam, Shama Obaid, organizing secretary of the opposition BNP, Prof Nuzhat Choudhury, daughter of Dr Abdul Alim Chaudhury, one of the martyred intellectuals during the 1971 Liberation War, and Dr Manisha Chakraborty, central committee member of a left-leaning political party Bangladesh Samajtantrik Dal (BaSaD), were also in the panel, moderated by Dhaka Tribune Editor Zafar Sobhan.
Prof Imtiaz highlighted seven points that he said needed to address for the future of Bangladesh.
But he mostly stressed the need to address fear since he found that “the fear pressure is the biggest one and we need to contain this fear with evidence-based information.”
He said: “So, the next five years ought to be, you know, some people should be working on the evidence-based information data. Data is the future.”
Prof Imtiaz referred to the data on violence on 26 categories he analyzed over the 12 years through a project at the Dhaka University.
Shama Obaid: BNP will fight for democracy as long as it takes“I can tell you with confidence that we are actually very peaceful people, believe it or not, I can say with confidence we are much more peaceful.”
He also drew the media's attention in this regard.
“If you reproduce all this fear, you are not going to get the young people staying in Bangladesh. They just leave,” he said, lamenting that elite children are not studying in Dhaka University, despite the fact that the top university created the elite of Bangladesh.
“And I have seen that as a faculty member of Dhaka University. You know, Dhaka University created the elite of Bangladesh. But not a single, except one or two maybe, elite children are in Dhaka University now. So pathetic,” he said, as the elites talk about democracy and human rights in Bangladesh, but their children do not stay here.
“How are you going to build it? So, fear is the first one (to address),” the professor said.
Nuzhat Choudhury: I have to look back to look forwardCorruption
For the next five years, he said money laundering needs to be brought down to zero.
“Now there has to be some collaboration on that so that the money can be brought back or that flow can be stopped.”
He also stressed the need to address corruption and show zero tolerance on the banking sectors’ irregularities.
“It's not easy. The politicians talk about it, but it's not easy. You need creative, serious creativity to do that,” he said, adding that some out of box thinking would be needed to tackle that.
Bangladesh in next 5yrs: Norwegian envoy stresses the need to look aheadFor the next five years, he said the focus should be given on diversification of products and the diversification of destinations.
“The diversification of destinations has started in the RMG sector. We have diversified quite well because the business people know that you can't keep one particular market on and on and on,” he said.
Connectivity
The fifth one, he said the country needs to focus on high speed connectivity.
“And when I say high speed connectivity is, you can actually change the geography of Bangladesh. If you have six high speed trains connecting the eight divisional headquarters, literally, you only need six high speed trains and nowhere you will need more than one hour to go nowhere.
“To Barisal, you will need only 20 minutes. You can actually go for lunch and come back or go for your five times prayer and come back into your office nowhere,” Dr Imtiaz
“The money is not a problem, you just have to have the imagination,” he said.
The sixth one is that the government needs to engage the diaspora.
Shahriar: Bangladesh warned neighbours about Rohingya challenges in 2017“It's very important. There is a very creative diaspora. I know some of them. They want to work for Bangladesh. But I think the diaspora needs to be connected and there should be an institutional structure,” the professor said.
Electoral reforms
The last point he suggested is the electoral reforms to get out of the problem.
In the Westminster system of election, the minimum precondition that you need is trust among all political parties.
Believe it or not, trust is zero (here in Bangladesh), he said.
“And there are good reasons for trust to be zero. If you don't believe in the 1971 Liberation War, if you don't believe in genocide, if you don't believe in August 15 (when in 1975 Father of the Nation Bangabandhu was killed along with the most of his family members) and on the top of that August 21 (grenade attack on Sheikh Hasina in 2004), how can you trust?”
“So, you'd think that there should be serious reforms and it can be done,” he said.
“This very idea of having more than one candidate from one party, I think it's a good idea,” he said, as this year in general elections Awami League leaders could contest as independent candidates against the party nominee as BNP did not participate in the election.
“This should be rethought. This time it was done for exceptional reasons, but I think one should go back. One can also have two prior elections.
“I think that is also something the French model or the Turkish model and also I think the other reform that needs to be done, 300 members for 170 million people is too low,” he said, adding that it should be doubled.
There should be 600 members, he said, because of the current population size of a constituency it is impossible to shake hands even.
“If you make it 600 members, then the representation also gets better because what at the end of the day is representation,” he said, as he does not see any compromise in politics.
“You can't have a compromise on some of the basic issues (1971, 1975 and 2004) where the country stands. This is impossible,” he said.
