A person has phronesis when he has the knowledge and wisdom to get things accomplished which are good for the society. It is different from academic type of knowledge that the Greeks might call epitome.
I know of no person whose life better exemplifies the quality of Phronesis than Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir, a well-known Bangladesh politician and economist. His life is controversial and he has a long list of enemies. This article sets out things that he has accomplished and some of the controversies he has faced.
If anything has directed his life, it is his loyalty to the state of Bangladesh and to the Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, for whom he was worked so long and faithfully.
Alamgir began his career attaining his PhD at Boston University under the supervision of Gus Papanek. He was a brilliant economist and taught at Dhaka University, headed BIDS, and wrote extensively. I take up this story in 1996.
Collecting loans
Alamgir became Managing Director of Shilpa Bank in 1985. The NPL list was long and MKA used his legal powers when defaulters were not willing to pay. He issued arrest warrants. The authorities found something else for him to do. The wealthy defaulters did not find prison a good place to be.
Leading the charge against the BNP fake election
After the first election in 1996, carried out by the BNP and characterized as fraudulent by the foreign observers, MKA was the key leader of the civil service secretaries' protest against the election fraud, demanding a caretaker government and new elections. He organized the Janatar Mancha that kept the protests going 24 hours per day. This uprising by the civil service was the action that convinced the BNP Parliament to pass the law establishing the caretaker government.
The AL was saved from certain destruction. If another BNP government had continued in power, the AL would have been suppressed. While many brave people were involved, there is no doubt that it was the leadership by MKA of the civil service protest in favour of a caretaker government amendment that resulted in the cancellation of the first 1996 election. The BNP, later in 2002, brought charges against him for his role in leading this insurrection.
After the AL won the second election in 1996, MKA was appointed as a secretary in the PMO. The AL had not been in power since 1975, so Alamgir was given the task of organizing the new government appointment of secretaries etc. Alamgir then took up a series of assignments the PM gave him:
1. Complete the Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) to bring international oil companies into the country to explore for and produce discovered gas. The negotiations of these contracts had been going on for several years but it had been impossible to bring these negotiations to completion. MKA took up this task, and his drive and insistence that the government organizations involved work out the issues led to final agreement.
The signing of the PSCs was probably the single most important action of the 1990s that has led to successful economic development of Bangladesh. The gas provided by the PSCs, particularly Chevron, fueled this development. The American Ambassador David Merrill stated to me: “Without Alamgir there would have been no PSCs.” Without this great increment in gas supply, the power sector could not have grown, nor the fertilizer plants produce low cost urea, nor could Dhaka have rid itself of the polluting two stroke “baby taxis.”
2. Farakka Barrage: With the construction of the Farakka Barrage, the Indian government began to divert part of the Ganges to the Hooghly, reducing substantially the flow of the Ganges into Bangladesh. Negotiations went on from 1975 without results. PM Sheikh Hasina instructed MKA to negotiate a treaty on water sharing. He did so. It is the only progress made on water sharing with India until a few months ago.
3. The Hill Tracts treaty: The rights and position of the minorities that lived in the hills in eastern Bangladesh were a matter of great controversy. Disputes over acquisition of land by Bengalis displacing tribal people led to an insurgency and years of fighting. Alamgir, following guidance from the prime minister, negotiated successfully a treaty that brought an end to the insurgency and provided a legal framework establishing the rights of the hill tract minorities.
The treaty's implementation over the years has enabled the tribes living in the Hill Tracts to flourish. The ending of the insurgency after 17 years of fighting was a remarkable achievement. There are few examples in history of a negotiated end to an insurgency that lasted so long.
4. Boundary treaty with India: Again, a complex issue that had been unsettled since partition and defied resolution. PM Hasina instructed MKA to seek a way out of this puzzle. Pieces of each country were inside pieces of the other country and, in some cases, there were pieces inside the piece that was inside the piece. Somehow MKA, working with his Indian counterparts, found a way to write down a solution that both parliaments would accept.
Fifth Five Year Plan and population census
Alamgir now shifted out of the civil service and into politics, becoming the State Minister for Planning. He masterminded the preparation of the Fifth Five Year Development Plan, always a significant accomplishment. He also oversaw the population census of 2001, another major accomplishment. These are major achievements.
Years of courage and victory (2002-2008)
Alamgir ran for parliament for the first time in 2001 and lost. Given the hatred for him in the BNP for his role in organizing the Janatar Mancha, he expected much difficulty when the BNP returned to power. He was right. When he returned to Bangladesh after a few months abroad, he was thrown in jail without charges and systematically tortured; he told me that the torturers offered to release him if he would sign a document incriminating Sheikh Hasina. He refused and the beatings and sodomizing continued throughout his confinement.
An international uproar followed and after several months, the courts ruled that MKA had to be released, and so he was. The American Ambassador Harry K Thomas played a key role in obtaining his release. MKA was present at the August 21, 2004 grenade attack and helped rescue one senior AL person.
After the military takeover on January 11, 2007, Alamgir was arrested and charged with corruption. (He was not alone; many persons were arrested but only Alamgir and his two sons were convicted.) The caretaker government was determined to prosecute and convict Alamgir. One army major had been appointed to ensure that MKA was convicted.
I was in the court room for two days and observed this major directing the proceedings with signals to the judge. Akbar Ali Khan sat with me and he noticed the same controlling behaviour.
I will not comment further on the trial. The case was thrown out on appeal. The military, the most honourable of organizations, knows what their officers did and will answer for it. The major, disgraced, fled to Canada. Alamgir was imprisoned for almost two years; he used the time to write a book about what being imprisoned was like. How typical of MKA -- if you have a condition that you cannot control, make the best of it and achieve something.
Despite torture and abuse by the BNP and the army and attacks on his family, MKA remained loyal to the honorable prime minister and the AL. The army's reputation never recovered.
Without question, he emerged from the 1/11 years with a reputation for courage and achievement.
Free from false imprisonment, including the major's efforts to convict MKA's two children -- both adults who were American citizens and long-term residents of the United States -- he could pick up his life again. MKA's anger was directed at those who dragged his children into this conflict. He had no illusions about the way the military was behaving. He had no illusions about the judicial system. In 2008, MKA was finally elected to parliament.
Appointed Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, he discovered a tremendous back-log of cases going back, in some instances, 20 years. Setting about getting these disputes cleared up, he led the committee to dispose of all of this in a practical way, bringing the position more or less current. This led to his appointment to an IMF/World Bank Group tasked with working on the relationship between executive and legislature on financial matters.
He was appointed Home Affairs Minister and served in 2012-2013. The main event of his tenure was the management of the Hefazat-e-Islam uprising. The Hefazat-e-Islam issued a 13-point demand to the government, threatening to close down Dhaka. The demonstration culminated in the protests of May 5 and 6, 2013. This mob action was in response to the Shahbag movement earlier in the year.
Hefazat's political action efforts were short lived and ended in Dhaka by May 7. MKA successfully managed the mass demonstration which had the potential of becoming a religious uprising. There were certainly some deaths. The range of deaths I estimate as 20-60, a low number given the number of Hefazat members and their supporters that were present in Dhaka estimated at 200,000-400,000.
Alamgir now established a University (European University of Bangladesh) and Farmers Bank. The university continues to progress, but Farmers Bank turned into disaster for him. Some of his fellow directors manipulated large loans that were essentially stolen. Some say MKA was involved; he denies this. Some of the directors are in jail.
A cabal, formed by persons jealous of his achievements and courage, and afraid of his rumored appointment as Minister of Finance, attacked MKA and Farmers Bank. The Ministry of Finance launched an attack against the bank by withdrawing Government organization deposits. In addition, Bangladesh Bank improperly released to the public the accounts of Farmers Bank.
Prior to these events, Farmers Bank's accounts are characterized by MKA as not much different from other 4th generation banks. Now called Padma Bank with new owners and management, the renamed bank finances have deteriorated dramatically -- to the point that it has become a seriously troubled bank. The Ministry of Finance successfully destroyed Farmers Bank. Why they would do this, I cannot imagine.
MKA has led a life of courage and risk taking. One son, a talented young political scientist on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts drown in Thailand; Alamgir spent six months in jail with regular beatings and sodomizing; spent another 18 months jailed by a military organization that had lost its honor. He lost his bank through errors in judgment along with unfair, unexplained actions by the Ministry of Finance.
Yet this is the man who saved the Awami League in 1996 from a terrible fate; who opened the door to the energy needed for the economic development of Bangladesh; who settled, under the PM's direction, major issues of the nation; whose actions defanged an Islamic organization prepared to make major trouble.
Aristotle identified the greatest form of wisdom as Phronesis. No living man in Bangladesh, apart from MKA, has demonstrated this wisdom through his life.
Aristotle also taught us the concept of tragedy, of a man brought down by the very nature of greatness. God gives to some men and women Phronesis, but also the tragic fate that accompanies achievement.
Forrest Cookson is an economist who has served as the first president of AmCham and has been a consultant for the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
