Dhaka is looking up

BANGLADESH: I have visited Bangladesh in the past, I have wondered whether the country would ever make it. Words like "a failed state' has haunted me and I have often expressed apprehension over the future of 150 million people with practically no natural resources, except gas.

Still I have never lost faith in the Bangladeshi people because I have followed them in their liberation struggle. How bravely did they defy the Pakistan army to be on their own? There is nothing more difficult than to initiate a new order of things.

The Bangladeshis did it. First, they created an environment of independence and then established the democratic system which even Pakistan envied.

No doubt, the ever-increasing bomb blasts scare you in Bangladesh but back home I found in Mumbai a series of blasts which were no less alarming. Fundamentalists are responsible in Bangladesh and so is my inference in the case of Mumbai. Too much fanaticism is killing the best in all the three countries _ Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Some of their nationals seem involved. Who is controlling them is yet to be known.

But their designs are obvious. They do not want any nation to stay secular or democratic.

There were only freedom fighters when I went to Dhaka within a few days of its independence. I heard the slogan 'Jao Bangla,' at the airport itself. Passengers looked like people returning to the promised-land. They were willing to make any sacrifice to stay free.

When Sheikh Mujib-ur Rahman, founder and father of Bangladesh, said: "We will have to turn the independence movement into a struggle for building our country," it sounded more of faith than a programme. Dhaka was then an over-grown town. The countryside was poor and the teaming millions had all the aspirations.

Today, Dhaka is an expanding city beaming with confidence and spreading like any world capital. So many offices and restaurants are coming up that I lost the count by the time I reached the hotel from the airport. The country has already recorded an annual growth rate of six per cent. The yearly remittances are US $6 billion and the trade with India exceeds US $3 billion. Some 33 years ago, I saw nearly every rickshaw-puller in banyan. Today they wear shirts.

Poverty still stares at your face. But then neither the eight per cent growth in India nor the seven per cent in Pakistan has licked poverty. The plus point in Bangladesh is that its people are conscious of their limitations and realise that they have a long distance to go.

In contrast, the civil society in India and Pakistan believes that it has already arrived. They are oblivious to their social obligation and lead a life which has the parameters of class, caste and the region to which they originally belong.

Unlike India and Pakistan, non-government organisations in Bangladesh have done a tremendous job. The credit given by voluntary bodies has changed the complexion of several parts in the countryside and made people self-sufficient.

They are so confident now that the perennial floods do not drive them to cities as was the case a decade ago. They manage their own affairs locally, without depending on the government which in any case is far behind the people's initiative.

The postponement by the Tatas of $3 billion investment till after the elections early next year is unfortunate. It looks as if Dhaka was not willing to offer the required use of gas lest it should become a poll issue.

But the fact is that the impression built over the years is that India's use of gas, however remunerative, is not in the interest of Bangladeshis. The ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is said to be responsible for this.

Probably, things will work out after elections. But, in the meanwhile, the Tata deal postponement may become grist to the propaganda mills in India against Bangladesh. Still when its trade with India exceeds $3 billion _ and it is increasing all the time _ a reverse in the deal should be taken in its stride both in India and Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is a viable proposition now. Sooner or later, many Tata-like projects will come. All that the people in Bangladesh have to understand is that the gas is a source of wealth when used. It will earn them money for development. Successive governments have used the gas for political battles. Dhaka has come a cropper, not New Delhi. Already more than three decades have been wasted.

Imagine the amount of foreign exchange Bangladesh would have earned to spend on development. In fact, the bias against India, visible during the BNP's rule is disconcerting. A country cannot live with its neighbour in enmity when the two have so much in common, besides the long border.

Culturally, Dhaka and Kolkata are so close to each other that even at hostile meetings the songs of Rabindra Nath Tagore and Nazar-ul-Islam are sung at both places.

However, Bangladesh's problems, regarding minorities, a recent report by South Asian Human Rights says, are no different from those of India and Pakistan. This similarity emanates from the centuries old common, historical, cultural and political background.

The point to worry about in Bangladesh is that public and political culture appears increasingly premised on playing the religious majority card and marginalising minority groups despite a long history of accommodation and tolerance of diversity.

The Jamat-i-Islami, a constituent of Prime Minister Khalida Zia's government, has played havoc in the country because it has all the official patronage to vitiate the atmosphere. It has injected fundamentalism even in remote villages where Muslims and Hindus have lived side by side for centuries. It is evident that Bangladesh is undergoing a process of belated Islamisation that has eclipsed a more inclusive and hybrid Bengali national ideology.

The Jamat is after the Ahmediyas these days. The hate politics is being engineered against them and they are a victim of the worst type of crimes. The pressure on the government is so immense and relentless that the Ahmediyas may be declared as non-Muslims as in Pakistan.

Still, a Bangladeshi is offended if you compare him with a Pakistani in any way. I find in Pakistan a sort of nostalgia for the days when East Pakistan (Bangladesh) was part of Pakistan. Many wish the two countries should become one again. But they are living in a fool's paradise.

The Bangladeshis have neither forgotten nor forgiven the Pakistanis for what their army or the Punjabi culture did to them. Time may heal wounds. In the meanwhile, Islamabad would do well to get back some 300,000 'Beharis,' the stranded Pakistanis, who have been living in Bangladesh for the last 34 years in deplorable physical and psychological conditions.