Development Can Never Be Sustainable Without Democracy – OpEd
Absence of democracy not only plagues bureaucracy and institutions with corruption but also destroys the whole state machinery and political system. Consequently, instruments of the state, such as independent judiciary, independent election commission, human rights commission, anti-corruption commission, independent police, independent media etc. which are essential for checks and balances in the state, become crippled.
Corruption is the biggest problem in Bangladesh. It is eroding the economy in many ways. For example, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats allocate state funds for projects which give them an opportunity of misappropriation, corruption causes capital flight, it makes economic activities slow, it prevents the trickle-down process, it leads money market and capital market to sickness. It is the absence of democracy which appears in the form of corruption— nothing or nobody can avert this manifestation.
Only in a purely democratic environment, it is possible to tackle corruption because politicians have to be accountable for everything in such an environment. If that is the case, ministers or MPs won’t collude with bureaucrats when the latter plans to ask citizens for bribes for a service or deprives anybody of any opportunity. It is the collusion between politicians and bureaucrats, which generates corruption, but if MPs don’t need people’s mandates (when elections are unfair), she/he won’t even have a sense of accountability.
Why Amartya Sen doesn’t support the communist system is the fact that ‘development for all’ cannot be ensured without democracy— to be precise— free & fair election, free media, independent instruments of the state, freedom of press, freedom of expression. In his book “Poverty and Famines”, Amartya Sen emphasised the importance of democracy to avert corruption. Sen describes democracy as a form of universal values and says that democracy can even avert famines. Democracy is essentially a system where the existence of multiple parties, election and criticism of government by the opposition are its integral parts. Sen in his book “Development as Freedom” shares the same view and adds that free media and presence of the opposition are a must for development.
There is a huge literature on the relationship of corruption with institutional and political systems, and on the relationship of democracy with growth in the economic and political realms. That without democracy, good governance and a corruption-free society cannot be built is the central message of these studies.
There was a time when many countries including the then Soviet Union had socialist/communist systems in place. Now it exists only in Cuba and North Korea. All states belonging to the erstwhile Soviet Union have been following capitalist economic models since their separation. In China, only one feature of the communist system exists, which is one-party rule. Dictatorship of the proletariat is an amazing philosophy no doubt, but the problem started when party men refused to remain proletariat any longer, and wanted to own wealth and means of production. When democratic practices are absent within the party, when party leaders behave like bureaucrats and when there is no scope to bring a change in party leadership, despite numerous complaints against them, corruption must come in. And it did.
Jean-Paul Sartre remained a true believer of communism till death. At the same time, he was a stern critic of Stalin’s regime. To give communism a humane face, Sartre felt the necessity of democracy. The reason why he liked the Cuban Communist Party so much is that there were democratic practices within the party. Ahead of the party congress, extensive discussion meetings, exchanges of views and debates were held. Anyone, from inside or outside the party was able to raise complaints against party leaders. To represent in the National Assembly, one had to have 50 percent of the votes from his or her constituency. The central message of what has been said about Cuba is that, without democracy, without opposition and without checks and balances, corruption is bound to come in, which finally deter development from being sustainable.
Bertrand Russell belonged to the British Labour Party. As a party representative he visited the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1920. He didn’t like the existing socialist model in the Soviet Union at that time. He realized, a system without freedom of speech, opposition parties and freedom to gather gives rise to autocracy which he witnessed himself. It is surprising that after a one-month visit, what he wrote of the situation prevailing in the Soviet Union in his diary now prevails in Bangladesh, a country of parliamentary democracy. He wrote, “All kinds of tricks are being adopted on the way to an absolute dictatorship under which the opposition parties—even leftist parties—are not free to speak and gather.”
Joe Devine, a professor at Bath University, refuses to accept the popular narrative of growth and development as indicative of real development. When Bangladesh has already earned her reputation for development, David Luis, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics, mentions the lack of good governance and widespread corruption in his book “Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society”. He also says, ‘the parliamentary system here has not been effective at all and that although the democratic process was introduced after 15 years of army rule, there has been little change in the corruption perception index of the country.’ It means, what is being called a democratic system is actually a false democracy, because accountability, which is at the centre of any democracy, is missing here. Often, after being elected as members of parliament, leaders are seen to concentrate on gathering wealth rather than being accountable to the people because they know that it is money that can help them manage party tickets for the next election and then purchase votes. In the absence of real elections, MPs believe they will be elected again, throwing the nation into a vicious cycle.
