During the interim government’s tenure, there was a sustained campaign of criticism against Prothom Alo and The Daily Star — some justified, some unjustified — along with calls for the newspapers to be shut down and even attacks on their offices.
At the time, many of us argued that instead of attacking newspaper offices, those who objected to these publications should establish an alternative newspaper of their own.
Many responded by saying: Amar Desh is back. Under Mahmudur Rahman’s leadership, Amar Desh will become the new Prothom Alo.
My response was that Amar Desh might well become a new kind of Amar Desh, but it could never become the new Prothom Alo.
Let me give you an example of why.
During a party at the home of a retired Additional DIG, 85 adult men and women were arrested in the name of an anti-drug operation.
Amar Desh extracted images of the young men and women from video footage, published their names, identities, and photographs, and made the story its lead. It even published their fathers’ names and identities in considerable detail.
There is no way Amar Desh reporters could have obtained all these details without receiving the lists from the police and intelligence agencies.
I have something to say about this entire episode.
Hasina’s misrule has plunged Bangladesh into a deep economic crisis. There is only one way out.
Many people are unaware that the IMF dropped a bombshell last week.
The IMF has forecast extremely low economic growth, high inflation, and a depreciation of the taka to 160 against the dollar by 2031.
What surprises me is why it took the IMF so long to make this prediction.
In my book Unnayan Bibhrom (The Illusion of Development), published in 2023, I stated very clearly that Bangladesh was heading towards an economic crisis.
Immediately after Sheikh Hasina’s fall, when Faham bhai, Faiz bhai, and I were honoured at the Bangla Academy, my very first sentence was:
“Sheikh Hasina was supposed to fall as a result of an economic crisis, but we have brought her down before that crisis arrived. Consequently, the next government will inevitably face an economic crisis.”
The explanation I gave in that discussion — what the crisis would look like, how it would unfold, and why it was happening — is not far removed from the IMF’s present analysis.
That crisis is here.
I also identified the solution: Bangladesh has no way out of its economic crisis without foreign investment.
The three growth drivers that Ziaur Rahman left behind — ready-made garments, agriculture, and remittances — have been squeezed to the limits of their productive capacity.
They are no longer growing sufficiently and cannot generate the recovery needed to overcome the broader crisis.
The only way forward now is FDI — foreign direct investment.
Without global capital, we do not have the capacity to emerge from this economic crisis. We are a nation lacking in intellectual capacity. Our politicians, bureaucrats, and even our intellectuals are intellectually deficient.
In my experience, even one of our country’s leading intellectuals would struggle to hold their own in a discussion with a third-rate Indian intellectual.
So we have to allow global capital into the country — capital that, in pursuit of greater productivity, will bring with it knowledge, science, and rationality.
My argument is that if we want to attract global capital to establish factories for Nike, Apple, or AMD in Bangladesh, as India, Malaysia, and Singapore have done, we must create the conditions for a liberal society.
Why does attracting foreign investment require building a liberal society?
It was precisely this reasoning that led me, despite various reservations, to oppose Jamaat-e-Islami coming to power and to support the BNP.
I knew that if Jamaat came to power, it would take Bangladesh in a direction where culture wars and battles over clothing and personal freedom would dominate the national agenda.
And as a consequence, no FDI would come.
We need to understand the connection between foreign direct investment and personal freedom.
To attract global capital, a country must build a society founded on liberal values. Those values include democracy, personal liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the rule of law.
You might assume that the relationship between liberal values and global capital is simply about allowing wealthy people to enjoy themselves.
After all, people who earn a great deal of money want to have fun, so perhaps they need to be allowed to drink alcohol, attend parties, and engage in similar activities.
But that is not the issue.
The real issue is the distribution of power between the individual, society, and the state.
When a society gives the state — and its police, RAB and Detective Branch — the power to control individual freedom, when it allows the authorities to arrest a hundred adult citizens at a party on allegations of drinking alcohol, it sends another signal.
It signals that the state possesses virtually unlimited power, and that those who wield that power can, if they choose, confiscate an individual’s capital or seize their investments.
The same problem exists under socialism.
Cuba had considerable personal freedom, but foreign investment did not flow into the country. The underlying issue was the same: the distribution of power.
In a state that can dictate whether an individual may drink alcohol or attend a party, neither domestic nor foreign investors can be confident that their investments are secure.
Because the same police officers, DB officials, politicians, and RAB personnel could seize your factory and tell you: We found alcohol here. Now get out.
That is why investors consider the degree of freedom enjoyed by a country’s citizens before deciding whether to invest.
This is a question of signalling. And the signal that Amar Desh sends is also important.
A newspaper has every right to decide for itself what it will and will not cover.
But global capital is watching how the different centres of power within the state and society exercise their authority.
As we know from Foucault, power is not confined to laws, the police, and RAB, or to institutions with the capacity to repress.
Mobs have power. Intellectuals have power. Newspapers have power.
Consequently, investors do not look only at Prothom Alo or the BNP.
They also look at Amar Desh and Jamaat, which occupy positions on the ladder of power.
If Amar Desh, a newspaper representing the right, believes that it is appropriate to make a lead story out of men and women arrested at a party even before its ideological allies have acquired real power, then we can form some idea of what people who share Amar Desh‘s values might do if they actually gained power.
Investors draw conclusions from such signals as well.
Tarique Rahman is signalling his commitment to a centrist society
Whatever mistakes Tarique Rahman may have made over the past seven months, one thing is clear: he has taken a firm position in favour of building a state based on centrist values.
There may be many legitimate questions about the decisions of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government, but he has sent one unmistakable signal: He will not engage in a culture war.
Even before the election, he did not make his daughter wear a hijab in public as a way of attracting votes.
Meanwhile, some women I have known for years — staunch liberals who returned from abroad — wrapped so many layers of cloth around their heads to win votes that I would never have believed it had I not seen it myself.
Tarique Rahman has made clear that he wants to build a society based on middle-class values and openness.
He won the election on that promise, and he is keeping it. He has given virtually no encouragement to repressive religious politics. He has gone to the cinema with his wife and daughter. He has visited Bailey Road. Zaima Rahman moves around in public without covering her head.
What are they displaying? They are displaying centrist, middle-class values. This signal was badly needed.
After Sheikh Hasina’s fall, the rise of extremist and ultra-conservative forces, and the direction in which Bangladesh appeared to be heading, made me fear that foreign direct investment would dry up.
That is why this change is so important.
Another condition for attracting FDI is creating a society with less conflict
There is another issue.
When a society becomes excessively preoccupied with regulating personal behaviour, it creates conflict. There are people who place the highest priority on their personal freedom and individuality. If you try to forcibly restrain them, you create a conflict between liberals and conservatives.
In many countries, such battles have deeply divided society.
Today, the world has entered the age of artificial intelligence. The entire global landscape is changing.
Look at the countries of Asia — Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Billions upon billions of dollars are being invested there. Why? Because they have moved beyond these culture wars and settled the basic questions of personal freedom.
Despite being Muslim-majority countries, they have established that religious obligations apply to those who choose to observe them. Those who do not wish to follow them will not be forced to do so.
Meanwhile, we remain trapped in the world of culture wars — sending police to arrest students at parties, charging them with drug offences, publishing their photographs in newspapers, and then writing Facebook posts about the whole affair.
Why should this be the case? We should be concentrating on other, far more critical issues. Eventually, we must move beyond this stage.
Under Hasina, who sat upon the country like an immovable boulder, there was no hope. The machinery of the state had no objective other than keeping her in power. But now we must build a Bangladesh of hope.
We must overcome this economic crisis. The people of Bangladesh must follow the path taken by Vietnam or Malaysia. And to do that, we must allow global capital into the country. The left must abandon its culture of fear surrounding capital.
The panic that allowing global capital into ports, energy, IT and other sectors will somehow compromise national security is a recipe for becoming North Korea. We must learn from South Korea, not North Korea.
The reality is that Bangladesh cannot escape its present crisis unless it becomes a hub for global capital, like Vietnam or India.
We need iPhone factories here. We need to manufacture Nvidia microchips and Sony camera sensors.
Without taking this path, we have no realistic prospect of using domestic investment alone to eliminate unemployment among our young people or to build a knowledge-based society.
This does not mean promoting a completely disorderly or socially irresponsible society. Learn from Malaysia.
This does not mean we should promote a society of complete disorder or debauchery. No. We must uphold our values socially and inspire young people to embrace them. But this must be done through society, not through the state.
Because there will always be people in society who drink alcohol or live outside religious conventions. As long as they do not interfere with the freedom of others, that is their right.
I repeatedly cite Malaysia as an example. When I visited Malaysia, I found that Muslims there were much more religiously observant than those in Bangladesh. At least 90% of Muslim women I saw wore the hijab.
At the same time, there are bars and nightclubs, and people have the freedom to live according to their own choices. That is what we should aspire to.
You may raise your own family and guide your community according to Islamic values. But you cannot throw someone in prison simply because they choose a different lifestyle.
If we do these things, capital will not come, and Bangladesh will turn into another Afghanistan. It is precisely this fear that will keep capital away.
The IMF’s forecasts are terrifying
Over the past 30 years, the IMF, World Bank, and ADB have never made such a frightening forecast for Bangladesh: low growth, high inflation and unemployment continuing until 2031.
The prescriptions they are now offering essentially amount to austerity.
The IMF is calling for increased government revenue, higher VAT rates, market-based energy prices, and a market-determined exchange rate.
The consequences of all these measures will be higher inflation, reduced government spending capacity, and a shrinking public sector.
And it is public spending that has largely kept the economy afloat over the past six or seven years.
My argument is that the IMF’s prescriptions are not the solution.
Our only solution is to attract FDI.
To achieve that, we must stop obsessing over alcohol consumption, parties, clothing, and similar issues, and instead create a tolerant society.
This is one of several necessary steps.
I am not suggesting that simply ending culture wars or guaranteeing personal freedom will automatically bring foreign investment.
The BNP will also have to establish the rule of law, dismantle patron-client politics, free businesses and the economy from party-affiliated racketeers and those who seize control of enterprises, improve administrative efficiency, and accomplish many other things.
But my point is this: Even if the BNP fulfils every one of these conditions, and even if Bangladesh achieves financial stability, FDI will not come if we remain an illiberal society — one consumed by disputes over clothing and veiling, and characterized by religious and social tension.
Those who believe that cheap labour alone is enough to attract capital are mistaken. And when you allow individuals to be free, some will drink alcohol and attend parties. That is an unintended consequence of freedom, not its objective.
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman must take action over this incident
Because society may engage in moral policing, but state-sponsored moral policing is the first step towards becoming Afghanistan.
Ziaur Rahman permitted bars to open. During his rule, female gymnasts began wearing appropriate athletic clothing. The same changes took place among female swimmers.
Jyoti Rahman has written an excellent article about how the paths taken by Pakistan’s Zia and Bangladesh’s Zia diverged in 1978.
Therefore, Tarique Rahman must make a decision about what action to take in this incident — not because he is Ziaur Rahman’s son, which is not the relevant consideration here, but because he is the prime minister of a country facing an economic crisis.
By taking action against Ishraque, who appeared on TikTok brandishing a gun in the name of fighting drugs, and against BNP woman MP Ferdousi Ahmed Mishti, who seized control of a clinic, he has signalled that he will not tolerate such behaviour.
So what action will he now take against the DB officers who arrested people for attending a party? That, too, will send a signal.
It will indicate whether, in the Bangladesh of the future, the state will continue to exercise oppressive power over its citizens, or whether citizens will be protected from the encroachment of the state’s coercive machinery upon their personal freedoms.
And that is why this seemingly small incident has a profound connection to the enormously important question of whether foreign direct investment will come to Bangladesh.
This article was originally published by Counterpoint and is republished here by Panam Institute with permission. © Counterpoint. All rights reserved.
