Politics and Business in Bangladesh Patron-Client Politics and Business in Bangladesh by Stanley A. Kochanek Review by: Thomas A.

Timberg Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29, No. 48 (Nov. 26, 1994), p. 3033 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4402068 . Accessed: 26/11/2011 06:45
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inequality and stresses the factor of ruralurban migration as a major cause of urban imbalance. Heinz Bongartz in his inlloduction brings home the need for comprehensive planning for both urban and rural areas with equal stress. The remaining authors ot Volume 1, Sivaramakrishnan and Buch, engage themselves mainly in implementational problems of basic service projects and call for more efficient management. The perspective that emerges after reading the volumes is important. The focus is on the need to look beyond policies and projects towards the level where decisions are taken in the framework of a given political economy for which planning bypasses the informal sector or tribals in Thane living only 40 km away from Bombay die of gastroenteritis every year indicating that any inequality can be claimed to have the implicit approval of the system. Problems of financing urban service projectsorempowermentoflocal bodies need to be examined from this perspective that would help remove many ambiguities. Message of such books and other similar works of recent times [5] is self-evident:

tackling of metropolitan or urban concentration, distortion in their spaceeconomies andthe associatedinequalitiesin the quality of urbanlife calls for integrated to approaches regionalandnationalplanning in which the town and country are viewed as partsof an interactivesystem.The critical issue, however,is how manysocieties would recognisethis viewpointas legitimateas that would demand a structuraltransformation of the society itself. Notes
[1] Smith D M (1979): Where the Grass is Greetner, The Johns Hopkins University Press, USA. [2] Harvey David (1985): The Urbaniisation of Ccapital.Basil Blackwell, UK. [3] PeetRichard 1977): 'Inequality Poverty' ( and in R Peet (ed), Radical Geograplhy: Alternlative Viewpoints on Contenlpo)rary Social Issues, MaaroufaPress. USA. [4] Pahl R H (1970): Whose City. Longman, London. [5] KunduA (1993): In theNanme'fUrbanPoor: Access to Basic Amenities,Sage, New Delhi.

Politics and Business in Bangladesh

Thomas A Timberg Patron-Client Politics and Business in Bangladesh by Stanley A Kochanek; Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1993; pp 387, Rs 350.
the developing privatisation the politics and thatfollowedthe 1982drugorder.Forgeneral background,after nationalising almost the whole of industry in 1971, successive governmentshave permitted largenumber a of units to returnto the former owners or new purchasersand are now committed to privatise manyof theremaining units- though the actual pace has not been as rapidas the rhetoricmightsometimesleadone to expect. In 1982,thenew militarygovernmentpassed a drugorderwhichadopted WHOstrategy the of strictly limiting the number of drugs permittedto be producedand consumed in to this sphere; it reports, inter alia, on the the country. empirical work of U A B Razia Banu on The choice of issues is particularly useful the relationship between Islam, behaviour sifnce they give a nuancedview of the extent and politics among the urban classes in to which Bangladesh has gone in adopting Bangladesh, and the historical work of the generalpolicies advocatedby the World Rafiuddin Ahmed, etc. Bank and the IMF, and the limits to that The volume is really three books: an adoption. This in turn bears on a second introductorybook on Bangladesh political debate on whether economic growth has history and culture, a second book on the accelerated,both the Bankandits critics say historyandstructure business association no, andif not, why not.The governmentand of politics in Bangladesh,and, finally, a more manyotherobserverscontendthatimportant theoreticalsection leading to two landmark developmentsareoccurringwhich areeither case studies of economics policy-makingin not fully capturedin the official statistical Bangladesh.The second study, of business series or only will be capturedwith the lag politics, is in many ways parallel to connectedwiththepublication thoseseries. of Kochanek's earlier books on business and The optimists point to items like the politicsin Pakistan. The case studiesconcern accelerationin investmentregistrations and THE volume underreview may be the most insightfulbook publishedin recentyears on Bangladesh government both policy-making, because of its own insights and the huge amountof relativelyinaccessible secondary materialon which it draws. This is a major book, both in terms of the general understandingof businessandhow it interacts with politics andin termsof the elite politics of Bangladesh. Thisis morethe case, because it puts aside the major.issues that divide Bangladeshi political parties and concerns itself with the key economic policy decision-making.But the book is not limited

the openingof lettersof creditfor the import of capitalequipment overthelastfew months. To the extent developmenthas not occurred differentcommentatorsblame the lassitude of indigenous entrepreneurs (eg, their lack of the 'animal spirits' of their Indian neighbours), the apparent slow growth of rural investment and production, the remainingdead hand of regulationand the immobilisationof resourcesin publicsector corporations,etc. One dynamic development has been the considerableinflow of fundsremittedby the thousandsof soldiersnow servingon various United Nations Missions aroundthe world and receiving fantastic salaries in normal Bangladeshi terms. The politics of Bangladesh is unusualin South Asia both because of its turbulence in the 1970s and because of the relative importance of foreign aid donors. (This characteristic it shares with Nepal.) The two major leaders and the country's'Jfirst foundersof its major political partieswere both assassinated. The country has still to see one elected government hand over to another. But much of the analysis clearly applies to other countries in the region. Despite the changes of government, Kochanek characterises all of the major Bangladesh regimes as having power centralisedin the executive in a unitarystate with weak legislatures and judiciary, and government manipulationof elections and the media. The lack of business association autonomywas accentuatedby the historyof the Pakistan period when associational activitywasforciblychannelled a limited into number of state-sponsored chambers, as distinguished from the pre-existing Indian type of pluralism. Despitethecommonfeatures,thepolitical patterns describedinthisbookarenecessarily especially those of the Ershadperiod, 19821990, and may not do full justice to what has emerged since Bangladesh'sbloodless transitionto the present BNP government. The futureof that governmentis now very much in question. The two large partiesin thecountry,theBangladesh Nationalist Party founded by General ZiaurRahmanand led by his widow, and the Awami League foundedby SheikhMujibur Rahman led and by his daughter, now have manageable ideologicaldifferences.Theyhaveacommon interest in sustaining a civilian political system to avoid military coups. But the assassinationsand turmoilof the 1970s still cast strong shadow on their relations. In recentmonths,outsiderslike representatives of the Commonwealth Secretariat and insiderslike the membersof theGanoForum led by Kamal Hossain have tried to broker anaccommodation. as I indicated But earlier, this all occurs on a level largely separate from the politics dealt with in the present volume.

Economic and Political Weekly

November 26, 1994

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