Bangladesh Nationalist Party Research Articles

Relative State Autonomy and Development Strategy in Bangladesh, 1975-1981

T HE SUDDEN TRANSFORMATION in the nature of the Bangladeshi state in 1975 brought about a radical change in its economic policy. The state that emerged in 1975 was an administrative state-a state dominated by civil and military bureaucrats.' During the five-and-a-halfyear regime of General Ziaur Rahman (Zia), the civil-military bureaucrats formed an alliance-a marriage of convenience-and were continuously dominant in the main decision-making structures of the state apparatus (the office of the president, the cabinet, the National Economic Council [NEC], the Planning Commission, the public corporations, etc.) which were formerly dominated by political elites during the 1972-75 regime of Sheik Mujibur Rahman (Mujib). Although Zia formed a political platform through the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and there was an elected Parliament, the bureaucrats were the main decision-makers in the sense that Parliament was not a sovereign body; it was subordinate and subservient to the president, who was a nominee of the armed forces.2 Since the nature of the state had been transformed, a drastic revision in its economic policy was to be expected. Given the change in the nature of the state, a few questions regarding its role in the economic development of Bangladesh during the Zia regime merit attention. What type of development policy did the state in