Bangladeshi State Research Articles

The moral and political economy of the pandemic in Bangladesh: Weak states and strong societies during Covid-19.

As the Covid-19 pandemic spread in 2020, the government of Bangladesh ordered a lockdown and promised a program of relief. Citizens complied at first, but soon returned to economic and social life; relief proved slow and uncertain, and citizens could not rely on government assistance. The government tacitly and then officially permitted the lockdown to end, despite a rising Covid-19 caseload. This article draws on theories about state capacity to make and enforce policy to understand why Bangladesh proved unable to sustain a lockdown deemed necessary to contain the pandemic in this densely populated, low income country. Drawing on original qualitative mobile phone-based research in six selected communities, this article examines how the state exercised its capacities for coercion, control over lower factions within political society, and sought to preserve and enhance its legitimacy. It concludes that despite a) the growth in the capacity of the Bangladeshi state in the past decade and b) strong political incentives to manage the pandemic without harm to economic wellbeing, the pressures to sustain legitimacy with the masses forced the state and its frontline actors to tolerate lockdown rule-breaking, conceding that the immediate livelihood needs of the poor masses overrode national public health concerns. Chronically unable to enforce its authority over local political elites, the state failed to ensure a fair and timely distribution of relief. The weakness of the Bangladeshi state contrasts with the strength of widely shared ‘moral economy’ views within society, which provided powerful ethical and political justification for citizens’ failures to comply with the lockdown, and for officials’ forbearance in its enforcement. The Covid-19 pandemic highlights both the importance of state capacity in managing novel shocks from within the global system, and the challenges in settings where weak states are embedded in strong societies.

‘Safeguarding Islam’ in modern times: Politics, piety and Hefazat-e-Islami ‘ulama in Bangladesh

Within Muslim communities, the ‘ulama are considered the most crucial corporate social agency that drives the ideological and spiritual energy to the members of the society who find religious teachings necessary for their individual and social, if not always political, lives. However, when the ‘ulama of Bangladesh gathered under the umbrella platform of Hefazat-e-Islam (HI) in 2010, agitated by the numerous upheavals of the government’s policies (which they argued were contrary to the teachings of the Qur’ān and Sunna), scholars and members of the civil society often dubbed them as regressive, reactionary, and insensitive to modern changes. While anthropologists have challenged this dichotomy, this article aims to understand the HI ‘ulama’s views on modern changes and how the ‘ulama safeguard the traditional integrity in legal, educational, and gender aspects within the domain of the Bangladeshi state mechanism. Based on anthropological notions of tradition and piety, this article argues that the ‘ulama’s position on education, woman, and legal questions is neither monolithic nor static; rather there is always discussion, debate, and dynamism within the ‘ulama itself.

‘May you live with us forever Father!’ Rethinking state and kinship among Bangladeshi long-distance nationalists in London

Based on ethnographic fieldwork around commemorative events in London and analysis of textual materials used during commemorations, this article explores how long-distance nationalists are involved in Bangladeshi state building practices. I demonstrate how long-distance nationalists, people who identify with Bangladesh and its government as their ancestral homeland, and who seek to influence the state, draw on family histories to narrate national pasts and justify dynastic political hierarchies that characterise Bangladeshi politics. Further, by paying attention to the uses of the idioms of kinship in transnational state practices, the article deconstructs thinking about states as natural entities that can only be studied as part of larger abstract political frameworks removed from peoples’ experiences. Narrating shared pasts are central in creating shared sentiments and form a justification for undertaking Bangladeshi state practices from London. Taken together, the materials presented in this article illustrate the need to take the use of kinship idioms in state apparatuses seriously, because they provide key insights into the ways these apparatuses work within and beyond the borders of the nation-state.

‘Firing cannons to kill mosquitoes’: Controlling ‘virtual streets’ and the ‘image of the state’ in Bangladesh

This article examines the historical, social and political legacies of the Information and Communication Technology Act (ICT Act) (2006–2018, amended in 2013) and the Digital Security Act (DSA) (2018–) in the Bangladeshi state’s attempt to control the ‘virtual streets’ of Bangladesh. The application of ICT and DSA has become an increasingly visible and controversial means to provide the spectacle of a state that extends disciplinary power and governmentality into proliferating online spaces—akin to ‘firing cannons to kill mosquitoes’. We use the lens of Tim Mitchell’s structural-effect (1991, The American Political Science Review 85(1), 77–96) to understand the state beyond the frameworks of its salience or elusiveness, arguing that the criminalisation of online speech has enabled the creation of ‘digital vigilantes’ who are predominantly the powerful, the sycophants, and the multitude of attention seekers who are driven by their personal contestations and ambitions. The legal outcomes, however, have been more ambiguous and uncertain—but the effect is to produce fear as an ‘environment’ (Virilio 2012, The Administration of Fear. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press) through frozen/suspended charges with the potential to be redeployed in different contexts.

Bangladesh in 2017

Bangladesh experienced a turbulent year in 2017, largely as a result of damaging floods. Moreover, the flood of Rohingya refugees in the second half of the year added considerable strain to Bangladesh’s political economy. There are worrisome signs that the Bangladeshi state is using a range of institutional and extrajudicial mechanisms to stifle political opposition.

South–South Migration and Security Risks: Political Islam and Violent Extremism in the Shadow of Globalisation in Bangladesh

Against the backdrop of 2016 terrorist attack in Dhaka, this article argues that in the terrain of Bangladeshi literatures on migration, little is explored about the impact of south–south migration in unleashing security threat to Bangladesh. This article offers a historic trajectory of south–south migration and security threat to Bangladeshi state. It argues that while it is important to understand migration from various point of views, scholars have ignored to explore the nexus between migration and security threat of the sender state. This article explains why to some Muslim migrants of Bangladesh, bad ideas such as terrorism may seem to form an option and how globalisation played a role in fostering bad ideas. It proposes that scholars of migration require to indulge in further research to understand the nexus between outward migration and security threat to Bangladesh.

Human rights disasters, corporate accountability and the state

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the state-business nexus in responses to human rights violations in businesses and questions the efficacy of the UN guiding principles on human rights in businesses, in particular in the ready-made garments (RMG) industry in Bangladesh. Drawing on Cohen’s notion of “denial” and Black’s (2008) legitimacy and accountability relationships of state and non-state actors, the study seeks to explain why such “soft” global regulations remain inadequate. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical work for this paper is based on the authors’ participation in two multiple-stakeholder advisory consultation meetings for the RMG sector in Bangladesh and 11 follow-up interviews. This is supplemented by documentary evidence on human rights disasters, responses of the state and non-state actors and human rights reports published in national and international newspapers. Findings – The paper provides clear evidence that the state-business nexus perpetuates human rights disasters. The study also shows that the Bangladeshi state, ruled by family-led political parties, is more inclined to protect businesses that cause human rights disasters than to ensure human rights in businesses. The economic conditions of the RMG industry and accountability and legitimacy relationships between state and non-state actors have provided the necessary background for RMG owners to continue to violate the safety and security of the workplace and maintain inhumane working conditions. Research limitations/implications – Complex state politics, including family, kinship and wealthy supporters, and economic circumstances have serious implications for the efficacy of the UN guiding principle on human rights for business. This paper calls for broader political and economic changes, nationally and internationally. Originality/value – The study highlights the perpetuation of corporate human rights abuses by the state-business nexus, and indicates that human rights issues continue to be ignored through a discourse of denial. This is explained in terms of legitimacy and accountability relationships between state and non-state actors, bounded by complex political and economic conditions.

The State of Relief on the Bangladesh-India Border

By focusing on a remote part of the Bangladesh-India border, this paper seeks to understand how the state has been reconfigured from its older, developmental paradigm, involving large-scale infrastructural change and resource redistribution, to its contemporary NGO-driven avatar. The paper suggests that the state today is merely one of multiple governing agencies that participate in producing ‘state-like effects’ on a territory and its population. Sometimes these agencies are in competition; often they work alongside one another. NGOs are agencies of this kind and are a major focus of this paper. In light of this, the idea of a sovereign Bangladeshi state which is apparently being eroded by neoliberalism, is not a complete picture. Other than a particular moment in the post-colonial period where there was optimism that the contrary would be achieved, sovereignty has in fact always been a mediated, fragmented affair in the borderlands as well as in Bangladesh as a whole.

Histories of Belonging(s): Narrating Territory, Possession, and Dispossession at the India-Bangladesh Border

AbstractThis paper offers a history of belonging in Dahagram, a sovereign Bangladeshi enclave situated within India but close to the India-Bangladesh border. I recount Dahagram's post-Partition history, focusing particularly on the long and localized struggles between 1974 and 1992 to open the Tin Bigha Corridor, a land bridge through Indian territory that links Dahagram to the Bangladeshi mainland. Drawing on the memories and experiences of residents, I examine Dahagram's past(s) as narratives of postcolonial belonging: to fragmented conceptions of state and nation, to surrounding areas, and to the enclave itself. I focus on the overlapping tensions between national and local struggles to ‘claim’ Dahagram as Bangladeshi or Indian territory, and uneven processes of political inclusion within and around the enclaves and within the Bangladeshi State. I use ‘belonging’ as a double-entendre, as these tensions are all intimately linked to possession of land/territory, goods, and access to markets. The notion of belonging(s) helps to illuminate Dahagram's historical and contemporary cultural politics and political-economy, as well as its articulations with broader events in postcolonial South Asia. Yet, belonging is also an analytic for understanding how history is remembered and articulated as a claim to territory, rights, and membership in unstable places.

Islamic Militancy in Bangladesh: A Complex Web * By ALI RIAZ

This book examines, in the setting of Bangladesh, domestic, regional and international factors in the rise of militant politics by parties and organizations that use Islam. The author offers several explanations—a domestic political environment that is favourable; the weakness of some Bangladeshi state institutions in certain geographic areas; a popular glorification of militancy; and material support given to the militant institutions by kindred organizations outside Bangladesh. The author attributes the foreign interference to a sort of proxy war between India and Pakistan, insurgency through porous borders from India and Myanmar. Looking at future trajectories of militancy, the author wonders if Bangladesh, with its limited resources and fragile democratic institutions, can fight the militants on its own. The book's argument is premised on three claims: first, that these clandestine groups, despite having little support from the general public, are a threat to public life, national security and the future of the country; second, that the militant groups have access to arms and military training and are supported by a political network; and third, that a proper understanding of the political and ideological challenge posed by the Islamists will assist in the forging of an appropriate response. And it is presented with three methodological caveats: first, the nature of the militants’ operations makes it difficult to collect and verify information about these groups, to identify the sources and their veracity in published accounts, along with the ethical constraint of maintaining the anonymity of various interviewees belonging to government and political organizations. Secondly, there was the problem, intensified in a highly politicized and partisan media environment, of making sense of misinformation about the principal actors. Third, there was the problem of assessing the number of organizations and their cadres in militant activities.

Civil Society and Good Governance in Bangladesh

Many of the recent ideas and concepts of ‘good governance’ and ‘civil society’ in Bangladesh have been generated by the international aid agencies and their ‘good governance’ policy agenda in the 1990s, but there are also local meanings to the terms derived from the independence struggle and the construction of a Bangladeshi state. This article aims to obtain a clearer analytical understanding of the processes and institutions of civil society in Bangladesh that can develop workable strategy to improve governance for helping the poor and moving beyond the patron–client relationships on which they have depended historically. It also focuses attention and debate on those aspects of civil society which can enhance the quality of governance and democracy by overcoming the western top-down approach; and can strengthen the role of civil society organisations to further enhance their impact on better governance for fair distribution of public goods and ensuring social justice for the poor.

Democratizing Bangladesh

This article analyzes the conflicts and contradictions released by the processes of democratization and globalization in Bangladesh as they are played out between two competing groups of rural patrons: the clergy and the developmental non-governmental organizations. Both groups vie for rural dominance by fighting over the role of women in society. By investigating the violent circumstances surrounding a poor women’s rally in 1998, I examine how, in this conflict, these women were vulnerably situated in relation to the clergy and the NGO. The Bangladeshi state, which has fostered an Islamic ideology, remains complicit in this violation of women. I further argue that the good intentions of feminist NGOs are constrained in their ability to offer an autonomous critique of NGO practices because of their structural dependence on the NGOs.

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