Problems that persist over time turn into difficult to solve structural ones

The CPD's IRBD (Independent Review of Bangladesh's Development) initiative is now approaching 30 years. Since 1995, its whole objective has been not to be a critic of government policies, but to enable public discussion of policies by stakeholders. The whole premise of CPD and its IRBD was that policy-making should be a consensus process involving stakeholders including both the government and the opposition, civil society, foreign partners and a wider constituency of ordinary people.

Never view these exercises as adversarial but essentially as part of institutionalisation of collaboration between the state and civil society. The best friends of an incumbent government are those who are ready to point out the problems and then come up with suggestions as policymakers, because of the very nature of the governance, are not getting the information they need to make policies effectively. This is particularly important today. Since the economy is on an upward trajectory, we have certainly moved into troubled times for a variety of reasons-- short-term ones I attribute to the Ukraine war and Covid, but there are a series of structural problems which have been building up.

This confluence of ongoing structural problems in the economy with the short-term shocks of the Ukraine war and Covid crisis have created a more aggravated situation where the government of the day, no doubt, is making heroic efforts to deal with. But in such circumstances they can do with all the assistance they get. The notion that they can go on addressing the problems from an exclusive position will be to their disadvantage. They are the only people who are competent to make policies.

Since its first recommendations presented to the then BNP government, the emphasis of CPD's IRBD during the five successive governments has always been on concluding with policy recommendations. We like to come up with positive recommendations. And the measure of good governance is how seriously the policymakers accept [the recommendations] in good faith. They will agree or they will disagree. But they should recognise the constructive elements in the particular exercise.

Some of the problems placed in the presentation here today have been in the list for 10 years. Any problem which has been repeated in terms of solutions over a 10-year period should essentially be qualified as a structural problem which has become embedded in the institutional arrangements and policy-making in the political economy of a particular society. The problems which have been further identified may have originated from short-term impacts of the Ukraine war and Covid and may have catalysed and aggravated some of the long-term crises. I would ask [the commenters here] to keep this distinction in mind because your responses here will be determined not merely for immediate short-term responses, but for how you want to deal with basic problems which should not be recurring in our recommendations another five years down the road, because problems which persist over a period of time move from symptomatic illnesses into cancerous problems within the system. And to deal with such problems within the system is much more serious and certainly for those who are well-wishers of the government in policy-making apparatus, we would not wish them to get into a situation where they have to, in fact, address problems of systemic and cancerous nature and have to deal with the social and political consequences that arise thereon.   

Prof Rehman Sobhan's speech has been slightly edited for space

Prof Rehman Sobhan is the chairman of Centre for Policy Dialogue

Disclaimer: Prof Rehman Sobhan shared his thoughts at the Centre for Policy Dialogue's (CPD) Independent Review of Bangladesh's Development (IRBD) programme