Afsan Chowdhury
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| Afsan Chowdhury |
JUST as the government has embarked on a propaganda blitz of ‘unnayan mela’ all over the country, The CPD has come forward with data which show that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer in Bangladesh. The government should provide counter-evidence and arguments that the claims are not accurate. But the finance minister has called the CPD findings ‘rubbish’ and accused the outfit of ‘trying to pull Bangladesh down’ rather than contest the data. Till that happens, the CPD claim stands.
However, politically for the government, such information is not considered worrying as no evidence exists if such information influences politics in Bangladesh. Electoral voting is power and only power matters and the government shows little anxiety about 2018. So, any increasing gap between the rich and the power will not make the ruling party lose much sleep anyway.
Stats and evidence
Bangladeshi official world often appear confused about the difference between growth and development and its loyal media do the same. But economists have been challenging this claim for some time using the government’s own data. For example, Professor MA Taslim of Dhaka University had asked where the benefits of high growth and high equity are going. Writing in an article titled ‘Where did the benefits of economic growth disappear?’ (bdnews24.com, December 18, 2017) Professor Taslim not only doubted claims of wide-scale prosperity but found BBS data unreliable as its finding contested other data which the officialdom generates.
Citing the Household Income and Expenditure Survey data, Professor Taslim states that ‘the household real income has actually declined by 11 per cent between 2010 and 2016. Real consumption also declined by about the same proportion during these years.’
But going by the Bureau of Statistics data, ‘real national income has risen by more than 42 per cent between 2009–10 and 2015–16 while the real per capita income has risen by 31 per cent. In other words, at the national level, each individual member of the total population, on average, has contributed to 31 per cent increase in real income during these 6 years. This increase in income was accompanied by a similar increase in real consumption per capita.’
But the Household Survey data show that in 2016, each person at the household level actually earned less than 2 per cent of what he did in 2010. ‘Real spending for consumption of each decreased by about 1 per cent.’
The disconcerting part is that the differences between the HIES and the national accounts data are rather too large to be ignored as statistical errors or due to different methods of calculation. Professor Taslim argues that the benefits of growth did not reach ordinary people.
What CPD said
THE CPD’s main point is that the economy has come under pressure because of the banking sector crisis, inflation, soaring imports amid inadequate export earnings and insufficient remittance inflows. The CPD added that the banking sector is suffering from cronyism and other irregularities. Embezzlement of public funds is taking place with influential people involved in it.
According to the CPD, theft of public money and criminalised banking sector are critical indicators of the nature of the economy. Both income and wealth inequality rose despite an average 6.5 per cent annual economic growth between 2010 and 2016. It says that the quality of growth should be analysed.
CPD research fellow Towfiqul Islam Khan said that the rate of job growth and poverty reduction in 2010–2016 was slower than in 2005–2010. Also, the pace of poverty reduction has not been equal throughout the country.
The income of the bottom 5 per cent of the population dropped 60 per cent in 2016 compared with 2010. By contrast, the income of the top 5 per cent rose 57 per cent during the same period, he said.
The govt is not threatened
THE government cannot be in denial about its own data; so, what it is doing is ignoring it because it does not need to accept them. The economic system in place since 1972 has favoured the rich and the nature of wealth making is based on connections and political identities. This is translated into a political structure which ensures political power that, in turn, sustain this method of wealth making. Hence, one guarantees the other.
As this process has matured, the notion of ‘democracy’ has also split into electoral democracy which is essentially controlled by the wealthy and the democracy of the marginalised which has its roots in traditional organic institutions like ‘salish’, ‘mohalla’, etc that have been at bay from the penetration of centrally-controlled local government outfits.
The nature of the state is based on inequity and whatever comes in the way of the poor is a bonus for them. Thus, income and prosperity disparity issues and data showing its evidence will not be challenged by the government as it does not feel threatened by them now or in 2018.
Unhappiness of the marginalised does not translate into electoral difficulties which is largely an internal matter of two contesting groups of the well-off. Hence, data or action based on them will not really matter.
- Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist and researcher.
- Courtesy: New Age/ Jan 17, 2018
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