Rise in per capita income no yardstick of development: Kamal Hossain

Staff Correspondent

Lawyer Kamal Hossain addresses a discussion on equity and citizen rights at Bishwa Sahitya Kendra in Dhaka on Saturday. — New Age photo

Senior Jurist Dr Kamal Hossain said Saturday that per capita income rise could not be the yardstick of development as it was worked out by aggregating high income and low income groups.
He called per capita income as a misnomer as the disparities in earnings were averaged to work it out.
Speaking at the inaugural session of national conference on ‘Access to Justice for All,’ he said, in a society marked by disparities, most of the resources were monopolized by 10 per cent of the rich class while the incomes for the 90 per cent keep on getting less and less.
he conference was hosted by 28 legal aid and human rights organizations at Bishwa Sahitya Kendra in the capital.

Kamal Hossain said that only when common people have access to basic needs and rights it could be
said that the nation achieved economic development in ;line with the goals of the War of Independence.
He said that as the nation could not yet for institutionalize democracy, the movement for the institutionalization of democracy still continued.
Enactment of the Right to Information Act being a revolutionary change in itself, he called for ensuring common folks’ access to information.
He said that common folks were less demanding of their rights and the authorities were not interested to provide them their rights.
Due to colonial legacy people love to think that government and not they were the state’s owners.
Kamal said that the legal aid and human rights organizations had a lot to do to bridge this gap.
In his keynote paper, Jagannath University assistant professor SM Masum Billah said that he considered the partisan legal community as an obstacle on the common people’s way to access justice.
Quoting the findings of a research, Bangladesh Legal Aid Services Trust honorary executive director Sara Hossain said that in this country hardly two per cent of victims of violation of rights usually seek justice.

Presided over by Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association president Fawzia Karim Firoze, the conference was also addressed by Wave Foundation executive director Mohsin Ali and Nagarik Udyog chief executive Zakir Hossain.

   >NEWAGE/3-11-2018