A case for intellectual empowerment

Our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promises to build a country free from hunger and poverty. She pledges to build a country where economic prosperity, cultural richness, peace and stability will become the defining features. Inspiring thought indeed! On the same day, our finance minister admits that removal of Professor Muhammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank will do little to improve the image of Bangladesh but he had no options. We are sure he has explained what he meant by not having another option; his reasons, however have not been reported in the outlets that are had access to. In any event, even if he is to be true, there is a case for questioning the degree of clarity, transparency and regulation of our financial institutions and the effectiveness of our legislation. But that is a matter for another day. These headlines, of course, come, amid reports in the weeks gone by of soaring commodity prices, continuing deterioration of the law and order situation and consistent economic failures most momentously at the stock market. When we put all the above together, we get a picture of a government, devoid of a plan, unsure of its mission and unaware of its destination. The inspiring and lofty slogans of building a prosperous country becomes the cause of further despair and indignation. Our PM comes across as a person detached and removed from the planet, Bangladesh. For her acts, words and stated determination hardly reflect reality and bear little resemblance to the messages coming out of the government's actions. The above are a glimpse of the sad reality of our beloved country. However, our object today is to make a case for intellectual empowerment, a matter that hardly ever gets media attention and even less frequently draws important minds to discussions. The challenges which we face as a nation, the barriers to our progress and prosperity are partly natural, partly political. Natural in that we are often made to suffer due to flooding, at times from drought and, of course, the issue of global warming and its devastating consequences in our country. Political because we have a culture of impunity where corruption and criminality of all proportions goes unchecked due to incompetent, criminal and corrupt politicians, busy making good of their authority. But most importantly, at least to our understanding, our challenges are made much more complex by our intellectual ineptness and the total absence of a true civil society. Ideologies can and should be drivers behind thinkers and researchers working in all fields of life. But an intellectual class is necessary to capture the mood of the nation, document the challenges of our time and devise strategies to move forward. However, serious and genuine intellectuals must draw conclusions based on facts known to them or at least derived from known facts. Political biases must never be the overriding factor in coming up with our findings and conclusions. The lack of the intellectual class, capable of going beyond political loyalty, or more appropriately, ideological animosity, has compounded our difficulties in holding our government to account. The absence of serious minded intellectuals, carefully studying our challenges and undertaking forensic analysis of government initiatives against the identified challenges, is a major deficiency in our effort to take our country forward. For without serious intellectual basis, we will never have a sound basis to evaluate effectiveness of our governmental activities. Perhaps we should explain with an example: much is said and done about the nature of different governments in power in our country. The likes and dislikes of a government have often been driven by issues which are symptoms rather than the root causes. There have been little studies and conclusions drawn about different governments, based on objective evidence and factual realities on the ground. As a result, with the change of government, we experience change of style and faces but we hardly see profound changes, fundamental shifts and creative initiatives. Our country is loosing the plot on all fronts. Despite enormous potential to become a major player in the region and an example for the developing world, we continue to slide downwards. Our governance seems to get weaker by the day, our academia loosing their characteristics and our society showing increasing faults. And when crises are engulfing us from all sides, we still see our so-called intellectuals arguing on shallow ideals with little substance. For this reason, our focus does need to turn to building an intellectual class keen about drawing conclusions from evidence and facts. People of our civil society need to be empowered in their thoughts. We need an active programme for intellectual empowerment. Author is an educator, activist, and a Barrister residing in the UK, and he can reached: e-mail : talha.j.ahmad@gmail.com