Instability and quest for middle-income status

Just when we are about to recover from the trauma of pre-election violence over January 5, 2014 and the country's economy was gradually moving towards the right direction, the BNP-led alliance called a 12-hour shutdown across the country on September 22, 2014 protesting the passage of the '16th Constitution Amendment Bill' that empowered the parliament to remove Supreme Court judges.
Before that, the Jamaat-e-Islami, a key component of the BNP-led alliance, called
48-hour hartals for Thursday and Sunday, protesting the Supreme Court verdict that sentenced its leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee imprisonment until death for committing crimes against humanity in 1971.
This means the country has lost three full working days, causing sufferings to people and huge losses to the
economy.
All political parties claim that their politics is for the well-being of the people and the country but in reality, they are practicing politics of hate and attrition.
They are least concerned about the sufferings of the people, the economy and the nation. Had they been at all concerned about the people of this country and the economy, they would have come out of the hartal culture a long time back.
Hartal or shutdown is, to a person of conscience and proper learning, is an obsolete tool of protest in the modern world. Our politicians claim that hartal is their democratic right but nowhere in the world it is practiced the way they are in Bangladesh.
The consequences of hartal in terms of economic, social and political costs are huge. Different trade bodies, economists and business leaders
feel that the country is facing a disaster because of hartal, blockade and political
instability.
Ask any businessman about doing business challenges in Bangladesh and most probably the answer will be political instability as the biggest constraint for the country's business environment.
There is no government disclosure of national loss on hartal, but many private think-tanks, associations and organisations estimated the loss.
According to reports of the International Chamber of Commerce, Bangladesh, hartals cost the country an estimated $200 million a day.
The World Bank in a recent study has taken stock of reasons why our GDP growth rate lost a full one per cent in the last fiscal year.
The violent political agitation campaign waged last year has been identified as one of the key reasons for this
downturn.
The economic blockade and 85 days of hartal over a six-month period led to  a US$1.4billion loss for the national economy.
Hartal is not helping us to move ahead anymore; rather it is taking us backward. But it seems we cannot also restrain the political parties from calling hartal.
During hartal, common people like day labourers can't go to work and as such don't earn money.
Schools, colleges and universities remain closed during repeated shutdowns. Examinations at different levels are delayed and some were held at midnight, but nothing seems to be moving the politicians.
Why should they? They are not affected, their children
are studying at foreign
schools; their health treatment is done at expensive foreign hospitals.
It is we, the common ordinary people, who suffer the most — about 30 million retail and small-scale businesses in the country have been pushed to the margins.
Starting from business community, civil society, people from all strata are speaking out their minds, repeatedly requesting the feuding political parties to sit for dialogue to thrash out their differences and relieve
the country of an uncertain future.
It is understood to all that we cannot avoid politics; but we can do without rotten politics. We can have politics without bitterness and intolerance;
otherwise, political instabi-
lity would continue and
commoners' life will remain miserable.
These shutdowns caused not only immense human sufferings but resulted in severe downturn for most productive sectors including garments, transportation and tourism.
Exporters are incurring
losses as they can not make shipment of goods, with factories locked and entrepreneurs and their businesses in
doldrums as to how to pay back bank loans.
Moreover, violent and destructive politics is sending negative signals to the foreign buyers and investors, thus causing a greater dent to our economy than the recent flood and natural disaster.
Investments and businesses are deserting us, and as a result the exports of garment products from Vietnam and Cambodia rose recently by 22 and 15 per cent respectively.
The tourism industry in Cox's Bazar has gone through hard time due to political unrest and frequent hartals of last year.
Most of hotels and motels in the tourist town remained almost vacant during the shutdown and incurred huge financial loss.
We hope to achieve the status of middle-income country (MIC) by 2021 to mark 50th year of our independence and already many moves have been made into the right directions.
To attain the middle-income status, political stability is directly involved in this development as there must be high investment rate from both international and local investors.
A recent report issued by the World Bank states that Bangladesh's GDP needs to increase from 7.5 per cent to eight per cent in order to
qualify as a middle-income country by the end of the next decade.
To gain a strong economic development for a country, business is the key but political instability becomes the biggest threat for our economic development.
The country can not afford to return to the politics of deep-seated division and violence of the past.
Street violence will lead to greater political instability and potentially slow the economy which had recently begun to gain momentum.
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