What determines the size of political movement?

The words 'poverty' and 'politics' are two distinct words, yet they retain very strong reciprocity. The relation between poverty and politics can be identified when we analyse how poverty determines the nature of politics in a country - whether the mass political movement will be strong or weak. People often ask and seek the answer to the following question: What determine the success of a political movement? To paraphrase more clearly what determine the scale of mass political movement? In a multi-party political system, we see political movement and procession carried out by different political parties. People rally for their parties and come out in the street under the banner of that party.
However, a closer look at the composition of people who partake in the political procession of political parties reveal that predominant fraction of people are from lower class or from the poor class. Why is this? Why do not people from the upper class come down to the street to rally for their
parties?
The answer to this question is very much relevant to understanding the nature of the political movement and its dynamics in a country.  The degree of poverty determines the degree or scale of political movement of a political party. That means whether a party can launch a big political movement or not depends on the degree of poverty in a country provided that political practices are based on the game of retaliation. If the retaliatory political practices prevail, then people will not participate spontaneously in the political movement. Rather, a political party has to incentivise the people to participate in the political movement. For example, the Jatiya party recently observed  its founding anniversary happened. If someone has observed the different types of processions brought out by the activists of the party from different parts the country, he or she will see that over 95 per cent of people in the processions were from the lower classes whose income level are very low too. Moreover, most of the participants are teenagers and young people under 25. The high concentration of poor people and teenagers shows that people do not participate in the rally spontaneously. Rather a political party has to spend or give them incentive to chant slogans in the street.
But why is not a person from well-off class enticed to partake in the processions even if he will be given monetary incentive? The answer can be given following a very fundamental notion of economics - and that is opportunity cost. For a poor person spending five hours in political activities for a party in exchange for, say, Tk 200 is worthwhile since the opportunity cost of forgoing income for the time spent on political activities is not higher than 200. However, for a well-off person spending half a day in political activities for Tk 200 is not worthwhile since the opportunity cost of spending time for political activities instead of spending it for income-generating activities is very much higher than Tk 200.
Along with this factor, the game of retaliation has definite influence on determining the size of political movement. If the political parties play the game of retaliation and the game of revenge continues, the size of political movement will get smaller and smaller day by day. Politics will be recognised as a nasty profession done by bad people only.
In our social and economic set-up, people do not hold favourable views about those people who are directly and indirectly involved in active politics. Nor politics as a profession is well recognised in our country. For this kind of negative outlook towards politics in our country none but the political parties are responsible. Historically, they have been engaged in the game of retaliation. As soon as one party takes over, that party starts playing the game of retaliation with the opposition. Political hostility, open lies and public defamation are the common phenomena that we usually see and observe.
This analysis based on two factors begs its relevance in the present political deadlock. We are seeing time to time that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is calling for processions against the government but yet it is unsuccessful to wage a significant movement. Though there can be a lot of different factors behind such failure, including the persecution led by the incumbent government, the failure has a lot to do with the political outlook of the people of the country. Why don't mass people from special fraction ssuch as lower class people come out in the street to launch a protest against the government which has not taken over through an election in which all parties have participated spontaneously? Before the BNP or any other party launches any protest, it should realise this and endeavour to cope with such dilemma changing its conventional outlook towards politics.
Politics will be a passion and profession for all kinds of people if politics takes a constructive, and not a destructive, approach. A constructive approach will make people stand out against any persecution or injustice done by anyone. In that case, political parties will not have to persuade the people to join in their processions; rather the people will do it spontaneously. If we fail to ensure such an approach, politics will remain a nasty game of retaliation played only by politicians and leaders. The victim of such game will be the whole country. Instead of solely focusing on election, the political parties should focus on constructive politics that will bring change and also encourage people to get involved in political dialogues and processions spontaneously.
The writer is a faculty member of North South University.
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