The New Nation - Internet Edition

M.T. Hussain

There is hardly any denial of the fact that in Bangladesh we have been having dearth of capable, efficient, honest and selflessly dedicated leadership not only at the top level but also at other lower levels. That is why corruption, mismanagement, black money and muscle power have been eating away into the vitals for decades of Bangladesh. It does not mean though that the common citizens of Bangladesh are equally dishonest, inefficient and bullies. Whatever our gains we have in the decades past had mainly been due to these overwhelmingly hardworking honest people of the country. The onus of whatever deficiency and ills are mainly due to the inferior leadership quality at different levels. There is thus felt in the country an urgent need for better role models of leadership in our society.

Bangladesh is not only a newly independent country in the modern sense of the term but also has been accompanying past legacies and remnants of imperialism, feudalism, massive poverty mixed up with illiteracy and lack of enough education for all people needed for modern citizenship to nurture democracy as an effective social management tool. These underdevelopment syndromes have no easy quick fixes.

The unusual price spiral of the essential food items as of late has proved beyond any doubt that a section of extremely greedy businessmen had many things in scheming in the matter. Had they been little considerate and moral, spiral price rise would not have been the way we have had in the past weeks.

We have thus dishonesty in the sphere, despite the fact that Islam teaches Muslims to be honest businessmen through providing huge motivation for great reward in the afterworld for the honest traders. But as Muslim businessmen we care little to be honest and moral in Bangladesh.

Highly educated men and women run bureaucracy and administration of Bangladesh. But the question is, how many of them stick to ethics and morality for selfless service to the common people? Had they been honest, moral, selflessly dedicated to their officially assigned work, we could certainly have averagely corruption- free efficient service from them for the country.

Unfortunately, multiplication of corruption in huge scale and ineffectiveness of service delivery to the people have assumed very large proportion not only among the corrupt businessmen and administrators but even more among the greedy and self-seeking politicians, in many cases, in league with the corrupt businessmen and immoral bureaucrats.

We had politicians of high moral integrity just a generation or two ago who used to spend from their own pocket so much so that some of them like Nawab Salimullah, the founder of the All India Muslim League in 1906 in Dhaka, was known to have had gone bankrupt for organising the League before his premature death at 44 only in mid January 1915.

So had been selflessly dedicated Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Shere Bangla A K Fazlul Haq and Maulavi Tamizuddin Khan etc. They had hardly any big house anywhere except the ancestral homes of old types, sometimes of semi permanent tin shed and nothing of costly built pucca ones. How about for the present generation leadership to follow the role model of those selflessly dedicated leadership?

Even in the permissive society of the West having easy means for acquiring private property through the free market economy banking leasing system, we have examples of selfless leadership just as one I recall at this moment of a British Prime Minister, Edward Heath (Conservative) who after he set to leave the 10 Downing Street following the fall of his government in early 1970s, he took to a taxi in front of the pavement of the official residence of the Prime Minister to a friend's home for sharing his residence as Heath had no home in London of his own.