The cost benefit analysis of pursuing hartal to the nation

by M Ashraf Al Haq
July 20, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1596/the-cost-benefit-analysis-of-pursuing-hartal-to

Before reading this article, the politicians have to understand the meaning of Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), Hartal and true meaning of a nation, only then they will understand the accurate denotation deep inside this analysis and get the real essence of the implication of hartal continuation.

Firstly, let us analyse what is a nation, and what should be our duty to the nation. According to Wikipedia, 'Broadly speaking a nation may refer to a community of people who share a common territory and government; and who often share a common language, race, descent, and/or history. It can also refer to the inhabitants of a sovereign state irrespective of their ethnic make-up. In international relations, nation can refer to a country or sovereign state'. And a great expert in the field (Matt Rosenberg) wrote, 'A nation, however, is a tightly-knit group of people which share a common culture. A nation-state is a nation which has the same borders as a State'.

And on duty to the nation, the scouts group of University of Massachusetts Lowell, writes, 'Our duty to our country (nation) is, of course, part of our duty to God; and therefore our duty to our country cannot possibly be made an excuse for not doing our duty to God. It is well to have this fact firmly fixed in our minds,..."Country" means land with its hills and valleys, mountains and plains, rivers and streams, big and little lakes, harbours and seaboards, fertile lands and barren tracts, rock and swamp, -- and all this, although it is merely a vast quantity of physical matter clothed in wonderful forms, is but a symbol of what we really mean when we promise to do our best to serve God and our country. The soil, with all its varieties, is the place upon which we rest our feet and from which we draw the manifold necessities for physical life, such as food, wood, and metal; but our country in a deeper sense is the human life which the land supports, and this we call the nation; but there is something even deeper than the nation regarded merely as a vast population in the mass, and that is the nation regarded as composed of individual men, women, and children...It is just so with the life of the nation as a whole. It depends ultimately upon the strength of every individual citizen, and, even more than that, upon the strength of every man, woman, and child, and of every inhabitant within its borders...It is the duty of every single individual ...to be as strong as he possibly can be in his body, his mind, and his character; and, by so doing, he will be serving his country in the very best way possible. This is the most important way of doing our duty to our country and corresponds exactly with our duty to God; if we begin by serving our country in this way, we shall find out many other special ways of being useful to it'.

Now we analyse hartal in its true sense. 'Hartal was originally a Gujarati expression signifying the closing down of shops and warehouses with the object of realising a demand. MK Gandhi (Father of the Indian Nation), who hailed from Gujarat, organised a series of anti-British general strikes which he called hartals, thereby institutionalizing it. The contemporary origins of such a form of public protest dates back to the British colonial rule in India. Repressive actions infringing on human rights by the colonial British Government and princely states against countrywide peaceful movement for ending British rule in India often triggered such localised public protest' (the Wikipedia on hartal).

Furthermore, on 20th June 2011, Prof. Abdullah A Dewan (Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University, USA), writes in the Daily Sun, 'The title says it all. The word "hartal" is construed here as an acronym for "Hateful Act Rendered To Afflict Loss". In fact, UNDP estimates claim that hartals account for approximately 3 percent GDP loss annually – evidently not counting the all-enveloping social costs'. He further states, 'Forcible observance of hartal is nothing new in Bangladesh. With the restoration of democracy in 1990 the frequency of hartal — contrary to people's expectations — has increased steadily for the worse. Between 1999 and 2002, nearly 332 incidences of hartals were recorded. During … 2002—2006 the' opposition 'called 270 hartals. It seems democracy – instead of fostering civility in politics — facilitated incivility and incidences of hartal... As a columnist, my first article "The political economy of hartals" was published in The Daily Star and The Financial Express on 25 and 26 March, 2005 respectively... The police are still being deployed to crush hartal with the same ferocity... Everyone including the hartal callers would agree that hartal is harmful – ceasing most economic activities in cities and markets – one that's tantamount to calling for an "economic boycott" as I see — one that perpetrates a permanent loss of goods and services from the economic stream. A stronger characterisation would be to call hartal a self-inflicted act of economic terrorism'. According to him it should have been 'a call for hartal as a last resort'.

On the 9th of April 2011, BBC declares, 'Indian activist Anna Hazare ends hunger strike', as he states, 'his success was a victory for the people of India'. BBC further reports, 'Indian anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare has ended a 96-hour hunger strike, after ministers agreed to all of his demands...The 72-year-old campaigner is pushing for tough anti-corruption laws, and has gained huge public support'.

On May 8, 1932, Mahatma Gandhi started a 21-day hunger strike in protest against the British authorities in India. His hartal and hunger strike was a result of peaceful movement, nonviolent resistance, which is totally missing in hartal called by activists in Bangladesh today. All great leaders promoted Nonviolent resistance, like Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Andrei Sakharov, Martin Luther King, Jr., Václav Havel, Lech Wałęsa and so on. The news such as, 'The clashes erupted when thousands of Islamists cut off a stretch of highway leading to the capital's (Dhaka) eastern suburbs with barricades' (The Reuters, 10 July 2011), really demands urgent attention.

Now let us investigate the meaning of CBA, and fit the meaning to our current situation in Bangladesh. Cost benefit analysis, 'involves comparing the total expected costs of each option against the total expected benefits, to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and by how much' (Wikipedia).

F. John Reh further writes, 'A cost benefit analysis is done to determine how well, or how poorly, a planned action will turn out. Although a cost benefit analysis can be used for almost anything...'a cost benefit analysis finds, quantifies, and adds all the positive factors. These are the benefits. Then it identifies, quantifies, and subtracts all the negatives, the costs. The difference between the two indicates whether the planned action is advisable. The real trick to doing a cost benefit analysis well is making sure you include all the costs and all the benefits and properly quantify them'.

So from above partaking we understand the meaning of nation, duty towards it, the meaning of hartal and its noble start as a non violent movement and not bludgeon-carrying movement, the meaning of cost benefit analysis and where we can head to in the future.

A true sense of brining a change to the current notion can be hunger strikes like M K Ghandi or Anna Hazare. 'Hunger strikes have been used to change policy and social wrongs for hundreds of years...Fasting until an injustice is corrected is a nonviolent tactic' (Wikipedia).

The benefits from a Peaceful Hartal can be a breath of fresh air, less traffic, a chance to revise studies at home, one can walk to work, less pollution, peaceful roads, and children can play on the roads and so on. But the costs of these Bludgeon-Carrying Hartals (BCH) are, detrimental to the economy (a day it costs millions of dollars loss to this poor but developing nation), disruption to transport network, blazing of buses and cars, and damaging shops, severe injuries, wounds and growth of animosity, ill feelings and bad mouth, schools closed and exams delayed, earning stopped and missing of flights, and above all sympathy is eroded because of misunderstanding and mistrust between the negotiating parties. We should always remember the current and past achievements just by hunger strikes or peaceful non violent movement that can achieve enormously and which outweighs ill conceived plans and actions by recent opposition actions.

The Islamists move with terror (bludgeon-carrying) in a world of fright towards them shakes all mind and thinking. What sort of Islam are they propagating - terror Islam or peaceful Islam? I think the government has an urgent duty to check these growths right now, before we are in the danger of international question raised due to non interference. The CBA analysis has to be done by both parties. The real leader who is visionary will understand that achieving a result is depended on this Cost Benefit Analysis before a task is undertaken. One has to see whether running with swords will work or running with head and mind will bear fruit? We all have to stop for a while, take a deep pause and understand what is our goal? Is creating a chaos a goal? Then it has to be stopped. If a government is stopping a chaos it will be hailed. Because the angels are with the government initiatives. But if the government were brutal, like brutal kings in the past, then angels might be not with them, hence the confusion will mount and a natural order will have a say, as we see in case of Ghandiji. But in Bangladesh, we all see that in the analysis, the hartal callers are not in the path of negotiation, or normalcy, but rather resorting to ill tactics, and not wise one, therefore the popular support is missing, rather indisputably eroding.

One can Raise A Query for every point that is hoisted by the ruling authority, but the adherence of norms and values will make the CBA in ones favour. We should always keep this Cost Benefit Analysis in our mind, so that we are not missing the point or not losing the nation or its people. Though there are many environmental benefits in terms of non traffic observance due to hartal enforcement, the question arises; will it serve any benefit to a violent call? Anna Hazare, or Mr. Ghandi changed the world just by calling or keeping a hunger strike, and as we belong to the same nation, so why we should not learn? I think anybody willing to participate in active politics must study first the rule of law, the duty to one's nation, the political achievement history, the common sense approach in dealing with human psychology and above all, the meaning of peace, happiness, nation building criteria, and above all the correct way to calculate the CB analysis. In Malaysia, it is mandatory to go through marriage lessons and duties before getting married, which helped to a significant extent in resolving the divorce rates – so one should think twice before getting married, whether it's ok to marry or not, so similar lessons will help an active politician to do a Cost Benefit Analysis by attending such political courses before pursuing that career. An informed, educated politician will be a better choice than a questionable egoist running for that prime position, I believe. I am confident that all the politicians in Bangladesh will understand fully the true meaning of self image, respect, dignity, and building a calculative decision making process to achieve a desired end, not an act of sudden madness or miscalculating the cost benefit part. That will be disastrous.

Related Topics:  Op-Ed and Editorial receive the latest by email: subscribe to weekly blitz's free mailing list