MEDIA headlines mention this fact constantly. Various members of the ruling party at all levels are involved in many kinds of money-making acts, including some in criminal activities, the most popular being extortion. In current political discussions, this has become about political domination and this reflects the nature of the rule where the ruling party will not crack down on such elements. These activities have been institutionalised and, to some extent, formalised.
Given the frequency of reporting, most economic activities require political connections and protection, including in crimes, but little is done to arrest their prevalence and growth. Some have blamed law and order agencies and the administration for tolerating them as a matter of policy while some say tjat the enforcers are also part of the trade.
Both are probably partly right, but they both indicate an emerging nature of the state which seems to have gone unnoticed. These events state that the monolithic state, always a contested reality if a reality at all, is undergoing a transition. A formal state which is weak always does the same because it is the package that comes with the systemic deficiency of the state.
‘Politics is economics’?
CHINESE premier XI Jinping said in 2023 that ‘politics is economics’ which essentially means that the responsibility of the political state is to ensure economic development of the people and the rest of the issues are secondary. This has led to some questions in the world outside China where the main point has been that China is justifying its lack of priority for human rights and political democracy by focusing on economics only. That essentially points to the inadequacy of China’s political system.
For the Communist Party of China, this point probably has less interest and given the current state of the world vis-a-vis Sino-US/west relations, it is of even less concern. The global conflict is not centred around human rights and democracy issues but trade supremacy and control over regions and their attendant markets. The anxiety on both sides of the conflict zone is clear. Can the both survive as successful economic clusters or will one have to give in as the current scenario cannot handle two super economic powers? In other words, international relations is also about economics, not much else.
Criminal economics and sustainability
BY DUBBING such activities as ‘economics of criminality’, we can at least try to understand why it occurs so widely and grows rapidly in many countries, particularly of the post-war variety. A problem of much political analysis is that it is value judgement-based, rather than evidence-driven, as a result of which we conclude it from a moral/religious point of view. So, it has become a ‘good-bad’ issue rather than a causal phenomenon analysis. However, as an overwhelmingly ‘religious’ fundamentalist intellectual society, all beliefs are held to be final, including radical political ones. This belief is, therefore, only to be expected.
In a value-neutral sense, crime is produced by necessity or greed. It is not a sin but an act of economics using force or forgery. It has been part of human history and human beings are all capable of it. In our history, every turmoil and change of various sorts have seen its explosive growth. This applies to 1971 and the days afterwards. And, it continues. The form has changed, but the content is the same. In Bangladesh, it has taken epic proportions because it has become a profitable low-investment, high-returns sector.
That crime includes corruption is obvious, but no one takes anti-corruption seriously any more because corruption is systemised and functioning is based on it. Hence, it is not ‘corruption’ any more; it is part of the function. It is normalised.
So, is corruption good or bad?
NONE, but it is inevitable but when the system is not capable of efficiency and functional activities fail to achieve other targets. So, if there is corruption in the health system, it fails to deliver health inputs; the corruption, and — over time, health delivery system — becomes unjustified. So, the issue is not about corruption being bad but inefficiency making governance irrelevant. An inefficient state is not sustainable and a threat to itself.
Such matters are also linked to the formal and the official part of the state which sustains such systems. The political party functionaries who are into extortion are also part of the formal system and in conflict with the informal society. The expansion of the formal state is how state politics and its related institutions are perceived. The result for the last decades after 1971 has been an expansion of the formal system, hence corruption.
The informal state has increasingly been staying away from the formal as it is not backed by state enforcement and is increasingly developing its own coping mechanisms. As it is not considered ‘legitimate’, no mapping of its growth is made, but emerging research is showing that.
The threat to the growing growth of politically protected economic activities, including crime, is that the end victim is the source of the function — the formal state.
Afsan Chowdhury is a researcher and journalist.