–MIR MOSHARREF HOSSAIN PAKBIR–

Around 2 weeks have passed since a new interim government, led by Nobel laureate Dr. Mohammad Yunus was formed in Bangladesh after mass movement toppled the Sheikh Hasina-led 14-party alliance government. The interim government has critical challenges ahead. As the new government is putting their focus on system reform, they are identifying new areas of reform everyday justifiably. But, to address the people’s concerns as well as to have mass confidence, the new interim government can implement some constructive changes in different areas at earliest.

The interim government’s primary challenge lies in navigating the volatile national landscape. It must address the pressing economic issues that have left many citizens in dire straits. Economic recovery is critical to restoring public confidence and preventing further unrest. Moreover, ensuring employment of the youth along with reforming the education sector remains a great challenge. Politically, the interim government must work towards building a credible and transparent electoral process that restores faith in democracy. Security remains another critical concern. With the police force in disarray and the potential for lawlessness on the rise, the interim government must prioritize restoring order and ensuring the safety of its citizens.

The path forward holds both uncertainty and opportunity. If the interim government can navigate the challenges ahead with wisdom and integrity, it has the potential to lay the foundation for a more democratic, just and prosperous Bangladesh. For that, along with the broadline plans, the interim government can start portraying small but significant changes in different sectors.

For example; the health sector can have some quick reforms. It is very unfortunate that, despite having qualified doctors and medical staffs, the health sector is far behind from any developed or developing nations in terms of its services. The public hospitals are full of different syndicates and a patient is continuously harassed by syndicate members in different phases. The advisor of the ministry of health and family welfare, Noorjahan Begum can take quick actions against these syndicates with the help of the law enforcers as well as army. Moreover, the advisor can call on the doctors and hospital staffs to improve service quality by extending support to the patients in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Many from the middle or upper middle class prefers the private hospitals or clinics. Their services are extremely costly considering the economic standard of Bangladesh. The government should take quick action to bring down this cost. Moreover, if time allows, the government should establish a world class medical facility including a hospital, a medical college, a nursing training institute and a research facility so that, the higher or upper middle class of the society do not need to go abroad for better treatment.

The education sector of Bangladesh requires critical reforms. Though the educational institutes were all opened from Sunday, many institutions did not start their regular classes. The education advisor Wahiduddin Mahmud can instruct all institutions to start regular classes as topmost priority. He can also initiate the changes in the curriculum and exam system immediately from the next year according to the standard of any developed country.

Moreover, he can declare a zero-tolerance policy for any corruption surrounding education and needs to act on that. He should also address the issue of collection of heavy fees at different private Bengali and English medium institutions. He can also take an action plan to improve the quality of education at institutions located at suburbs or rural areas. One of his critical tasks can be to ensure and increase the quality of teachers as many unqualified teachers are causing critical harm to our students all around the country. He can also take some actions to eliminate destructive politics from all educational institutes at earliest.

We have already seen some commendable steps or plans from different advisors of the interim government. Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan, power and energy advisor, has already expressed his commitment to stop price increase by executive order on Sunday as he said if necessary, the prices will be adjusted through a hearing at Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC). He also said to try no increasing the price of electricity, oil or gas, which will definitely comfort the people.

The finance and commerce advisor Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed has expressed his plan to improve the business environment as well as to control the inflation. He has taken steps to form a ‘banking commission’ to monitor the banking sector as critical steps are required quickly to eliminate any negative influence over the banking sector. We have seen heavy corruption in the banking sector during the past few decades. The banks are often engaged in harassing the small to mid-level loan takers while providing illegal benefits to the loan sharks. Hence, many small and medium enterprises even lose their business. Such harassments also need to be eliminated.

The information advisor Md. Nahid Islam already expressed his commitment to ensure a free media. During the period of political governments, we have seen the media to blindly praise the government and, in the process, many media personnels became unbelievably rich or received significant government rewards through posting or awards. Such practices should never come back. The media should remain free and it has to carry out its role as the fourth pillar of the democracy properly.

While we are opting for the reforms of judiciary and the law enforcement, it is important that we come out of the culture of filing cases against anonymous persons. During the previous governments, we have seen hundreds of anonymous persons in the accused list, which gave the police scope to arrest and accuse anyone and that led towards serious corruption. This tool of anonymous accused had turned out to be a great weapon to make the police act in inhumane and dishonest ways. The law enforcers and lawyers earned millions by harassing the innocent persons who were arrested or accused in different cases under the ‘anonymous criminal’ tag. Now also, we are seeing the same practice and it must be eliminated to ensure true justice as well as to bring the police force out of corruption.

Currently, we are seeing different representatives of different political parties giving different statements, which is confusing the populace and can harm the stability of the country. Only the selected representative from a political party should provide statement on behalf of his party. If a person is in a specific role in a political party, he can talk about issues surrounding his role only. Similarly, for a better and accurate communication, the advisors of the interim government should talk about issues concerning their ministries. This practice will also enable them to remain focused on their assigned tasks. Only the Chief Advisor can discuss about any issues. This practice will also be a great change.

The interim governments need to put focus on ensuring political reconciliation at earliest to ensure stability and peace throughout the country. Chief advisor, Dr. Yunus needs to take some serious step for the political reconciliation to establish a progressive environment as he needs to establish a system for free, fair, inclusive and credible election. The door of political reconciliation should remain open. Every political party should have the chance to participate in the election irrespective of their ideologies. But it must be ensured that money, muscle or power cannot influence the future elections in Bangladesh. Corruption must be fully eliminated from the electoral process for the sake of sustainable democracy, for which the student-led protests were actually staged.

We have discussed about only a few areas where the new interim government can start visible works. Right now, we are going through a volatile period and though there are much disadvantages of such period, many big tasks can be carried out at these hours. The people are ready to allow the interim government a longer period to conduct critical reforms and they need to show people the changes.

Dr. Yunus-led interim government has come with lots of promises. The aura of Dr. Muhammad Yunus has increased our expectations to a great extent. We believe his global image and acceptance will assist Bangladesh to reach new heights. With few small steps, the government can initiate implementing critical changes to bring the people, who are still bitterly divided, in full confidence on the new interim government. We hope to observe such changes soon for the welfare of Bangladesh as we want to move to a new direction.