CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md.

Saidur Rahman

CIVIL SOCIETY

IN

BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT

AND

FUTURE

BACKGROUND
Bangladesh is a low-income country with a staggering population of 157.6
million1 people within a land area of 147,570 sq. km2 (BBS 2013). Bangladesh
is the most densely populated country in the world with a population density
of 1,068 per sq. km (BBS 2013). Bangladesh is a riverine country with
predominantly agrarian society at the time of independence. With booming
industries like readymade garments, pharmaceutical and shipping, the
countrys economy is shifting toward manufacturing and service sector and a
rapid urbanization is in the process. The country is vulnerable to regular
natural disasters where climate change is making the situation worse by
increasing the intensity of disasters. 31.5% of the population live below the
poverty line (World Bank 2010), most of whom live in rural areas with limited
job opportunity or in geographically vulnerable coastal areas or in urban
slums. Though government managed to sustain a decent 6 percent economic
growth rate3 for last few years (World Bank 2013), the poverty reduction rate
is not impressive for Bangladesh. Political inefficiency and governments lack
of resources further contributes to the gloomy picture and calls for strong
civil society engagement.
POLITICAL HISTORY

OF

BANGLADESH

1 http://www.bbs.gov.bd/home.aspx
2 http://www.sid.gov.bd/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/BANGLADESH-at-a-glance-Census2011.pdf
3 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG/countries/1W-BD?display=graph
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Bangladesh became independent in 1971 from Pakistan after a nine-month

long war. Sheikh Muzibur Rahman4 formed the first post-independence on
secular nationalism and ruled the country in a semi-authoritarian style during
1971-1975 (Quadir 2003). During this time, government limited the freedom
of press and restricted the role of private sector. Very soon, the people
become dissatisfied with the government and eventually military took over
the power through military coups. General Ziaur Rahman 5 ruled Bangladesh
during 1976-1981 and replaced secularism with Islamic values to use religion
to gain support. With 12% Hindu minority and considerable tribal population
in hilly areas, this strategy gave rise to the ethnic tension in Bangladesh
(Quadir 2003). The next military government, ruled by General H. M Ershad 6,
governments revitalized the private sector, shut down many state own
enterprises that were suffering substantial loss due to inefficiency and
corruption (Lewis 2011) and decentralized local government by introducing
upazilla subdistrict system at the local level to create legitimacy for the
military government (Cook and Manor 1998). However, the government
failed to gain political legitimacy and eventually democracy entered into
Bangladesh following a widespread movement by students, political parties,
4 Sheikh Muzibur Rahman was the head of Awami League and first President of Bangladesh.
Muzib is also referred as Father of the Nation. Muzib was assassinated in 1975 during military
coup.
5 General Ziaur Rahman was considered as war hero. He became president in the aftermath of
the military coup. He founded Bangladesh Nationalist Pastry (BNP) one of the two major
political parties.
6 Genreal H.M. Ershad succeeded Ziaur Rahman to rule Bangladesh as second Military president
following Zias assassination. He founded Jatiya Party (JP), the third major political party of
Bangladesh.
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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

public sector employees, middle-class professionals and NGOs in 1991. The

first BNP7 government (1991-1996) got rid of upazila councils after losing the
majority in local level election. Series of strikes by opposition - AL in later
part of this government brought a halt in countrys economy. During the first
AL government (1996-2001), water-sharing treaty and Chittagong Hill Tract,
Jamuna Bridge Project was their biggest success; by the end of the term, AL
government became highly corrupt and inefficient. The second term of BNP
government (2001-2006), Islamist group rose to the power and country
experienced series bomb attacks by fundamentalist groups. The country
ranked as the top corrupt country by Transparency International during 20012005

(Lewis

2011).

During

2007-2009,

military

backed

caretaker

government in the place, and countrys democracy was threatened. Later,

pressured by foreign countries and civil societies, caretaker government
handed over the power to the newly elected AL government.
HISTORY

OF

VOLUNTARY ACTIONS

AND

CIVIL SOCIETY

IN

BANGLADESH

The earliest form of civil society in rural East Bengal known as samaj
(Society), local community established by the religious value. Samaj was
responsible to maintain the social order by employing matbars, elders of the
society, who would operate through shalish, village-level council, to manage
social issues and development (Lewis 2011). Lewis (2011) identified three
types of voluntary actions in East Bengal religious charity, philanthropy and
7 Bangladesh Nationalist Party, formed by General Ziaur Rahman. Khaleda Zia, Zias wife, later
became the chairperson of the party. Khaleda Zia became the prime minister of Bangladesh twice
1991-1996 and 2001-2006.
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self-help. Religious charity included Islams provisions for zakat8 to help the
poor, Hindus customs to provide food to religious and spiritual personalities,
Christian missionaries voluntary activity in education and health sector.
Affluent people of the community would carry out philanthropic activity by
building mosque, school, madrasa or providing relief to disaster affected
people. Some limited self-help organizations like Palli Mangal Samitis (Village
Welfare Society), Cooperatives etc. also existed in the pre-independent
Bangladesh.
The history of civil society in Bangladesh is relevant since British colonial era
when Bengal civil society actively engaged in the independent movement.
Since then civil society of Bangladesh adopted an approach to confront the
state (Quadir 2003). The relationship between civil society and state further
deteriorated when a group of civil-military bureaucratic elites (Quadir
2003) captured the power in Pakistan period and exploited the people of East
Pakistan, which is the present day Bangladesh. Civil Societys language
movement in 1950s triggered the independence movement, which ultimately
resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. Even after the liberation, the
disentanglement between the state and civil society existed.
The civil society of Bangladesh experienced a transformation from preindependence period to post-independent period. Prior to independence, civil
society comprised of students, lawyers, journalists, cultural activists etc. and
focused on political movement i.e. language movement which are known as
8 According to the Islamic Law, Muslim people requires to give one-fortieth of ones income to
the poor, known as zakat one of the pillars of Islam religion.
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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

old civil society (Hashemi and Hasan 1999). Immediately after the
independence, so-called civil-authoritarian government absorbed the old
civil society into state control civil society (Jalal 1995) by coopting them
into official organizations and party affiliated groups. Subsequently,
military governments further weakened civil society replacing the focus from
social to military (Jahangir 1986). Such coercion contributed to the
emergence

of

new

civil

society

organizations

like

nongovernmental

organization (NGOs), pressure groups and umbrella organizations with

broader focus.
CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS

IN

BANGLADESH

The countrys civil society received widespread recognition soon after when
Professor Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen bank received Nobel Prize in
2006. Over the years, civil society organizations (CSOs) in Bangladesh
carried out extensive work in socio economic development on various issues
largely funded by donors. The number registered CSOs in Bangladesh is
259,774 (Tasnim 2012). Chart 1 gives an account of CSOs corresponding to
different types:

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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

Chart 1: Num ber of Registered CSO s (2004 or 2005) in Bangladesh

189,847

45,508

1,997

8,271 6,607

465

6,780

299

De ve lo p me n t NGOs Re c e ivin g Fo re ig n Fu n d in g

Source: Tasnim 2012 (Based on the statistics of different types of civil society
organization collected from the bookers of respective institutions and their
websites)

Different CSOs fall under different ministries and institutions like NGO Affairs
Bureau, Ministry of Social Welfare (MoSW), Ministry of Women and Childrens
Affairs (MoWCA), Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS), Ministry of Local
Government, Rural Development and Co-operations (MoLGRD) etc.
According to Tasnim (2012), the civil society in Bangladesh is considerably
vibrant in term of density after the Philippines among different Asian
countries. Chart 2 provides a comparison of CSOs among selected Asian
countries between 2001 and 2005.

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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman
Chart 2: Number of Registered CSOs and CSO Per 1000 Inhabitants in Selected Asian Countries (2000-1005)
700,000
600,000
500,000
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
0

604,800
259,774

249,000
12,000

Numbers of CSO Registered

12,000

3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0

CSO Per 1000 inhabitants

Source: Tasnim 2012 (Collected from various websites, reports and journal articles)

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOS)

IN

BANGLADESH

NGOs in Bangladesh requires special attention in regard of civil society as

the NGO sector is relatively large. In some parts of the world, NGOs are
equated with civil society; but civil society involves other types of
organizations as mentioned earlier. For NGOs, different numbers are
available MoSW registered 54, 536 NGOs by 2004 (Lewis 2011), NGO
Affairs Bureau registered 1,997 development NGOs receiving fund from
foreign source (Tasnim 2012) and World Bank studies suggested 206,000
not-for-profit organization in Bangladesh (Lewis 2012). Nonetheless, the
NGO sector in Bangladesh is quite big and contributes 6 to 8 percent every
year (Irish and Simon 2005).
In 1974, a severe cyclone hit the country and a large number of NGOs
emerged to assist the affected people. Since then, some NGOs extended
their service to 20 to 35 percent of the population (World Bank 20006b) and
NGOs like BRAC and Grameen Bank expanded into giant organization.
Citizens often termed NGOs effort to provide basic services in health,
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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

education and credit as parallel government. Sometimes, government

itself delegated responsibility to NGOs i.e. BRACs role in primary education,
which in most cases, lacks accountability measures and receives foreign
funding to operate; for which critic referred Bangladesh as franchise state
also (Wood 1997).
NGOs in Bangladesh carry out wide range of activities i.e. credit, safe
drinking water, sanitation, health care, adult and child education, agricultural
training, road construction, skill training, environmental work, employment
generation, advocacy etc. The NGO sector in Bangladesh suffers from several
criticisms. First, there is no appropriate accountability mechanism in place
for NGOs to ensure their transparency regarding their expansion, source of
funding and expenditure. Secondly, NGOs self-serving attitude as they
involve in economic enterprise to benefit only their employees. Thirdly, NGOs
involve in economic activity and compete with business organization (BRAC
Bank) while enjoying special privilege (tax exemption) and ignoring their
social objectives to improve needy peoples lives. Finally, NGOs involvement
in politics, sometime for specific political parties (Proshikas affiliation with
Awami League since 1996), received further criticisms from citizens.
CURRENT CONCERNS

FOR

CIVIL SOCIETY

Civil society in Bangladesh works in various areas like promoting democracy,

good governance, poverty alleviation and social development. Some major
concerns for civil societies are:

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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

Civil Society and the State: As mentioned earlier, following independence

state put a restriction on civil societies while NGOs involved only to assist
disaster affected people during the semi-authoritarian and military regime.
Civil society was active against the military government that eventually led
to the democratization of the country. During democratic government, civil
societies emerge with a new outlook and involved in various social
development

activities.

However,

most

business

and

professional

organizations are in reality front organizations for the major political parties
(Quadir 2003). Similar trends exist in terms of various other associational,
educational, ethnic and religious organizations all of which belongs to any
of the three different fronts secular (AL), nationalist (BNP) and Islamist.
Apart from these, some organizations operate based on communist value.
Generally CSOs backed by opposition critics against the state only to gain
their political objective while CSOs backed by ruling party support
government. The only exception is the NGO sector that is still non-partisan in
nature. The relation of NGOs with the state has improved recently due to
increased recognition and collaboration. However, any criticism of state by
CSOs are not welcoming at all i.e. Khaleda Zia cancelled the registration of
Association of Development Agencies of Bangladesh (ADAB) on the ground of
political involvement in 1992 or recent corruption report by Transparency
International Bangladesh reported corruption by state officials which several
AL government ministers severely criticized.
Civil Society and Democracy: The role of civil society in Bangladesh has
been crucial in the struggle against military regime when people from
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different social sectors came together. Civil society played instrumental role
to establish a provision for ninety-day caretaker government during the
election period to ensure a fair election and smooth power transfer. However,
the democracy at present, in Bangladesh is far from ideal. At the beginning,
the country ensured only minimalist democracy regular elections,
peaceful transfer of government power, guarantee of basic freedom and
civilian control over institutions and policy (BRAC 2009). Later, disruption of
the law and order, party favored political and legal institutions and misused
state power contributed to illiberal democracy (Lewis 2011). Different
international organization like World Bank, International Monetary Fund,
UNDP are funding CSOs to push the agency of good governance to ensure
transparency and tackle corruption (Parnini 2006). Transparency International
Bangladesh (TIB), local edition of Transparency International (TI), runs
several campaigns like Youth Engagement and Support (YES), Shojon
(Citizens for Transparency), Young Professionals against Corruption (YPAC)
etc. and publish various reports regularly regarding corruption 9. Till to date,
the success to minimize corruption is little as Bangladesh ranks 145 10 among
175 countries in Corruption Perception Index by TI. A local think tank Institute
of Governance Studies (IGS) mentioned that the parliament is not
representative of the electorates , public policies only fulfils interest of party

9 http://www.ti-bangladesh.org/beta3/index.php/en/
10 http://www.transparency.org/country#BGD
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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

people and widespread regional disparity exists across the nation in their
recent report11 The State of Governance in Bangladesh 2012.
Civil Society and Economic Development: NGOs like BRAC, the Grameen
Bank, and Association for Social Advancement, one of the civils societys
dominant actor in Bangladesh, involved in large microfinance sector to
provide microcredit to poor people in rural and urban areas. Microcredit has
been a largely debated issue. Opponents of microcredit criticized for its high
interest rate, continuous borrowing by clients, suicide by borrowers etc.
Proponents of microcredit argued that the social indicators like health status,
education status, women empowerment etc. is better among the borrowers.
Nonetheless, microcredit schemes provided loan to millions of poor people
who were left out from the financial sector to be the victim moneylenders.
Other than this, NGOs like Proshika ran a campaign on budget in 1997 (Lewis
2011), think-tank like Centre for Policy Dialogue regularly publishes reports
on budget to inform citizens etc.
Civil Society and Religion: The World Bank identified 189,000 not-for-profit
organizations as religious of the 206,000 not-for-profit organization in
Bangladesh. This indicates that religion is a strong force of association in
Bangladesh. However, some of the religious organizations took a stand
against social issues like dowry and organized crime. One such example is
Brahmanbaria12 Islamic Foundation targeted around 3,317 mosques in
Brahmanbaria to deliver anti-dowry sermons in different religious gatherings.
11 http://www.igs-bracu.ac.bd/images/stories/Publications/sog-2012%20full%20book.pdf
12 Brahmanbaria is district in the east-central part of Bangladesh.
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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

However, the clash between government and religious CSOs are also present
in Bangladesh.

In 2011, Islami Oikko Jote (Islamic Unity Group) staged mass

protest against the Women Inheritance Law that will allow women to get
equal share of her parents property, which they thought against Islamic
Law13. Simultaneously, the attack on religious minority within the country
increased in recent times. In 2013, one person was killed, 188 persons were
injured and statues, houses and businesses were demolished 14. With the rise
of Islamist groups and countrys drive toward secular nationalism may put
secular and religious CSOs in difficult situation in near future.
FUTURE DIRECTION

OF

CIVIL SOCIETY

There are several future concerns for future civil society in Bangladesh:
Accountability: Currently there is no proper accountability mechanism in
place to monitor and evaluate civil society performance. A new law for NGOs
are going to be adopted that will ask NGOs about the source of foreign fund
and program performance. The policy may ensure CSO performance but also
will reduce their funding options due to additional requirement. A balanced
accountability mechanism for CSO is necessary to overcome this issue.
Youth

Empowerment:

Increasing

youth

empowerment

and

their

participation in various civic engagements is contributing to stronger civil

society. Such engagement goes beyond careers in CSOs to voluntary

13 According to Islamic Law, women get only half of what her brothers get from their parents
property. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12956907
14 http://www.thedailystar.net/attacks-on-minorities-increased-35336
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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

activities, which will make citizen movement stronger and create a balance
with the other two sectors.
Urban Middle Class: The middle class in urban areas are increasing due to
their higher education and income level, which is shifting the middle class
indicator upwards. The urban middle class are more vocal and resourceful,
who have the ability to mobilize the resources fast. They have the potential
to become an important civil society groups in the power struggle.
Rural Areas and Coastal Areas: The expansion and activities of civil
society is mostly limited in urban areas. Rural people do not have strong civil
society representations to articulate their concerns to wider society. Coastal
areas, the most disaster vulnerable areas in Bangladesh, also suffer from
lack of strong presence of civil society. Civil society needs to address this
issue seriously to prevent unequal civil society, which may create another
type of patron-client relationship.
Bengali Nationalism, Islam and Ethnic Identity: In recent years, these
three issue have sparkled different types of conflict within the country. Civil
society, with the help of government, requires to take immediate steps to
solve

the

disparities

among

secular

nationalist,

religious

and

tribal

community. However, it will be a challenging task to come a concrete

solution soon, but it will prevent unwanted violent conflict situation.
Climate Change and Natural Hazard: Even though civil society responds
to natural disasters immediately, but ignores the preparation to handle
future events. Civil society needs to address climate change and natural

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CIVIL SOCIETY IN BANGLADESH: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Md. Saidur Rahman

hazard more articulately and demand government to establish relevant

infrastructure to manage such events more adeptly.

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REFERENCES
Blair, H. (2005). Civil Society and Propoor Initiatives in Rural Bangladesh:
Finding a Workable Strategy. World Development, 33(6), 921-936.
Gauri, V., & Galef, J. (2005). NGOs in Bangladesh: Activities, Resources, and
Governance. World Development, 33(12), 20452065.
Lewis, D. (2004). Old and new civil societies in Bangladesh. In M. Glasius,
D. Lewis, & H. Seckinelgin (Eds.), Exploring Civil Society: Political and
Cultural Contexts (pp. 100-106). New York: Routledge.
Lewis, D. (2011). Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society. New York:
Cambridge.
Parnini, S. N. (2006). Civil Society and Good Governance in Bangladesh.
Asian Journal of Political Science, 14(2), 189-211.
Quadir, F. (2003). How Civil is Civil Society? Authoritarian State, Partisan
Civil Society, and the Struggle for Democratic Development in
Bangladesh. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 24(3), 425-438.
Rahman, S. (2006). Development, Democracy and the NGO Sector: Theory
and Evidence from Bangladesh. Journal of Developing Societies, 22(4),
451-273.
Tasnim, F. (2012). How Vigilant is the Vibrant Civil Society in Bangladesh? A
Survey-based Analysis. Journal of Civil Society, 8(2), 155-183.

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