Abstract
This chapter, based on empirical survey data, investigates the nature and trends of civil society, focusing on their resources, behaviors, relations, nature of activities, etc. The survey data reveal rich involvement of civil society in grass-roots actions while indicating their low participation in politics and state related affairs. This means that civil society organizations are vibrant in grass-roots social services. However, they lack the necessary participatory attributes for proper interest articulation and monitoring of the state, resulting in a less vigilant civil society. Data based analysis accelerates the mainstream argument of the book that civil society in Bangladesh may be noteworthy for its contributions to the development and social welfare but it can hardly contribute to democracy.
Some sections of this chapter are derived in part from an article by the author, titled How Vigilant is the Vibrant Civil Society in Bangladesh? A Survey-based Analysis, published in Journal of Civil Society in 8(2), 155–183, June 2012, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2012.726548.
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Notes
- 1.
In further analysis of the activities and nature of participation of civil society, these 13 categories have been compressed into four broad categories: economic, education and culture, pressure group, and welfare and development. Under Economic heading, all CSOs that have identified themselves as economic organization, agriculture organization, and labor unions and also CSOs in the other categories. This is because economic and labor groups are related to industry and business and micro-credit, the farmers organization are also cooperatives concerned with loan and micro-credit, again the 5 CSOs that have selected the other options identified them as either micro-credit groups or business and income related groups. Under the heading of Education and Culture all the CSOs that have identified them as education and research groups, cultural organizations, religious organization, and recreational and sports organizations shall be brought together. All CSOs that think they are government or administration related organization, professional groups and citizen’s group have been named together as Pressure group. Lastly, all the social welfare groups and NGOs have been brought under the heading Welfare and Development group.
- 2.
This booklet provides the rules for providing financial grant and loan to the voluntary social welfare organizations and cooperatives that were followed in 2006. This amount has increased in the last one decade.
- 3.
Respondents were asked in the questionnaire, “when a policy related problem or an incident occurs in the geographic area where your organization is active, how much influence your organization has in resolving these problems? Please rate your influence from 1 to 5 where (1) No influence, (2) Hardly any influence, (3) Little influence, (4) Some influence, and (5) Strong influence.”
- 4.
The confronting political parties prefer to engage on the streets instead of air their grievances at the parliament. Often the street politics, mass protests, etc., are accompanied by day-long nationwide strikes instigated by violence which is known as Hartal.
- 5.
In Bangladesh, although the Supreme Court is independent from the government, lower divisions of the court are still controlled by government-recruited magistrates. This issue is long-standing, and the political parties always promise in their election campaigns to separate the judiciary from the government. However, no such separation has actually taken place under either regime. The Supreme Court has ruled on this issue and in 2007, under the emergency rule, the separation process began.
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Tasnim, F. (2021). How Vigilant Is the Vibrant Civil Society?. In: Civil Society in Bangladesh . New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives, vol 46. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4404-4_5
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