OUR noble laureate Professor Yunus has spoken his mind unequivocally on the Savar tragedy; this is what one would expect from a noble mind to do during one of the greatest industrial tragedies of our times; hundreds of our garment workers mostly, young female workers, lay crushed under the debris of Rana Plaza.

The contribution of these poor workers should not be measured in terms of dollars or euros alone which they bring to Bangladesh; what is generally overlooked is the sight of streams of mostly young garment girls going to work in the early hours and coming back late in the evening or night; it is the spectacle of a moving and thriving new Bangladesh pulsating with life and vigor.

The degree of freedom and confidence they exude fill us with pride; we believe we are on our way to achieving the empowerment of women along with micro-credit in a manner which no amount of intolerance can stop; we are firmly set to fulfilling one of the most cherished visions which inspired our Liberation war: the creation of a modern, tolerant and liberal society in Bangladesh.

The projection of this positive image of Bangladesh to the world at large made these young garment girls our best ambassadress abroad and the backbone of our economy at home. No wonder Professor Yunus has so passionately and powerfully articulated the degrading status of these workers as ‘slave labourers’ echoing the sentiment of Pope Francis.

This is fundamentally, one of the most important reasons, as to why the buyers, retailers, the governments and the people, particularly of the US and the EC, need to realise that walking away from Bangladesh is no solution at all; this would tantamount to penalising the poor workers, compounding their sufferings, causing wide spread unemployment and perhaps pushing Bangladesh from its forward march on the path of moderation and modernisation.

Prof Yunus’s initiative at this point of time is, therefore, of crucial importance to the nation. His proposals on international minimum wage, trust fund and the initiative with the founder of Transparency International are indeed commendable; I feel that undue focus need not be placed on 50 extra cents of his proposal; its significance lies in getting the buyers to accept the responsibility of ensuring minimum wages for the garment workers internationally so that they can live a decent and human life.

Once the buyer’s ownership of the burden of the extra wages is accepted by them, public opinion would eventually impact positively for enhanced wages in the future.

Prof Yunus has already initiated the process of engaging a cross section of public opinion and intelligentsia abroad through a series of interviews to the BBC, CNN and Aljazera; he persuasively elaborated the sound rationale underlying his proposal on minimum international wage for the garment workers.

Prof Yunus’s argument states: “Everybody has to have the same minimum wage. Bangladesh will have the International Minimum Wage. Burma and Cambodia will have international minimum wage… […] These countries are part of the global economy; you cannot judge them with the yardstick of the local economy.” This should have a salutary impact on the public opinion in the western democracies.

More difficult and challenging task for Prof Yunus and the proposed citizen’s initiative would seem to be to move beyond the symptom and to try to cure the disease. As Prof Yunus observed, “Savar tragedy is a symbol of failure as a nation. The crack in Rana Plaza that caused the collapse of the building has only shown us that if we don’t face up to the cracks in our state system, that we as a nation will get lost in the debris of the collapse. [...] It made us aware of what Bangladesh’s dysfunctional system has led us to.”

The Westminister system of parliamentary democracy, which we have adopted, is under stress and strain; characterised by growing formidable challenges to political, economic and social stability. The present system has delivering neither democracy nor development; it is what Plato would call a ‘mobocracy.’

Crucially, this is negatively impacting on our goal of achieving major economic progress and development and for the creation of an egalitarian society by meaningfully reducing the widening disparity between the rich and the poor. If the current rate of growth goes below five percent in the context of the domestic crisis faced by the economy, it is predicted that our graduation from LDC status to a middle income country would become difficult to achieve in the foreseeable future.

Some serious and urgent rethinking is needed to achieve functional democracy inseparable from good governance.

It is time to have a serious look into the models of democracy and development particularly of the Asian Tigers; combining democracy with meaningful development, good governance, clean and stable government. This would enable Bangladesh to overcome the critical challenges, among others, of global financial meltdown, climate change, water, energy and food crisis, terrorism and militancy.

This should significantly help Bangladesh leapfrog from the current status of being amongst the poorest least developed countries to a middle income and developed economy.

The writer is a former UN Regional Administrator in Kosovo.