by Farhad Mazhar

New Age proposed that we discuss the role of liberal arts in our curriculum to fight obscurantist forces. To take up such a challenge we first need to make our premise clear. The following note is an attempt to do so.
   
   Education is by definition coercion. Such a claim may surprise many, since we do not consider education from the perspective of violence, but that is what is done when we ‘educate’ new arrivals to our world in order to integrate them into the existing web of our relationships, language, laws, procedures, ideologies, imaginations, fantasies, stories, narratives, et cetera, or, in short, into our pre-existing ‘system’. Education is a process to socialise our biology or bio-capacities to fit into the use of existing social machineries and practices. No matter how we argue, all such coercion is meant to make us ‘functional’ in society and the justification of coercion is ultimately based on enhancing our functionality in society as a human animal. The predominant notion of education as functional is what we would like to discard here along with its disciplinary and coercive measures, machineries and officers. Here are some preliminary reflections in order to reclaim education as playful, joyous learning through thoughtful engagement in our everyday life and relationships. This is part of the search to define a step to go beyond the present wounds of our time featuring, among others, war, violence, militarisation, fragmentation of the human community into various identities, cultural cloning of human beings as merely consuming beasts, profiteering as the only organising motive of society and transnational corporations as the highest form of global institution and globalising agency, etc. Education as prevailing in its dominant form ‘educates’ us to accept these as eternal realities without raising questions and coerces our beings to plug into the system. Issues that directly affect our lives are obscured and mystified. In this context, our task is not to reject education but rather transform it so that it can enhance our capacity to think, since we are losing this capacity to a terrible extent. Because of this failure, obscure forces from various directions are overwhelming us and diminishing our collective ability to play an effective role in transforming the world.
   I am a strong advocate of education that enhances our capacity for original thinking. I wonder why we don’t have thinkers like Bose in pure science where we do not need huge scientific laboratories and massive investment, which is not possible now. But we have human resources and there are huge gaps in science, arts and philosophy that demand original thinking, and our education system must enable us to occupy the gap. I believe it is possible, and if we put our act together we can very soon become a thoughtful nation and at the same time an original player in the fields of science and technology. Admittedly, there will be many areas where we may not be able to compete. But we definitely can produce mathematicians, economists, theoretical physicists, political scientists, philosophers good enough to rock the world. Why not? I believe we can. I am personally inspired by Jagadish Chandra Bose for his daring notions about plants and his ‘sacrilegious’ belief that one cannot draw a line between the animate and inanimate realm since the world is like a living organism and in continuum. As a practitioner in science my ideas of ecology and agro-biodiversity draw inspiration from persons like him. My prolonged engagement with agriculture tells me there are enormous gaps to fill globally, and there is hardly even any attempt to understand what agriculture is. To understand one must learn to ask the relevant questions, and one learns to ask the right questions only if one thinks. We are not thinkers, we have accepted our fate as functional agents. We do not study pure physics, only applied physics so that we can repair transistors or televisions; mathematics does not interest us, we are contented to learn C++ or Java scripts; we do not study economics but are eager to have MBA degrees and look for highly paid jobs in companies; we are not interested in political science but in public administration. Education for us is nothing but an effort to produce labour power for the business companies or to export to other countries as immigrants. This is a terrible situation. Debasement of education to provide functional skills to keep a peripheral capitalist society catering to the needs of global capital, as if people in such societies are incapable of original thinking, is deeply rooted in colonialism, racism and our internalisation of the notion that we are indeed inferior. We must wake up from this slumber in order to inspire our youths by telling them that they have a world to win and they must win it with dignity and the brilliance of their minds. I believe they can do it. The time is ripe.
   To enhance the thinking capacity of our society I also advocate ‘liberal arts’, but not the way it is conceived now, as if one could departmentalise the disciplines as they wish. The point is, whether we read literature, botany, physics, mathematics or economics, we first need to develop our ability to think, to frame original arguments, to ask the right questions. We must learn to identify the gaps in the history of thought, no matter which discipline we are talking about. So inclusion of liberal arts in our curriculum is geared to enhance our capacity to think. Thinking seeks fertile ground in imagination, in cultivating the ability to use and deploy metaphors, symbols and signs in order to break the weight of the prevailing language. This is the reason why I advocate reading poetry, short stories and novels, and include music, drama and painting not as separate disciplines but as integral to our education. However, I am not interested in ‘performers’ since glamour often confuses and undermines the capacity of arts and culture in nourishing our thinking. Enhancing thinking capacity implies that we are able to distinguish between trash from art, advertisements from culture. The prevailing notion of education presupposes that human beings, despite their differences from other beings as thinking beings, are ‘objects’ of manipulation, as if we are things to be moulded in educational factories. As ‘students’ our subjectivities are recognised only to the extent we are willing to submit ourselves to educational coercion and accept our thing-like status; we thus allow manipulation by people who are assigned by the elite of the society to be ‘teachers’. Such education bears the inherent danger of reducing all thinking or potentially thinking ‘subjects’ into ‘objects’ and becomes a hindrance to the thinking faculty. A self-critical education system is aware of this danger and develops inbuilt mechanisms to diminish the threat. One of the well-known approaches to minimise this menace is allowing ‘liberal arts’ to play a central role in education. Educationists argue that ‘liberal arts’ in the educational curriculum must be compulsory in order to nurture the imaginative, creative and thinking faculties. Philosophers are now also debating to what extent coercive socialisation through education actually hinders thinking or original experience that does not fit into the existing paradigm of various disciplines. In social science the thinking that challenges the existing paradigm is rather identified as a ‘radical’ or ‘destabilising’ act; all the coercive apparatuses of the state are set into motion to terminate such acts that are out of track, and often the thinker as well. There is also intense debate whether the thinking capacity of human beings are indeed pre-social or even pre-linguistic, despite the fact that thinking dwells in language but goes beyond the existing language to allow the thinking-subjects to be claimed by the possibility of new experience. An original experience that finds expression in language gradually becomes ‘common sense’ or common knowledge. Experience and knowledge dwell in words but words are also a barrier to new experience. Thinking, language, knowledge, innovation and education — independently or in their interrelationship — are now major areas of research and experiment. Philosophers are now suspicious of all claims of knowledge or truth. Ideology of ‘education’ is under critical scrutiny. The so-called civilising effect of ‘education’ as a universally positive feature is contested in order to demonstrate the particular nature of various educational practices and their direct relationship with power and the state. The disciplinary nature of education is studied as we study prisons, and surprisingly schools or educational institutions have more similarities with prisons than differences. What difference do schools have from prisons if both intend to ‘correct’ the behaviour of human beings? The prisons or correctional disciplinary institutions are like educational institutions that are part of the coercive domestication process. The notion of ‘education’ to civilise or tame our individual ‘unsocial’ being has the same premise when criminality is seen as located in the individual person and not in the society; legal systems and disciplinary institutions are created to ‘correct’ or ‘civilise’ the unsociability or criminality inherent in all human beings.
   
   Literacy is not education
   Education has become a kind of policing of our minds and creative faculties, and certain people who call themselves ‘educated’ obtain power and authority to dictate to others simply because they have certificates from some educational institutions. Education creates the illusion that the educated are wiser than people who do not have certificates from any educational institution. Education also divides the society into literate and non-literate and assumes that literate culture is inherently superior to oral culture. More ridiculously it assumes that with the advent of Gutenberg’s technology, we have erased or transcended the role of oral communication in knowledge transfer and generation, innovation and creative articulation. This is obviously an illusion; we are as oral as we are literate and literacy, like the skill to use computers, is learning how to use alphabets and words. As digital technology forges digital divides, literacy divides people by a similar technological margin. The recognition of patterns in an inked page is a feat we have to achieve, not only to gain knowledge but to get social credit. This is the reason why literacy, or for that matter, any skill training are not issues proper to the general discussion of education, but should be discussed under the critique of technology that should include the critique of the techno-organic extension of our biology and the transformations we often unconsciously undergo, risking degeneration of our senses, sensibilities and capacities as thinking human beings. Such an undertaking is beyond the scope of this article, but it is very crucial to realise that literacy is not education.
   Education is like making an alien ‘naturalised’ in a particular society at a particular time of history. Like all coercive processes such domestication usually continues smoothly without causing any ripples in the structured social routines of life since we hardly notice the process of manipulation. We take for granted that ‘education’ is something very normal and natural. The police, army, magistrates are the coercive apparatus of the state, and so are educational institutions. Society needs schools, colleges, universities or training institutions, otherwise we could not manage the ‘wild’, ‘accidental’ or ‘unpredictable’.
   
   In defence of ‘unpredictability’
   Shouldn’t unpredictability in human nature be the object of preservation, of education? Unpredictability is another name for originality, the urge to think originally of that which has not been thought before. To think the un-thought is the challenge of our time. Unpredictability thrives in our capacity to imagine — in our metaphoric ability to remain playful. Unpredictability is the horizon of all creativity, the realm that can never be anticipated until it arrives, until creativity manifests itself as an event, becomes part of our reality. But our so-called education aims not to enhance unpredictability, rather its arsenal is deployed to stabilise the status quo by bringing human society within predictable limits so that ripples that can not be managed are not created.
   Still ripples happen and sometimes they can be startlingly radical and world transforming. Why is this so? Is it because there is a mysterious subject called ‘history’ that decides on its own to make radical breakthroughs rather than undergoing evolutionary transformation? A materialistic understanding of both continuity and discontinuity in history is the primary condition in order to respond to this query. Grasping the materiality of real life situations is mainly to clear up the premise where questions about the role of human agencies could be raised (sic). Human agency cannot be reduced to a ‘thing’ or ‘matter’ and it is paradoxical to say history is objective while ‘making history’ involves and requires subjective human acts. Indeed the question of education becomes fascinating when linked to the question of its role in constituting agency (sic) both as predictable or unpredictable elements of history.
   Marx conceived a notion of education where people are ‘educated’ not only by the disciplinary educational institutions of the ruling class but also by the struggle between the classes. In criticising Rousseau’s idea of ‘education’ that requires ‘educators’, Marx raised the million dollar question: who is going to educate the educators? Rousseau presupposed ‘educators’, as if they are fereshtas from paradise, but aren’t they from the very society that they would like to preserve? So the question — who is going to educate the educators? — is indeed a profoundly original one. The response that society is the ‘educator’ and education is triggered by the contradiction and antagonism of the material foundation of society, that includes both production and reproduction and manifests itself as a struggle between various classes, has radicalised the question of education. In such formulation the unpredictability of the human agency has been restored at the level of the class struggle. Revolution as a creative act of revolutionary human agency produced by social education through class struggle is possible. The disciplinary or coercive notion of education has not been denied, rather reinforced, but the possibility of transcending the status quo has also been demonstrated. It occurs in the marginal spaces of society. The revolutionary nature of organising education outside its dominant institutional forms has been revealed. This is the reason why organising ‘study circles’ has always remained a central political activity of Marxist parties. Education is simply another site of struggle between the classes in a society. Education, as we understand it, cannot make us conscious of our role in history or cannot free us from ignorance, obscurantism or repressive ideologies. Our struggle as an oppressed or exploited class makes us aware of what we are and reveals to us the totality of our existence and therefore shows the way to go beyond the present. As a result we can dedicate our struggle to the emancipation of the whole society, absolving all classes, based on our experience of the totality of our social being in history. Marx is not saying that there is a mysterious thing called ‘history’ and it acts through our subjectivities or classes, rather at any historical moment the totality of the historical context may be revealed to us through the class struggle. But it does not reveal itself automatically, it is revealed through conscious struggle, in struggle that is thoughtful, operating in a thinking mode. In the thinking mode history claims us for the realisation of what is possible, doable and therefore inevitable. So it is not merely that we make history, but history also makes us accomplish the inevitable.
   This is where Marx is original and useful in the discussion of education, and practitioners of mass education should heed his pronouncements. Marxist discourse is also important to understand that the history of education is intricately related with the history of religion, family and the state. It means that any history of education will have to explain why and how education became independent from religion and the family, and became integral to the apparatus of the modern state. The theological nature of modern education can be traced by locating when and where modern educational institutions replaced churches, mosques or temples for a similar functional goal: to coercively manipulate individuals to win allegiance to its definition of truth, meaning of life and goal of human history. To achieve this goal, both the religious and the modern educational institutions reject or undermine the role of the family in educating a child except in areas assigned by these institutions. This is the source of fundamental conflict we now see raging between madrassah education and the so-called ‘modern’ education. Beneath the clouds created by the propaganda that madrassahs create ‘jihadis’, we know that it is in tune with the ‘war against terrorism’ strategy, before we even investigate and analyse the claim. But what is obscured by this propaganda is the fact that modern education created George Bush and Tony Blair as well, who are now the grand symbols of state terrorism. They are a disgrace to what has been achieved by ‘modernity’ as enlightenment.
   So we end by emphasising that confronting obscure forces does not mean simply confronting religious groups but also the forces of so-called ‘modernity’ who hide behind the cloak of ‘progress’ and manipulate us by being in control of the machineries of education and the dominant discourse. But we can achieve this goal only through enhancing the critical faculties of our mind and not by slavish and mindless acceptance of the ‘master’s voice’. We desperately need liberal arts in our curriculum to achieve this goal.
   Farhad Mazhar is a leading thinker

by Azfar Hussain

1995. Dhaka. I saw two children—of probably the same age—walk side by side. Their destination was visibly the same place—a local primary school. One child was wearing a clean T-shirt and a half-pant. The other one was half-naked; he didn’t have a shirt but was wearing a mud-coloured lungi. He was carrying the other child’s bag of books. The other is always othered.
   Let me now shift the tense and state the obvious: one goes to school; the other—a paid escort—only carries the books, one who would never read them, one who would never go to school. Classrooms themselves are class made visible. And education, globally and locally, is never a right but a privilege—a class privilege for that matter.
   Thus, in the case of Bangladesh, the question of education has always been a class question, a question that also brings up an entire matrix of economic, political, cultural, and ideological issues affecting and affected by the education system itself. In other words, to speak of education in Bangladesh is to speak of who owns, governs, manipulates, or even reforms both the material and mental means of production, involving the production of knowledge, interconnected as they all are.
   And, here, I feel tempted to invoke the Italian theorist-activist Antonio Gramsci. In his relatively well-known piece ‘On Education,’ Gramsci maintains: ‘It was appropriate to struggle against the old school, but reforming it was never so easy as it seemed. The problem was not one of model curricula but of the people, and not just of the people who are actually teachers themselves, but the entire social complex which they express’ (translation from the Italian modified by Joseph Buttigieg).
   Gramsci rightly places his premium on the interrelationships variously operating and obtaining among education, the people involved, and the social complex or system itself. Taking leads from Gramsci, one can move on to argue that education is not just simply a matter of acquiring knowledge and skills but is simultaneously an economic, political, and ideological question—one that I intend to take up, rather briefly, in the context of Bangladesh.
   

With a gradual decay in the education system of the country as a whole, and a flailing state of liberal arts and sciences education, leading academic Dr Belal E Baaquie, once the ‘toast of the town’ in Dhaka’s theoretical physics fraternity, and now with the National University of Singapore, talks to Mahfuz Sadique about the multifarious issues facing the practice, image and breadth of ‘the process of learning’ and the general perception of knowledge both in the country, and globally

New Age: As an academic involved in curriculum formulation, what is your take on the global trends in liberal arts/ sciences education at the higher education level?
   Dr Belal E Baaquie: It is widely accepted worldwide that intellectual broadening for students in majoring in all subjects is necessary to keep up with the rapid changes in global knowledge and in the job market. All students should take at least 20-30 per cent of their courses outside their field of specialisation. Almost all universities in the US have adopted this approach, and European countries are also moving in the same direction. Countries in East Asia are also adopting this approach. A pillar of higher education, in addition to intellectual broadening, is to impart critical thinking to all students. This is a bit more difficult and most elite institutions of higher learning worldwide have undertaken specific steps to inculcate critical thinking in their students.
   With specialisation as the driving mantra of academia today, what are the advantages of an elaborate liberal arts/ science education?
   All specialisations are based on the application of the fundamental knowledge of the Arts and Sciences. For example, MBA and business specialisations in general are all offshoots of the study of economics, sociology, political science and so on. All of engineering and medical sciences are applications of the fundamental physical and life sciences. Without a sound foundation in the Liberal Arts and Sciences, a society can never master the specialised and applied forms of knowledge.
   Does the incorporation of a holistic approach to education need attention at a more rudimentary level i.e. primary and secondary?
   Imparting breadth of knowledge should start at the primary and secondary schools. Reading, writing and numerical skills should be developed from the earliest age. Given the large amount of knowledge that has been generated and accumulated, specially in the 20th century, more and more educational material is being pushed down to the primary and secondary levels. A curriculum that integrates elementary schooling with higher education is becoming more and more important for successfully educating the new generation.
   What are the basic changes required to have a globally competitive, and locally practical, education system?
   To be globally competitive Bangladesh first needs to emphasise on English as the medium of education for all university and higher degrees. The courses need to be designed keeping the best global practices in mind. Courses based on memorisation and book knowledge are useless as these can be replaced by having access to a good library or to the internet. Education must emphasise critical thinking and intellectual breadth.
   For having education to serve local practical needs students need to have problem solving skills since local problems need unique and specific solutions. Copying solutions from other countries will not work. Solving problems creatively and with originality needs independent thinking and education should focus on imparting these intellectual skills.
   Aptitude for the sciences and mathematics is at an all time low in Bangladesh. In fact, science education is seeing an alarming depreciation across the globe. What do you attribute this to? Is there a larger socio-economic factor contributing to this in Bangladesh?
   Science and mathematics are the lynchpin, the key link, in the contemporary explosion of both theoretical and applied knowledge. All of the sciences are undergoing a process of deepening quantification and mathematisation, with the current focus being on arriving at a quantitative and mathematical understanding of biology.
   In this circumstance, any society that ignores science and mathematics will certainly end up by falling behind others. The global depreciation in science and mathematics is an illusion. There is enormous effort being put into the three leading and cutting edge technologies, namely information science, nanoscience and life science; all these three technologies are based on an advancing foundation of science and mathematics.
   In Bangladesh the subjects that students choose to study is largely determined by the job market, which at present does not require a high level of science and mathematics. In this circumstance the leaders of the country should ensure that a sufficient number of students study science to keep up with the rapid development of world science and to train science teachers for the schools and colleges. Universities have to keep upgrading their level of science and mathematics or else face the prospect of becoming irrelevant.
   What steps do you feel are needed to turn the tide, to induce a resurgence in a purer, knowledge-based education system?
   Education moves through cycles.  A few decades back engineering was quite the rage, which was replaced by computer and information sciences and with the current rage being the life sciences. There has also been a rush for students going for degrees in BBA and MBA.
   A knowledge-based education needs an economy driven by research and that depends on innovations, inventions and patents for developing new technologies. It is only a matter of time that all the simple avenues for advancing the economy will be exhausted forcing society to draw upon the fundamentals of science to make further progress.
   Knowledge is also an important component of the social consciousness of a society; once a society goes beyond merely bread and butter issues science becomes a major component of the culture of a society, of how the society views the universe.
   How big a role do you feel market dynamics plays on the education system, subject choices, curriculum formulation in today’s skill-driven corporate and professional world? Is the trend positive? What long-term implications would this trend have on the intellectual health of the nation? Or, for the world as a whole, for that matter?
   The corporate world needs not only trained manpower for mid- and higher- management. There is a pressing need in the corporate world for experts having technical knowledge as well. The educational system can benefit by responding to the needs of the market. For example, given the growing importance of textiles there should be a concerted effort to develop textile technology and the sciences that contribute to this. Another great growth area for education is information science and software in general.
   As long as the educational system produces graduates with real skills and knowledge, education will thrive; however if the graduates only have paper certificates with no real knowledge everyone will suffer.
   The greatest danger for the world is a growing divide between those who have, and those who do not have knowledge. The exponential growth of knowledge means that all those who want to possess knowledge have to integrate an enormous amount of ‘vertical’ knowledge before they can even reach the frontiers of knowledge. This enormous integration of knowledge can be carried out successfully only if students are properly trained from early childhood uptil adult hood. If a society does not take this task seriously their members will be permanently trapped in ignorance and the concomitant social and economic backwardness.
   In a previous interview, you had talked about ‘intellectual corruption’ in our intelligentsia? Would you care to elaborate.
   The intelligentsia of Bangladesh has a glorious history with the University of Dhaka having been the home of many outstanding academics and alumni. A drastic decline occurred after the [War of] Liberation when both students and academics were admitted to the public Universities based on their political allegiance rather than on their merit; quality education took a serious beating. Matters have come to such a state that at present one can be a full professor in the University of Dhaka without even having a PhD degree. Something quite unheard of in any university of good standing the world over.
   The reputation of academics is determined by quality of their intellectual products, be they original research or other scholarly texts. Once this criterion is given up academics, who should form the backbone of the intelligentsia, are in a state of free fall. Intellectual corruption is a term that refers to ‘intellectuals’ who hold forth on all matters without themselves having any creative and original intellecual output in their own field of specialisation. These ‘intellectuals’ should rather spend their time more fruitfully developing their own expertise.
   Only those intellectuals who have studied a subject deeply should offer their views to the public; the last thing we need is so called intellectuals passing judgements on matters based on guesswork and hearsay, or worse, based on their political leanings.
   Research is almost non-existent at our higher learning platforms. Some argue that with such a dilapidated state of the education system, and also the flailing socio-economic condition of the country, research funding is ‘unwanted’ and only a novelty. What is your take on this? What areas of the sciences would you recommend to get for research funding, if at all?
   Research is the lifeline of higher learning. Without research higher learning will soon be out of step with the rest of the world and Bangladesh would be permanently relegated to the backwaters of the world. Research depends crucially on the leadership of the Universities and of other centres of higher learning. For example in India even the most obscure University, with funding and infrastructure much worse than say the University of Dhaka, has a few dedicated souls writing papers in international journals. A culture of research has to be fostered that recognizes and rewards research. It is up to the Universities how they   organize this.
   As I mentioned the three areas of science and technology that have been identified as being at the leading edge of science are nanoscience, information science and bioscience. Research funding for these three sectors, or even one of these sectors, should be organized on a national scale.
   The private higher education setup has expanded over the years. There has been repeated criticism of these institutions for their lack of academic diversity, stopgap ‘patchwork’ knowledge dispensing and an excessive market-driven mindset. What is your analysis of this? Are private institutions going to be the mainstay of future higher education?
   The public universities have been politicised since 1972 and are beset with unending chaos, disruption and ‘session jam’. Serious scholarship and education have taken a back seat in the public universities. This situation may be reversed in the future but at present there seems no sign of any improvement. In this circumstance, private universities represent a historic breakthrough for higher education in Bangladesh and the pioneers who made this breakthrough have done a great service to the country. There are now at least a few centres of higher learning where classes are taught seriously and regularly, and with degrees being conferred on time. Another positive factor is that all private universities use English as the medium of instruction, thus providing a lifeline to the vast body of worldwide knowledge.
   Since the private universities are entirely funded from student fees, there is little option for them but be market driven, since as I mentioned earlier most students choose a subject to gain appropriate employment. To demand the private universities be comprehensive and well rounded is quite premature and unrealistic, as they simply do not have the resources or the students for such a broad curriculum. As the private universities mature, they will themselves broaden their curriculum as they will realise that a sound education requires teaching a broad range of subjects and not just job-market related subjects.
   To avoid the exploitation of students by unscrupulous people setting up private universities a first step could be to allow only non-profit organisations to set up private universities. Furthermore to ensure that the courses being taught are of acceptable standard there should be some sort of quality control of both curriculum and classroom teaching, preferably involving international academics to avoid the trap of being under the sole ‘supervision’ of local corrupt officials.
   Given the high cost of private universities and the huge population of Bangladesh, private universities can never be the mainstay of future higher education. Public universities need to be urgently developed since they are the mainstay of higher education and need to provide the required higher education to the youth of Bangladesh. Private universities will however continue to play a crucial role in the higher educational system. Private universities will hopefully continue to provide high-end university education that is responsive to the market and hence directly serves the economic and technological needs of the country.
   I hope that in the long run the private universities will evolve into universities providing the highest quality of education, something similar to the Ivy League and other private elite universities in the US, and will complement the public universities.
   It seems there is a lack of general appreciation for knowledge. It’s almost looked down upon. Why do you think this is happening?
   Of the many reasons why Bangladesh has lost its respect for knowledge, other than the obvious ones such as growing materialistic tendencies, or lack of opportunities for knowledge-based endeavours, it is the chronic corruption of our intelligentsia. It is a simple matter of professionalism. Just as doctors are supposed to cure, and politicians are supposed to serve, with due professionalism, the process of gaining, gathering and practising knowledge is no trivial matter. It needs professionalism.
   Well, for one, our intellectual class is doing everything else other than their primary concern: exercising intellect! Skimming off the surface, and just surviving on the stopgap materialistic solutions of consultancies, is destroying our academic community and bringing down with it the sliver of respect for knowledge and the credibility of the academics.
   Here is the danger: while the masses do not need to be knowledgeable — that is not possible — it is dangerous slippery slope, when they lose respect for the finer learning, or knowledge in general. Our intelligentsia should be wary of the trend that they are losing the respect once given to them. A society that finds no purpose in knowledge is not healthy.
   How is knowledge and its practice perceived globally now? Is there any depreciating trend?
   While the American idea of knowledge is segregated within the elite class, the European idea is quite different. The American mass is not in touch with such matters, though their intellectual class enjoys respect, as do the general academics; in Europe, and especially in my personal experiences from staying in Paris for six months, the knowledge earns the highest pedestal of respect. They feel honoured, and appreciate the company of a knowledgeable person. In fact, in general, the Oriental philosophy also holds great respect for it, still now. In Japan, no one is more respected than a scholar.
   However, I gather that this has a lot do with socio-cultural evolution. Most of the societies that respect and cherish knowledge are also economically and socially at equilibrium state, countries; whereas, developing and least-developed countries are yet to find a balance between the pursuit of materialistic gains and the scope of knowledge in that. Probably, this will need time and a strong sense of purpose.
   Appreciation and inculcation of knowledge is a primary role of higher education platforms. Where is this going wrong?
   Higher education is the platform to inculcate both practical and intellectual leadership. Yet, sadly, over the decades our universities have lost touch with any of the discourses expected of a podium of ‘higher learning’. While donor-prescribed policy had just spearheaded primary and secondary education, to mixed results, a complete indifference towards the bastions of intellectual rigour — our universities — has resulted, with even further catastrophic consequences, of new leadership, be it political, economic, or social, which is devoid of intellectual rigour. Or, for that matter, even respect for it.
   Mahfuz Sadique is senior staff writer, New Age

by Mahfuz Sadique

Probably not conceived as a symbolic move in itself, yet an attempt to remove a few bricks from the main foundation of Aparejeyo Bangla at Dhaka University, the statue erected in remembrance of the Liberation War and its martyrs, was to be first ‘real’ tectonic clash of ideologies to dictate Bangladesh’s polity nearly three decades later. This phenomenon would prove to be true for both state and its thinking organ: the universities. That year was 1978. The remerged and renamed contender was the Islami Chhatra Shibir, as the flag bearing student organisation of its still hidden yet omnipresent ideological mothership, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh; the defenders: the general students of Dhaka University, eternal bearers of the new flag of Bangladesh and its ideologies. While the Aparejeyo Bangla has come to symbolise the War of Liberation, independent Bangladesh, and in many ways the ideological building blocks that this nation is founded upon, the Jamaat-Shibir camp’s failed yet persistent attempt to dismantle the Aparajeyo is as literal as the story of the clash between theocratic political Islam and secular democratic politics could represent — then and now.
   In retrospect, Bangladesh had it coming. With less than a decade gone by, Bangladesh as a state was already diverging and dispersing from its original vision. A flailing state, its band-aided economy and even more bewilderment in the nation’s founding political establishment was taking its toll. The blazing days of the student-mass movement of 1969 fading, gradually, somewhere into the backburners of pre-Liberation history; its ideology being relegated almost to the realm of ‘revolutionary nostalgia’. The new nation, Bangladesh, was barely a decade old. With ‘secularism’ already dropped from the constitution through a decree on April 22, 1977 by General Ziaur Rahman, one of the founding principles of the young nation was already missing. Two assassinated presidents, two successful and a few unsuccessful military coups later, no one was quite sure where Bangladesh was heading. Almost as a precursor to the role-reversal of secularism, on May 4, 1976, a military ordinance by General Zia removed the restriction imposed on religion-based political parties and their activities right after liberation.
   Immediately after the ordinance, two Islam-based political parties emerged — the relatively progressive camp of the old Mulsim League reappeared under the same banner, and the theocratic camp formed the Islamic Democratic Party. Yet, the mainstay of the Islam-based politics in the then East Pakistan and later Bangladesh was to wait till 1979 to declare their presence. Through a conference on May 25-27 of that year, ‘Jamaat-e-Islami Bagladesh’ publicly announced their return.
   While Jamaat was taking it slow and easy, its student wing Shibir started early, and with a little attempt at secrecy. In 1978 they objected to the construction of Aparajeyo Bangla and even conducted a signature campaign against it at the University of Dhaka. Though their attempt was not successful, they did collect quite a handsome number of signatures. In a last ditch effort, they tried to sabotage the construction by removing a few bricks from the base of the under-construction statue. Their attempts were thwarted by the mainstream student political organisations and the general progressive attitude of the university’s students.
   In fact, Shibir’s movements had started becoming public the year before. On February 4, 1977, a few inductees and some old leaders of the Islami Chhatra Shangha, the pre-Liberation name of Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, gathered unofficially at the Dhaka University Central Mosque. After a short discussion and prayers, the meeting adjourned. They had a new name — the Islami Chhatra Shibir. But student political organisations at universities have a legacy that runs from the Pakistan-era.
   
   Beginnings
   The dynamics of student politics, and the role religion has played in it, has changed gradually over the years. Student political organisations based on religious ideologies, just like their mainstream counterparts, have almost always had their origins and visions pegged to their mother-ships, the political parties. Religion-based student politics in our higher educational institutions has its roots from the Pakistan period. Though, in their organisational strength and ideological rigidity they had little resemblance to their present day setup. In the early sixties, three religion-based student organisations operated actively: Pakistan Chhatra Shakti, National Student Federation (later referred to infamously by its abbreviated form: NSF) and Islami Chhatra Sangha.
   While Pakistan Chhatra Shakti was relatively obscure, the NSF and the Sangha had political muscle behind them. Established in 1956, as the student wing of the Khelafat-e-Rabbani party and later endorsed by then politically powerful Muslim League, the NSF had always been plagued by internal strife but remained a powerful and ‘bullying’ student organisation with direct backing from the East Pakistan governor Monem Khan. Though referred to as the ‘musclemen on campus’ and also responsible for first bringing violence into the student politics of Dhaka University, the NSF never had a strong footing among general students. And even more significant was their lack of political vision. Worth mentioning is that the cultural front of Khelafat-e-Rabbani, Tamaddun Majlish, played a pivotal role in favour of the language movement, in its early days.
   But the Islami Chhatra Sangha, the Bangla name of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, was a different story. Though, not a front running student organisation at the time, prepared the ground for the Islami Chhatra Shibir of today. Syed Abul Ala Maududi had established the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamic political party based on his own ideologies, in 1941. Right after the partition of India and Pakistan, the student wing of the party — the Islami Jamaat-e-Talaba (‘Talaba’ meaning students) — was formed in Lahore on 23 December, 1947. But until 1954 there was virtually no student representation in the organisation from East Pakistan. It was only in 1955 that a full-fledged East Pakistan wing, the Islami Chhatra Sangha, was formed.
   Another organisation that played a crucial role in galvanising the Islamic student movement was the Jamiat-e-Talabae-Arabia, though it did not fall under the general fold of student politics. This organisation’s member base were the madrassah-based students in the country. Till the mid-1960s they complemented the powers of the Chhatra Sangha.
   The first major clash, in terms of viewpoint and action, between Islamic student bodies and the mainstream surfaced in the 1969 student movement, when countering the 11-point general demanding self-rule from Pakistan, the Islami Chhatra Sangha put forward their own 8-point charter, which favoured the confederation. This resulted in the first visible alternative Islamic student force emerging alongside the majority student factions. There were even some violent clashes between the two opposing camps that left a prominent Chhatra Sangha leader killed.
   The beginnings of the Chhatra Sangha in East Pakistan might have been modest but by the late sixties they had mustered considerable clout within the organisation’s All-Pakistan (Nikhil Pakistan) body which culminated in the election of Matiur Rahman Nizami (presently a minister in the four-party alliance government and also the head of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh) as the president of the national committee. This was the first time that an East Pakistani was at the helm of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing for all of Pakistan.
   Islamic student organisations, taking their cue from their parent parties, always treaded the line of an Islamic state in direct contradiction to the ideologies of both the mainstream right and left student bodies which centred their actions around the four basic governing political principles of the progressive politics at the time: Bengali nationalism, self-rule, socialism and the most objectionable to the Islamic camp: secularism.
   
   Stepping stones to the mainstream
   While the actions of today’s mainstream student political organisations — some originating from the pre-liberation period and some formed later — have shifted from their original political philosophies (few of them consider their political charters as guiding principles) the contradiction between progressive and religious-conservative student politics, set off in the Pakistan period, carried on to the times of Bangladesh.
   While in between, Jamaat-e-Islami’s pro-Pakistan stance and its members’ involvement in acts of genocide during the War of Liberation made it the chief hate-target in post-Liberation periods. And as most of Jamaat’s leadership had come through the Shangha (presently Shibir), their slates were certainly not clean. For starters, the central committee of the Islami Chhatra Shangha in 1971 became the de facto committee of the infamous Al-Badar, which was responsible for the killing of intellectuals. Shangha members became members of Al-Badar by default.
   What is more disturbing is that, unbeknownst to many, the present highest decision making body, the Central and Working Committee of Jamaat-e-Islami — Majlis-e-Shura — is mostly populated by members of that controversial Shangha executive committee vis-à-vis high-ups of Al-Badr central and district committees. Starting from the present Ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami, the present industries minister Matiur Rahman Nizami, to the founding president of Shibir, Mir Kasem Ali, and the following two presidents — Mohammad Kamruzzaman and Abdul Zahir Muhammad Abu Neser — were all documented office bearers of the Al-Badr. They and many other former members of the Shangha, who later went into Jamaat, are responsible for ‘crimes against humanity’ according to documents at the Bangladesh Liberation War Museum.
   With this tainted legacy, Shibir started its new journey. After its re-emergence, it started expanding rapidly but with stealth. For the next few years, the University of Chittagong and University of Rajshahi become hotbeds of Shibir’s activities. The regions — Chittagong and Rajshahi — themselves had strong religious underpinnings, not of a subversive, murderous kind, but more spiritual and conservative than the rest of the country. They also made significant gains at other smaller, yet locally important educational institutions. One of their other major strongholds has been the Islamic University in Kushtia and the BL College in Khulna. Though the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology is a relatively young institute, the Shibir camp has gained considerable clout due to external factors.
   The process of Shibir’s recruitment was so discreet that it was hard to assess its total member base, or even supporter base. It was not until Shibir started flexing its muscles for control of the many residential dormitories at those two universities that its real power showed.
   Starting from the late seventies till this day, Shibir has kept a stronghold at the universities at Rajshahi and Chittagong through numerous student killings, terrorising general students and a general impression of their vicious political vindication. By the eighties, Shibir started being known as the rog-kata (vein-cutting) party since their most common form of terrorising was cutting the veins and tendons of political opponents. Despite the growing clashes with the mainstream student camps — the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-backed Chhatra Dal and Bangladesh Awami League-backed Chhatra League — Shibir’s overall presence at campuses was never as visible as the other two.
   Despite all the claims to violence, Shibir’s eternal quest seems to be that of legitimacy. Since its re-emergence in 1977, it has participated actively in every students’ union election in Bangladesh’s public universities. In 1982 they reaped the crop of that effort. The 1982 elections of Chittagong University Central Students Union saw the Islami Chhatra Shibir winning the entire panel with Jasimuddin Sarkar winning the coveted top post. This was the first time a Shibir panel had official legitimacy. The same year saw the first and only split in Shibir. A faction led by a senior influential leader, Ahmed Abdul Kader, opposing Jamaat’s direct intervention in the student wing formed an alternative Shibir. Though it was short-lived, some leaders of Shibir left around 1983. Most of them joined Chhatra Majlish, the student wing of the Khelafat Majlish party. In fact, the Chhatra Majlish is probably still the only other serious religion-based student political organisation operating at public universities. But their numbers are dwarfed by those of Shibir’s.
   After several years of public presence at Dhaka University, Shibir was dealt a blow in 1983. On February 4 of that year, Shibir organised their biggest public programme at the Ramna Battmul on their founding anniversary. The programme was trashed by activists of the Chhatra Sangram Parishad, an alliance of 14 democratic students’ organisations, which was agitating against martial law at that time. In fact, during a procession brought out by Shibir in 1982, a grenade attack injured two of its members. The 1983 incident was in many ways the death of Shibir’s public face at Dhaka University. In fact since, they have not brought out any public procession or held any gathering on the Dhaka University campus.
   But to presume that just the resistance from opposing political camps is the only reason Shibir has not come out strong in public would be gross miscalculation of its powers. In fact, Shibir’s ‘real’ presence at Dhaka University is as pervasive, if not more, than the two major political camps. Shibir’s overall strategy over the last two decades has been to lay low and gain ground through one of the systematic recruitment processes of any political party. Since there has been no students’ union election at Dhaka University for nearly a decade and a half, compared to other student political organisations Shibir’s true support base has never clearly shown.
   Throughout the eighties, Shibir had shown consistent performance at the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union. Even when they had little visibility on campus due to a combined alliance between the progressive left and the two major political camps, they invariably came third in the students’ poll and secured no less than 1,100 of the registered student votes. The figure is two decades old, but even by that standard a significant one. Another event that had an overall impact on the growth of Islam-based politics, and in its wake abetting Shibir’s growth, was military ruler General Ershad’s constitutional concession to the Islamic camp by making Islam the state religion in 1988.
   Probably an outcome of that decision came the same year when Shibir staged a full-fledged attack on the residential halls of Jahangirnagar University, which left a Chhatra Dal leader killed. Following the attack, Shibir faced a countrywide resistance, and the event triggered the eventual formation of the All-Party Students Unity, which led the anti-Ersahd movement at all universities.
   No public university charter officially acknowledges any political entity on campus. But while all major student political camps are represented and consulted with regarding major issues, the Dhaka University authorities have kept Shibir out of the fold from the very beginning. While in the beginning it was voluntary, with more and more Jamaat infiltrations into the teachers fold, this moratorium has been maintained by the strong opposition from the two major political camps.
   The dynamics of student politics saw a major shift after the 2001 general elections, as Jamaat became an ally in the BNP-led government. Taking queue from national politics, Shibir stepped up its offensive on opposing student organisations. And in perfect cohesion with Jamaat’s growing influence in both state power and its various organs, Shibir started enjoying privileges that were not there before.
   One of the first instances of misguided blessing from the main ruling party, the BNP, was during a violent incident at Rajshahi University in 1993. On January 14, a clash between Shibir and a combine Chhatra Dal-Chhatra League led to the death of a student. Instances of Shibir’s killings actually went into overdrive during the early nineties, especially at Rajshahi and Chittagong University. As a backlash of that incident, on February 5, Shibir and the combine ‘Students for the Liberation War’ got into a clash that turned out to be one of the most violent days in student politics’ history in Bangladesh. Five people died. Shibir had used crude weapons, including bows-arrows to attack their opponents. The ruling party’s student wing, Chhatra Dal, also opposed Shibir and was involved in the clash. But in an almost role-reversal, the then Home Minister Matin Chowdhury sided with the Shibir camp and even gave an official statement in parliament for them.
   Throughout the nineties Shibir’s clout has increased manifold. And there seems to be a grand strategy in all of its moves. Their recruitment process starts even before the students enter university. Former Shibir high-ups have gone onto set up university admission coaching centres where students with good academic records are taken into the fold. An agency recently reported that ‘Shibir is carrying out its activities through 12 university and medical coaching centres manned by high-level policy makers of the party across the country’.
   ‘Of the coaching centres conducted by Shibir, Focus for Dhaka University, Concrete for BUET, Index for Chittagong University, Success for Islami University, Songshaptak for Jahangirnagar University and Retina for medical colleges are identified as the main establishments’, states the report. ‘Shibir’s political activities that include new recruitment are carried out at nearly 150 branches of these coaching centres, where the Shibirites are teaching aggressive, vengeful values masquerading as Islamic values.
   ‘The annual income of these 12 coaching centres is Tk 25 crore, which they are spending for spreading their activities that includes arms training,’ the report quotes a Shibir activist as saying.
   The agency report states that Shibir leaders who are directors of these coaching centres include Shishir Monir, the president of the organisation’s Dhaka University unit; Badra Alam Didar, the president of Chittagong University unit; Abdul Hannan, the president of Islamic University unit; Sayed Fayjul Khalil, the president of BUET unit; and Mahbubur Rahman Jewel, former president of Dhaka Medical College unit.
   Those coming from rural areas and with financial difficulty are given assistance with subsidised housing and even monetary assistance. Blocks of housing have been rented under Shibir’s direct supervision at Shahbagh, Azimpur and Chankharpul areas of the capital. In addition to being used for housing, it has long been suspected that these are kept as bases for keeping a large of number of Shibir activists and assisting in their activities.
   With the strength and spread of Islamic political parties growing with every passing year, and as two Islamic political entities (Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and Islami Oikya Jote) are sharing state power, the underlying conflict between the mainstream and the obscurantists is reaching dizzying heights.
   Other Islamic parties which target universities, such as the, Islamic Shashantantra Chhatra Andolan, Islami Chhatra Majlis, Khelafat Chhatra Andolon, and the relatively new start-up Hizb-ut Tahrir, do not have any specific support base. But most activities of these organisations in turn have assisted the growth of the greater movement to legitimise Islam-based politics within the mainstream, or as is the case with such organisations, engage students with their politics.
   A sign of the increasing might of the Shibir during the first power-sharing of its parent organisation, Jamaat, came in 2003. That year Shibir demanded its inclusion in Paribesh Parishad, which is the university’s council of top officials and all student bodies to oversee the campus atmosphere. All Paribesh Parishad members in 1992 agreed not to allow any communal activities on the campus, a decision that was a blow for Shibir. The pact remained throughout the nineties, and in 1999, Shibir activists were again driven out of the Dhaka University campus by the Chhatra League when they tried come out publicly.
   On the other hand, this decade has turned out to be the rosiest for Shibir. A sampling of its confidence in its power base came in December 2002, when the then president of Shibir declared that no meeting of the Paribesh Parishad could be held without Shibir during the tenure of the present four-party alliance government.
   Following the alliance’s landslide victory in the October 1, 2001, general elections, Shibir had started asserting its presence at the Dhaka University campus by putting banners, sticking posters and bringing out processions in disguise on many occasions.
   The undeclared moratorium on Shibir at Dhaka University almost seems to be fading as in many other educational institutions. There has been speculation that some rising leaders and members of Shibir had actually crossed over to the mainstream Chhatra Dal and Chhhatra League in an attempt to infiltrate their organisational setup.
   As a catalyst for growth, Jamaat’s female students’ wing — Islami Chhatri Sangstha — has also been growing rapidly. It is very active in the female dormitories and common rooms, where they make targeted interferences on girls’ concerning their lifestyle, and in the process coercing them into their fold.
   While recruiting fresh members through its no-longer-clandestine activities, the Jamaat lobby among teachers at the universities of Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Shahjalal, Khulna is getting ever stronger. In many ways this growing phenomenon could be considered the last hurdle that Shibir needs to cross to make it strong enough to attempt hostile takeover bids.
   A significant number of former Shibir leaders have been getting teaching positions at universities. While some positions have been ensured through the Jamaat lobby, the system of recruiting activists among students with good academic backgrounds and assisting them — financially or otherwise — has helped Shibir in this infiltration of the teaching fraternity. Some have taken up resident positions as house-tutors, provosts of several halls. With their growing presence, they are also qualifying for previously-unheard-of privileges. They play a key role in accommodating the Shibir members in residential halls through allotment of seats. Dhaka University sources have repeatedly warned that Shibir has built up its strongholds in Salimullah Hall, Jasimuddin Hall and Haji Muhammad Muhsin Hall.
   Nearly thirty years have passed since the re-birth of the Islamic political camp at our higher educational institutions. Combined progressive students’ movements have kept its growth under check, but with stealth and strategy, Islamists have slowly strengthened their foothold.
   While Shibir is yet to tap into wider general students’ body, a stagnant ‘depoliticised’ psyche of general students has resulted in their (students) disassociation from any of the other major student bodies of either the right or the left. After the anti-Ershad movement brought together students throughout the eighties, the nineties saw a gradual fallout phase which has resulted in a great vacuum. As the ‘incorruptible purists’ of left student bodies in the 1960s and 1970s become a distant memory, a great intellectual lapse has engulfed the universities, and waits to be filled by a force which sees the gap and decides to fit into it.
   
   Enter Hizb ut-Tahrir
   While the country’s progressive thinking organs, the public universities, are being infected by slow encroachment from the Islamic Chhatra Shibir camp, the more socially disconnected and market-driven private universities are seeing green growth of another Islamic political camp: Hizb-ut Tahrir.
   ‘When the right time comes, we shall achieve our goal,’ said a smiling Mohiuddin Ahmed when I interviewed his last year. As the head of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Bangladesh, he is an Islamist revolutionary with a twist. Having graduated from Bangladesh’s top business school, the Institute of Business Administration at Dhaka University, with enviable scores, Mohiuddin presently teaches the same corporate strategies at his alma mater. But the number of students attending his business classes are dwarfed by the attendance at the Chhatra Sabha (Students’ Society) sessions of the Hizb ut-Tahrir. He and others like him represent the new face of the Islam-based religious politics that is slipping into the mainstream of Bangladeshi consciousness. Unlike in the past, his foot soldiers are career-oriented, upwardly mobile young men and women, from the country’s public and mushrooming private universities. Almost tip-toeing into the ‘ideological vacuum’ left from the aimless student politics of mainstream student bodies, Hizb ut-Tahrir is, to use his own words, ‘selling the time-proved cocktail of popular discontent and faith.’ And they are selling well.
   But there is the catch. What this ever-growing number of ‘modern Muslims’ envision, with intoxicating and chilling precision, contradicts the principles of conventional liberal, democratic and secular society, and nations that abide by it.
   For a man who is the chief coordinator and spokesperson of a religion-based political party presently banned in several Middle Eastern states, throughout Central Asia, Germany (the reason cited was anti-Semitism) and Pakistan, Mohiuddin couldn’t appear any less worried. ‘We have done nothing to instigate such a response. We do not believe in any form of violence, or force,’ he explains. When asked about the size of the membership roll, Mohiuddin claims that figure is not compiled. What he does reveal is that attendance in the monthly seminars they hold is in the region of 250-300, and not always the same people.
   Hizb ut-Tahrir was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by an appeals court judge, Taqiuddin al Nabhani. Initially the group’s operations were restricted to the Arab countries. The group first appeared in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Today, Hizb ut-Tahrir claims to be have operations in more than 100 countries.
   Hizb ut-Tahrir Bangladesh, the country chapter of the international organisation of the same name, which envisions a Shari’ah-based Khilafah state, has been gaining most momentum through its activities at the country’s private universities. Alongside its national launch in Bangladesh in 17 November, 2001, just weeks after the 9/11, with anti-American sentiment and Islamic fervour peaking, the party started off university chapters at several public and private universities, including Dhaka University and North South University. While Shibir has been the flag bearer of Islam-based student politics at public universities, Hizb ut-Tahrir has their eyes on a strata of students isolated from the mainstream. Non-practicing students, marginalised from mainstream politics, and open to discussions on lifestyle, society and science sprinkled with faith were the party’s first and prime target audience. But why this specific cross-section?
   
   Islam, intellectually speaking
   Though, the political ideology they represent is radical in terms of its values and implementation, the approach they have taken is least to say modern, and even appealing to the moderate Muslim, university crowd. Engaging in dialogue with both general students and opposite camps on previously taboo issues among Islamists through numerous seminars, discussion sessions and study circles, they are tactfully using the same political tools that previously worked so well for leftist student bodies during their heydays. The topics covered include ‘Existence of God’, ‘Blind faith of Atheism’ and ‘Cloning’.
   While Bangladesh has just seen close to four years of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which renounces all acts of violence even to achieve goals, is fast gaining popularity among a special class — the urban upper- and middle-class.
   
   Green growth
   Hizb ut-Tahrir’s activities, as with any rising political organisation, need a constant supply of committed, intelligent and resourceful members. Young men, and women, fit exactly that profile. What better place to recruit such youth than universities? And with a burgeoning private university students’ body filled with ‘disoriented’ youth from well-off backgrounds poised to take up decision making activities of big business, Hizb-ut Tahrir concentrates its most effort into them.
   While at Dhaka University, initial successes were thwarted when in late 2003 activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the main opposition party Awami League, chased away several Hizb ut-Tahrir members. Despite the incident, they have splintered support in the Commerce Faculty of the university. Several general students have mentioned being approached by Hizb ut-Tahrir, and some of them have also admitted to attending their seminars.
   Along with the one at Dhaka University, one of the first ‘circles’ formed was at one of the leading private universities: North South University. Though this ‘circle’ had no physical infrastructure to show for, they aggressively started preaching their cause through some initial contacts. To put it mildly, they had a field day, everyday. Encouraged by the initial success, Hizb ut-Tahrir started putting in more concerted effort into private universities. At present, they have groups at Independent University Bangladesh, East West University, American International University Bangladesh, BRAC University, City University, Southeast University and Northern University.
   An interesting turn of events in recent times makes the private university phenomenon even more lucrative for Islamists. As private university licences from the University Grants Commission have become as abundant as the certificates they give out, opportunist Islamists have acquired quite a few. While some had started quite early, like the International Islamic University-Chittagong, Asian University of Bangladesh and Darul Ihsan University, relatively new Islamic hubs such as Northern University, Manarat University, Bangladesh Islamic University and Green University are also becoming hotbeds for Shibir and Jamaat lobbies. Almost all are owned by Jamaat bigwigs. The recruitments at these universities are done keeping Shibir credentials in consideration. The Asian University of Bangladesh has had phenomenal growth and is planning outer campuses in cities of Saudi Arabia.
   
   ‘Guerrilla marketing’
   From the very beginning, students started paying attention. At North South University , dozens of members attended their group sessions after prayers at the most convenient location, the prayer room. While not just staying restricted to male members, they started recruiting female members. Within months Hizb ut-Tahrir had become a topic of discussion. Though the number of core members remained low, sympathisers grew rapidly.
   ‘Their leaflets are minimal but attractive in design and many of them are in English, which conveniently caters to the psyche of private university students. Their members mingle within the general student body. Be it in the canteen, in the student lobby, in the study areas, and mostly in the tea-stalls adjacent the university, they whip up conversations with any student on some topical issue, like the Iraq war or hartal, and eventually bring up their discussion sessions,’ says a final semester student at North South University.
   Authorities at the universities observed the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir with caution. And breaking their self-imposed embargo on student’s engagement with political organizations, they stayed quiet. As prayer rooms, canteens, rest areas, study rooms became the political playing field for Hizb ut-Tahrir, they just overlooked it as general religious practice. Only when their activities became elaborate did the authorities ask Hizb ut-Tahrir to take their activities outside the campus perimeter. While group sessions shifted to local mosques near the university, and restaurants, the political activism of Hizb ut-Tahrir members at private universities has continued.
   Though officially denied, insiders within the university administration and several faculty members have indicated that as religion is a sensitive issue, the universities think it better to ignore it. A highly-placed source in North South University said that the US Embassy brought up the issue with the university two years back as many of the universities’ graduates go on to attend graduate schools in the US. Activities of members of the party have been under heightened scrutiny since then though with a spread out member base within the general body, their activities have merely taken a more clandestine nature.
   
   Step aside!
   An interesting loophole within the systems of private universities is that student unions, or student political bodies, are not legally prohibited at any private universities as none of the private universities have published ‘statutes’ which legally restrict students from forming student bodies.
   While Hizb ut-Tahrir is actively entertaining its political aspirations, it is interesting to observe that other political camps, either from the right or the left, remain completely absent. Ideologically, the left student bodies are the only ones that are directly in clash with Hizb ut-Tahrir. But they seem surprisingly inactive. A little inquiry revealed a classic reasoning; adding to a better understanding of the rise of faith-based student politics. The Student’s Union, the largest leftist student body operating at public universities, do not consider private universities as legitimate educational institutions, and therefore they don’t operate in them.
   For what its worth, political Islam’s foray into Bangladesh through capturing the minds of the decision-making future citizens, has both new and old faces. Shibir at public universities and Hizb-ut Tahrir at private universities are gathering clout. The more student activists both Shibir and Hizb-ut Tahrir gain, the closer they get to their ultimate goal — be it a general Islamic theocracy, or a Khilafah state. As faith-based organisations, students have been found to be connected to them even after leaving their student status, and as they are rising through the ranks in Bangladesh’s state machinery, commercial establishments, these two party’s financial and organisational capacity is increasing likewise as all members contribute both compulsorily, and voluntarily. And along with it, as political Islam flexes it’s growing electoral muscle, Shibir and Hizb-ut Tahrir may no longer need to stay a mere phenomenon hidden from view. The trend, at least, shows that a day may actually come when these green brigades of political Islam will stand tall behind their ideological backers, and shout: step aside!
   Mahfuz Sadique is senior staff writer, New Age

by Mubin S Khan

What went wrong with Dhaka University? Is our country’s premier education institution heading for decline? Is there too much politics and political violence at DU? Has corruption and politicisation eaten up the establishment? Have session jams trapped our students in a vicious cycle and corroded the value of the degrees they are conferred? What happened to the ‘Oxford of the East’? Why can we no longer produce a Satyen Bose?
   The majority of people one speaks to about Dhaka University voice such concerns. Dhaka University, established in 1921, a symbol of our education system and integral part of our history as a nation, is doubted, criticised, scoffed at, at least by a certain section of our society today. And yet, in an institution that houses more than 40,000 students and nearly 1,800 teachers, we still have the very best of the country, even at an international level, as the torchbearers of the institution. What went wrong? We went around asking some of our top academicians as well as people who have led the institution from the top.
   
   What went wrong with Dhaka University was the first question asked of some of the leading academicians of our country all of whom have either served, or is currently working at the institution.
   Professor Serajul Islam Chowdhury, a leading academician and a former teacher at the English department points at ‘politicisation’ as the main culprit. ‘The 1973 Ordinance which stipulates that top positions at the university will be filled through elections has made academicians too involved with politics,’ says Islam. ‘In time this politics seeped into teachers, students, selection of teachers and officials, examinations etc.’
   Professor Sirajul Islam, the chief editor of Banglapedia, a former professor of history at the university, on the other hand, dismisses the notion that something has gone wrong. ‘In comparison to the past, at least during the time we studied, we have a much vibrant university then before. It is a myth propagated by a small section of society,’ he says.
   ‘When I studied during the 1950’s there was acute shortage of teachers as most of the teachers who were Hindu had migrated to the other side, we had one and at most two publications and around 250 teachers and 4,000 students and virtually no research. Today, we have around 250 publications, 40,000 students, 1,800 teachers and a very vibrant campus.’
   He, however, adds, ‘I do not intend to say that all is rosy. In fact, compared to our contemporary institutions we are lagging far behind. However, it is not because something has gone wrong but that we have not kept pace with the world in our progress.’
   Professor Shafi Chowdhury of the department of Physics however is all praise of the past. ‘We had people Sir P J Herztog, the registrar of London University, Langley, R C Majumder, Mahmud Hossain and Abu Sayeed Chowdhury in the seat of vice-chancellor here at this institution. Satyen Bose, Dr Md Shahidullah and Kudrat-e-Khuda taught here,’ he says.
   ‘Today, the top seats are political appointees, in fact people selected not only the basis of political allegiance but on the level of devotion to their political party and thus the plight of this institution,’ he adds.
   ‘Something did not go wrong as such,’ says Professor Fakrul Alam, professor at the English department currently chair and dean of English at the East West University. ‘However we are plagued by certain inadequacies like a lack of funds, infrastructural inability and a lack of accountability.’
   ‘As for politics, Dhaka University for its historical background has been the locus of the power struggle between the parties involved in national politics. Winning political control over DU has been an indicator of national control for political parties. Over the years, it has been an unbelievable burden on DU,’ he adds.
   Professor S M A Faiz, the vice-chancellor defends the institution. ‘This so-called decline is a feeling experienced by passing generations. I am sure when I leave this institution I will share the same feeling,’ he says.
   ‘Today, we are technologically up-to-date and our students and teachers are better trained, exposed and equipped than in the past. Our people are doing well all across the globe and there is not one institution in the world that does not recognise a degree conferred by Dhaka University.’
   However he admits there are certain issues that have actually changed for the worse. ‘At one time Dhaka University used to be a vast institution in terms of size. Today because of the increase in number of students and teachers we have shrunk considerably in size,’ he says.
   ‘We struggle to accommodate students at halls and classrooms. Genetic Engineering one of the most important fields of study in the world is a three-room department in our institution.’
   Professor A K Azad Chowdhury, the immediate past vice-chancellor, meanwhile, is highly critical of the current administration.
   ‘During my tenure we had set up two new halls, a faculty building, secured a grant to provide the Bangabandhu scholarship, cut down on session jams, etc,’
   ‘The scholarship has been discontinued, there has been no new development work done, session jams have once again been stretched and the recruitment of students, teachers, officials is reeking with corruption,’ he says.
   
   In 1961, during the rule of the Pakistani regime, the 1961 Order was established which allowed the government to exercise considerable power over the University. The 1973 Ordinance after the emergence of Bangladesh was enshrined specifically to remove that power of intervention and instead introduced elections in appointment of vice-chancellor, dean, syndicate and senate members, and a three-year rotation in the post of department chair.
   ‘Politics at the university is meant to revolve around the elections,’ says Serajul Islam Chowdhury, ‘and thus we have the blue, pink and white panel because it is impossible for all teachers to be personally acquainted with each other.’
   ‘However, these panels have been usurped by the political parties in national politics to establish their dominance over the university.’
   ‘The 1973 Ordinance allows too much autonomy to the teachers. It allows teachers to get away with negligence, malpractice and indiscipline and there is hardly any system of accountability. We need to amend the ordinance,’ says Fakrul Alam.
   Many teachers now feel that there far too many elections at the university which affect the academic work at the university.
   ‘We should do away with the syndicate and senate elections,’ says Professor Alam. ‘The only regular election should be the teachers association election.’
   ‘As for the selection of vice-chancellor we should have a search committee of eminent citizens who have or had some direct link with the institution.’
   The University Grants Commission, in a recent paper, also made the same recommendations.
   The vice-chancellor, however, feels differently.
   ‘Election has been proven in our country as the best process in the selection of candidates ahead of direct appointment or search committees. Every system has its pros and cons,’ says Professor Faiz.
   ‘There is nothing wrong with the system of elections as such,’ says Azad Chowdhury. ‘It is duty of the selected candidate to not let his political orientation affect his duty,’ he adds.
   Professor Sirajul Islam also advocates the election system ahead of other ones.
   ‘In the past the vice-chancellor was the direct choice of the ruling government, professorship and promotion in the hand of vice-chancellors, salary raise in the hand of chairpersons. The institution used to be under the powers of a select few around whom the rest revolved.’
   ’It is a much more of a democratic institution today.’
   
   The infrastructural problems currently plaguing the university is however something most academics agree upon.
   ‘For an institution as large as this it is extremely difficult to run it with a paltry Tk100 crore budget,’ says S M A Faiz.
   ‘We have run out of space and we need to provide our departments and academicians with more space, facilities and funds. We have tremendous scope in fields such as bio-technology but they a presently a virtual non-entity since we have failed to provide them anything,’ says Faiz.
   ‘We have 50 departments many of which have been opened for various reasons and are not really required,’ says Professor Alam. ‘We have 140-strong classes and a serious shortage of classrooms, we have no proper academic calendar and a shortage of hall seats.’
   ‘We have not had a good librarian for the last twenty years,’ he adds as someone who served as an adviser to the library.
   ‘The admission system should also be revisited as specialised subjects such as history and philosophy get a raw deal in terms of the students they get.’
   The research work being done at the university also does not impress the scholars. ‘Most of the work done here are more tilted towards areas were the funds come from. There is no organised mechanism that propagates research that serves our national interest,’ says Serajul Islam Chowdhury.
   
   Generating funds has always been issue of debate among scholars, administrators, students, as well as the public. Sporadic efforts have been made by the Dhaka University to raise its own funds but by and large it has refrained from taking any major steps like drastically raising the tuition fees.
   ‘In this day and age the tuition fees we charge our students is unrealistic,’ says Professor Azad. ‘We had pushed the tuition from Taka 8 to Taka 18 and if the subsequent administration had continued with the system of pushing the tuitions gradually every year we might have reached a position in a few years where we could generate some money on our own.’
   ‘Contrary to popular belief at least 70 percent of the students at the university are from the middle class. The amount we charge them is ridiculous. We can charge them more and provide full scholarship to meritorious poor students. That way, our students will have more responsibility and accountability and our teachers will be more motivated,’ he says.
   He also points out that there were efforts made during his tenure like setting up markets inside the campus to generate more money all of which had to be eliminated in the face of pressure from the lobby groups.
   ‘It is difficult to get out of the idea that Dhaka University is a public university,’ says the current vice-chancellor. ‘The reality is we are not getting the optimum fees and have to depend on the government for ninety percent of our financing,’ says Faiz.
   
   Recent media reports about the corruption in the recruitment of third and fourth class employees have left many of the former and current teachers at the university enraged.
   ‘It is not the kind of thing you would expect of such institution,’ says Shafi Chowdhury.
   ‘Dhaka University is an institution primarily dedicated to the cause of teachers and students. The administrative people are actually support staff,’ says Azad Chowdhury. ‘During my tenure we had kept at least 200 administrative posts empty to provide more funds to the teachers. The current administration has recruited nearly 600 new staff with accusations of rampant corruption during the recruitment,’ he adds.
   Many teachers and officials feel very hard done by the quality of the non-academic staff at the university.
   ‘Basically, we have people who enter at the level of clerk, with an education background of S.S.C. and H.S.C and slowly go on to become officials as important as head of accounts and chancellor of examinations,’ says another professor, on condition of anonymity.
   Even the vice-chancellor agrees with the notion that the support staff at Dhaka University is below par.
   ‘We have had recruitments during different tenures that, once completed, are impossible to revoke during subsequent administrations. We have to address this problem during recruitment,’ says Faiz.
   ‘We do not hire well-qualified staff to these positions simply because we cannot afford them’ he adds.
   Professor Fakrul Alam however does not feel the quality of the support staff is a major issue. ‘As it is the powers of the registrar and other such staff at the university is very limited,’ says Alam, ‘however, the engineering department under the offices of the registrar is a fiasco.’
   
   For most academics it is politics which is the principal malaise affecting the university.
   ‘The main problem is that a small section of the teachers have abandoned academic excellence for political ambitions. They are hell bent on securing positions such as membership of Public Service Commission, University Grants Commission, and vice-chancellorship,’ says Sirajul Islam.
   ‘Why should a university teacher become the head of WASA,’ asks one teacher.
   Shafi Chowdhury agrees. ‘Dhaka University teachers should not take up such demanding administrative positions as it can interfere with their academic work,’ he says.
   ‘Not only do these teachers take up positions outside,’ says another teacher, ‘their ambition and greed is such that even after being appointed as a vice-chancellor at a university at Feni, even after becoming a member of PSC or the head of the drug administration some teachers have still occupied their university residences, at times the residence provided to them in the capacity of hall provost,’ he adds.
   ‘Meanwhile, many regular and dedicated teachers do not get housing even after 30 years of work because they have no direct political affiliation,’ he adds.
   Regarding the issue of teachers taking up consultancy or take up teaching positions at private universities, most teachers have mixed feelings.
   ‘To maintain a living standard I can understand a teacher having one additional job because the pay at Dhaka University is very minimum,’ says Shafi Chowdhury. ‘But they should also realise the practical side that if you’re making rounds all the way across university to Banani, you will exhaust yourself which will affect your performance in the classroom,’ he adds.
   ‘Teachers should be allowed to have, at the most, one part-time employment and for full-time employment they can avail sabbatical leave,’ he adds.
   ‘There has been an erosion in social values in recent years and people have lost the meaning of academic excellence and instead crave improved living standards,’ says Serajul Islam Chowdhury. ‘What the teachers must realise is that Dhaka University is the institution that earned them their reputation and the subsidiary jobs, and they should not neglect it in any way,’ he adds.
   In general, however the academicians are not against consultancy as such.
   ‘The best brains in the country still teach at Dhaka University,’ says Faiz. ‘If one was looking for consultation they would come to Dhaka University, and if not for anything than for the betterment of the country, they should give it,’ he adds.
   ‘If you tried to crack down on consultancy the university will lose its best teachers,’ says AK Azad Chowdhury.
   
   The quality of education imparted at the university as well the quality of students is also an issue intensely debated among the scholars.
   ‘Post-independence, what used to be our growing middle class and was our main Dhaka University population became rich overnight. Soon, they abandoned Dhaka University for better options abroad,’ says Serajul Islam Chowdhury.
   ‘We were suddenly left with students from a lower middle class background who did not have the reception capability of the previous students,’ he adds.
   ‘Through one of the most competitive admissions in the country we got the best lot of students,’ says Shafi Chowdhury, also a former dean of the science faculty. ‘We must now ensure that our recent teacher recruits are also the best and not political selections,’ he adds.
   ‘The quality of students had dipped drastically during the 1990’s. At the English department we sometimes had freshers who had never heard any person talk in English in their lives,’ says Fakrul Alam. ‘Recently, however, things have looked up. Students are becoming more and more aware that they need to take an initiative to do well,’ he adds.
   ‘During the World Cup while an institution of the calibre of BUET had to close down I did not get one student who asked me to suspend classes. Our students in recent years have become very aware of the competition they have to face and force it upon teachers to provide them the best academic help,’ says Faiz.
   ‘The plight of students who have to stay at the halls is pathetic,’ says Pofessor Shafi. ‘Politics amongst the students have made the young student leaders toll-collectors and abusers and it is impossible for ordinary students to find an environment to study at the halls,’ he says.
   ‘We are trying to have the libraries remain open overnight so that students can find an environment to study there,’ he adds.
   
   Most academics, however, leave their last word in favour of the institution.
   ‘There are at least 100 teachers at the university who are recognised all over the world,’ says Sirajul Islam. ‘There are students who are going abroad for post-doctorate and masters at the best places in the world. Teachers are regularly being published at reputed journals abroad and invited to conferences,’ he adds.
   ‘Massive scholarly work is being undertaken at the university today,’ says Islam.
   ‘From 1921 to 1972, we only had 15 phd degrees conferred from the university,’ he says. ‘Today, we have over 300.’
   ‘A large majority of our teachers and students are still interested in academics and education and have a close-knit association amongst them despite their political allegiance,’ says Shafi Chowdhury. ‘It is a small group hungry for power and political employment that has tarnished the image of this institution,’ he adds.
   ‘Our undergraduate degrees are as good enough as any other university. What we now need to develop is our post graduate programs.’
   ‘What our institution requires is a strong administration which will take steps to modernise the institution,’ says Fakrul Alam. ‘Most of the malaise can be ridden with strong leadership,’ he adds.
   ‘This recent decision to give madrassah degrees recognition will eventually harm our institution more as their students will infiltrate DU with better grades,’ says Serajul Islam Chowdhury. ‘It should have been an academic decision not a political one. It is this kind of politics that destroys our institution,’ he adds.
   ‘The malaise of our university is the malaise affecting our entire society- corruption, loss of moral values etc.,’ says Azad Chowdhury. ‘But universities are an island of hope for a society and the malaise must first be tackled here before anywhere else.’
   ‘There are places we have made amazing progress and there are some areas we need improvement on. But overall, Dhaka University is heading in the right direction, may be sometimes at a slower pace than at other times,’ he says.
   ‘People ask me how it is that despite being one of the better known universities in the world how is it that Dhaka University did not make it to the top 600 universities in the world,’ says Faiz. ‘There are many factors that can contribute to it but I usually ask them to point out any other university that everyone knows of and yet did not make the list?’
   ‘Dhaka University’s reputation despite its problems is an achievement in itself for the institution.’
   Mubin S Khan is senior staff writer, New Age

by Manzoor Ahmed

Non-formal education (NFE) as a concept first gained popularity in the 1970s and spread rapidly in the developing countries in the subsequent decades. Government departments and directorates of non-formal education sprung up, large programmes were launched, and external assistance in substantial amounts poured in. Bangladesh was slow in taking advantage of the new wave; the first NFE activities here began in the early 1990s.
   What is this type or area of education which is identified by a negative prefix — education that is ‘not formal’? Is it a solution of the numerous problems and deficiencies of the formal education system? Does it extend educational opportunities to the large numbers of children, youths and adults who are deprived of even basic education? Does it make education more meaningful and relevant to life, the circumstances of learners and their development needs? Is it more efficient and less costly than conventional education programmes? Or is it a second-class and cheaper alternative for the poor and the disadvantaged who cannot be given a share of the ‘real thing’? The answer is both ‘all of these’ and ‘none’. It lies to a degree in the eyes of the beholder — dependent on what the expectations are and what one’s perception of education is. And the devil is in the details — which is true about most things in the real world. It all depends on how a programme is conceived, planned and implemented and in what circumstances, as will be seen below.
   
   Non-formal education: what and why
   Debate and discussion on non-formal education began with the publication in 1968 of The World Crisis in Education: A Systems Approach, a seminal book by Philip Coombs (1915-2006). A chapter in the book was devoted to ‘non-formal education: to catch up, keep up and get ahead’. Coombs initiated the debate in the context of educational expansion and reform needs in the developing societies, led the effort to lay out the issues, and helped define the concepts and delineate the practices in non-formal education. An assistant secretary of state for cultural affairs (a position created for Coombs and non-existent since then) in the Kennedy Administration, he was also the founder-director of UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris. This writer had the privilege as a young researcher of being in the team at the International Council for Educational Development in Connecticut, USA, led by Philip Coombs, which worked in the 1970s to develop the concepts and practices of non-formal education.
   The distinction between three modes of education — formal, non-formal and informal, proposed by Coombs and his team, was widely adopted and became the standard lexicon in discourse on educational development, even when qualifications were attached to the definitions or disagreements expressed sometimes with the value or relevance of the three-way classification.
   Recognising that ‘education is obviously a continuing process, spanning the years from earliest infancy through adulthood and necessarily involving a great variety of methods and sources’, Coombs and Ahmed, in their book published in 1974 by the World Bank, distinguished between the three modes as ‘analytically useful, and generally in accord with current realities’. (Philip H Coombs and Manzoor Ahmed, Attacking Rural Poverty: How Non-formal Education Can Help, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.) They articulated this distinction in the following manner: ‘Formal education is the highly institutionalised, chronologically graded and hierarchically structured ‘educational system’, spanning lower primary school and the upper reaches of the university.
   ‘Non-formal education is any organised, systematic, educational activity carried on outside the framework of the formal system to provide selected types of learning to particular sub-groups in the population, adults as well as children. Thus defined, non-formal education includes, for example, agricultural extension and farmer training programmes, adult literacy programmes, occupational skill training given outside the formal system, youth clubs with substantial educational purposes, and various community programmes of instruction in health, nutrition, family planning, cooperatives and the like.
   ‘Informal education is the lifelong process by which every person acquires and accumulates knowledge, skills, attitudes and insights from daily experiences and exposure to the environment — at home, at work, at play; from the examples and attitudes of family and friends; from travel, reading newspapers and books; from listening to the radio or viewing films and television. Generally, informal education is unorganised and often unsystematic; yet it accounts for the great bulk of any person’s total lifetime learning — including that of even a highly ‘schooled’ person.’ (Ibid page 8)
   Having made the analytical distinction, the authors noted that formal and non-formal education often bore similarities in pedagogical forms and methods, but generally differed in their sponsorship and institutional arrangements, educational objectives and the groups they served. On occasions, the authors asserted, their differences merged in ‘hybrid’ programmes combining the significant features of both.
   Coombs and Ahmed went on to argue that ‘the need now is to visualise the various educational activities as potential components of a coherent and flexible overall learning system that must be steadily strengthened, diversified and linked more closely to the needs and processes of national development’. They underscored the emerging consensus that nations should strive to build ‘lifelong learning systems’, offering every individual diverse learning options throughout her or his lifetime. (Ibid p 9)
   
   NFE in Bangladesh
   A broadly conceived non-formal education programme serving diverse learning needs of the population, known as the Integrated Non-Formal Education Programme (INFEP), was planned in 1992. Extensive involvement of non-governmental organisations was foreseen in this programme. INFEP envisaged a spectrum of activities ranging from early childhood education, non-formal primary education for drop-outs and those who had crossed the entry age for primary school, and adult literacy and continuing education.
   In the end, activities only in the area of adult literacy were initiated under INFEP in collaboration with NGOs. In 1995, INFEP was replaced by a more regular management structure for NFE with the establishment of the Directorate of Non-formal Education (DNFE) under the division, now a separate Ministry of Primary and Mass Education — MOPME. The activities of the directorate remained confined to adult literacy. In fact, launching and managing a large-scale literacy programme called the Total Literacy Movement (TLM) became the main task of the DNFE. Non-formal education in the public sector became synonymous with TLM. The adoption of a restrictive view of NFE, limited to basic literacy, was also accompanied by the government’s decision to exclude NGOs from direct involvement in TLM. The TLM target was to reach the population in the age-range of 11 to 45 years and raise the adult literacy rate from 35 per cent in the mid-‘90s to 62 per cent by 2000. According to official statistics, the target for literacy rate was exceeded by offering a literacy course to17 million youth and adults.
   However, widespread scepticism was expressed about the government’s claim; because, among other reasons, enlisting names in literacy courses did not necessarily lead to acquiring literacy skills. Independent surveys, such as the Education Watch Report of 2002, showed that the adult literacy rate in the country had improved somewhat in the previous decade to reach 41.4 per cent in the age-group of 11 years and above. The study also found that TLM had made almost no contribution to this improvement. The increase in literacy rate was achieved mainly through the expansion of primary education. Poor outcome from DNFE efforts perhaps led to the government’s decision to close down the directorate itself in July 2003, although the reason for the decision was never publicly explained.
   
   A degree of diversity in non-formal education in the country was and is being maintained through the NGOs’ initiatives and efforts. Non-formal primary education on a substantial scale has been carried out by NGOs. The largest of these programmes is offered by BRAC, serving at a time about 1.5 million children and adolescents between the ages of 8 and 14 years. BRAC, in fact, developed and pioneered the non-formal delivery of primary education, which would be usually seen as an essential component of formal education, and has been internationally acclaimed and imitated widely. Non-formal or alternative primary education delivery methods gained acceptance and legitimacy. As BRAC demonstrated, more flexible and responsive delivery of services, characterised by the non-formal approach, is necessary to reach and serve large numbers of children who are left out of the conventional schools for various reasons, until the conventional schools themselves become more adaptive and flexible.
   Other non-formal educational activities by NGOs include basic general education combined with skill training for adolescents and youths who had dropped out from school or had never been enrolled in one. There are programmes in early childhood development and pre-school education with community participation and contribution. All of these have been on a relatively small scale, serving only a tiny proportion of the potential clientele. The NGOs’ activities have received external assistance, but have not been benefited by an explicit policy of support or financial encouragement from the government.
   An exception to the government’s adult literacy focus under DNFE was a small project with a participant target of 3,50,000 for basic education to serve urban working children known, as Basic Education for Hard-to-Reach Urban Children (BEHTRUC).
   The government’s contention that the literacy targets had been achieved under TLM led to the conclusion that the need now was a post-literacy and continuing education programme in the country — despite contrary independent evidence of literacy accomplishments. The international aid providers went along for their own various reasons with this Orwellian logic. Some $200 million of external assistance was mobilised from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and some bilateral agencies to launch the Post-literacy and Continuing Education Projects (PLCE 1 and 2). The aim of these projects was to offer training in income-earning skills to the neo-literates and to consolidate the literacy skills they were supposed