Longing for Bangladeshi Obama

Published in Daily Star, November 2008

Longing for Bangladeshi Obamas
Faisal Salahuddin

AMID a breezy fall campus night when old leaves were falling in the wind, new hopes rising and students cheering, I watched Obama moving America to tears as he gave his victory speech. We all have been moved by the poetry of his improbable journey and the melody of his symbolic victory.

Amid swelling inspiration, oddly enough, I felt a tinge of jealousy book-ended by sadness. Jealous of the Americans for having Obama's promise of inclusive tomorrow and sad for us Bangladeshis lacking recent leaders who have offered us such confidence.

In the wake of alternating emotions, I felt some premature longing for Bangladeshi Obamas -- young Bangladeshi leaders who can inspire our youth to believe that we all can live beyond us -- for each other and for the country.

No, I am not completely naïve or delusional. I know the distance and the difference between the US and Bangladesh. In my own defense, I would just say that longing does not harm, cynicism does.

We have a very fertile cottage industry of cynicism, especially when it comes to politics. The ritual is to first get angry, then apathetic and finally cynical. But these often are just lazy emotions to support easy excuses for not getting involved.

Obama's victory raises an immediate but wishful question: How long will we have to wait for our political leaders to inspire and unite us and then govern the country?

A more introspective and responsible question is: What are our individual responsibilities to perfect our shared destiny as a nation? How long should we harbour hope unbacked by action?

Obviously, I don't claim to know the answers, but I know that the choices facing our young generation are stark: to sit back, wait for Great God to come from the heavens (to paraphrase the late, great Bob Marley) to fix our politics or to get involved in our own small capacity both in and from wherever we can.

Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote: "Among democratic people, every generation is a new people."Since change takes place generationally, the burden of responsibilities is heavy on Generation Bangladesh who are born around the time of Independence and are 100 million strong. As someone who has not been very involved with the political process I acknowledge that responsibility with guilt.

Each generation has to take its responsibility. Our earlier generation did not have independence handed over to them. Independence was their dream and they snatched it from Pakistan. Power does not cede easily.

If our generation wants a different political culture, we have to participate in the culture. Not just hope or whine about it as passive onlookers. If our generation wants newer faces in politics, we need to stand up. Not hide behind the stale veil of excuses.

I argued in April 2008 Forum that we have some of the ingredients to have our own Obamas: a young, connected and politically aware demography in a society that is undergoing rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in today's globalised world. This group is tired of old politics and hungry for change.

True, political change takes time. We are not going to have one big Obama tomorrow. Many small ones for now will do. From the small ones, will emerge the bigger ones. That's how leaders should emerge -- not through the family-sponsored dynastic hatcheries, be at home or abroad.

What are some key highlights of the Obama phenomenon and lessons for us?

The Obama Phenomenon

Obama used several powerful instruments and harnessed several emerging trends in American society. He built a bottom-up grassroots movement using modern technology to form, organize, and fund his campaign.

He started a political process that began with a smaller group of committed individuals. He gave people genuine hope and inspiration.

Lessons for our political parties

1. Groom young and bottom-up national leaders who have made (are making) it on their own and retained their integrity (no Picchi Hannan or Lomba Hazari please!)
2. Nominate young leaders. Given our demographic destiny, it is not only the right but also the smart thing to do. It will be a low-cost high-return winning strategy for the parties over the next 10 years.
3. Whoever comes to govern Bangladesh after December election should appoint some inspiring honest young leaders in the cabinet. I refuse to believe that the existence of such leaders is nil.
4. Whoever loses the election should learn some grace from McCain's concession speech and the winner could learn some unity from Obama's victory speech. We are tried of seeing after elections greedy hands waving "It's all mine!" when they win and pouty lips whining "I don't want to play now!" when they lose.

Lessons for Generation Bangladesh

1. It may be a cheesy cliché but we need to believe that individuals can make a difference. A committed group of individuals together can make a big difference.
2. We need to be involved in our own village or community by leveraging modern technology. We need to go beyond the op-eds or concerts. We can now travel faster and look further than any earlier generations. It is now much easier to organize and contribute to any movement from home or abroad.
3. Let's remember the simple calculus of hope. If you double a dream every hour, you will have more than a million dreams by the end of the day. Don't trust me? Just verify with a calculator. We have to double our hopes and halve our cynicism. That's how the infectious mathematics of optimism works.
4. We also have to remind ourselves that politics always and everywhere in the world is messy because life is. As in life, when moderates avoid politics, it gets only messier. The best way to clean dirty politics to get all of our hands dirty in it. Many hands make the work light and clean.
5. We need to be hopeful but remain patient. Both life and hope share the same rhythm and they need work. The journey of life begins in a single cell in mother's womb. The journey of hope begins in small increments in our soul when we share a common faith in our future wrapped in individual sense of responsibility.

Only then we can bend time, shape culture, and compose our own generational history.

Faisal Salahuddin, a macroeconomist, writes from Princeton University
(faisal.salahuddin@gmail.com)