In the face of such a grim picture of the economy, when our home currency depreciates against dollar every day, our Finance Minister while in Delhi with the PM during her three day-visit to the Indian capital, told a media person that the economic situation in Bangladesh was much better in certain respects than in India and that it was better managed. No doubt, our embattled finance Minister is thinking bold and people in the country wish that our Finance Minister's claim were true! For an economy to be better

managed presupposes the fact that the country is going up the ladder of growth.

But the irony is that during the four years the alliance has been in power, the GDP growth has marked an average 5.3 percent Hard hit by power shortages industries and business houses, big or small, remain inoperative during the vital hours of the day. Irrigation fields in this Boro season totally dependent on power driven deep or shallow tube wells have been running dry. The dual crisis of fertiliser and irrigation facilities have brought the farmers on the rampage in all parts of the country. The Boro crop which is critically fertilizer- dependent now faces the prospect of withering away due to absence of vital input. The unmitigated crisis will have ramifications such as bringing about shortfall in Boro production, a situation that will force the country to import food grains in a larger quantity in the coming days.

Since the 1980s, Bangladesh has been a country mostly dependent on agriculture gradually supported by technology. But because of our failure to give proper thrust in this sector, the rural landscape unveils a shocking litany of poverty, joblessness and deprivation that continues to drag the country down. The oft-preached growth has hardly made any dent on poverty.

To be precise, agriculture together with manufacturing, forms the backbone of the economy and its performance is crucial in the battle against poverty. It is worth mentioning that during the 1980s China's agriculture clocked an average growth rate of over 6 percent per annum and the sustained rise in rural incomes played a crucial role in China achieving a steep fall in poverty.

In our country, as we have seen, our approach to poverty alleviation is often seen illogical and perverse. We attack poverty through subsidies along with many schemes and measures that are only palliative. If the amount spent in such haphazard way was invested in public works, such as irrigation canals or wells, small dams, water-harvesting projects, rural roads and above all houses for the rural poor, it would have triggered multiplier effect and transformed the economic landscape of the country. Alas!

We do not invest money, we simply spend it.

Government policies toward poverty alleviation are sometimes good on paper but its implementation remains highly flawed. Economic boom or the spate of development, if there has been any, as the ruling alliance leaders have been preaching these days, has not distributed its benefits evenly. In the past decade, as we see, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer and those in the middle have gotten squeezed. This is a very sorry state and an unmistakable signal that the nation is plunging into disenchantment, disillusionment, chaos and disorder paving the path for rather an anarchic situation which no government can perhaps control.

The poor would not have resented, nay felt least concerned, if the rich were indeed getting richer but the poor would have stopped getting poorer. But this has not come to pass. Evidently, while the gains made by the rich have been spectacular, incomes of the middle class have been barely sufficient, and those of the poor not at all even that to get them back where they were 10 to 15 years ago. The yawning gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider by all indications available. This trend is no doubt very alarming. We don't know how it will influence the forthcoming parliamentary election, but the stark reality is that it has already shattered the "dream" we have cherished so long.

Let us spell out what this "dream" really means for us. It is just a comfortable house in a tree-shaded neighbourhood with just sufficient food and clothing, hazard free roads and meaningful school-cum-college education for the children.

But what concerns us most is that the "dream" does not seem to be coming true. Regardless of the size of its majority in the parliament the alliance government ran out of steam to govern the country simply because of lack of moral force and commitment to the cause of the people. Almost 54 months into office, bullied by allies, stunned by corruption expose, hurt by conspiracies and dubious roles by those close to the party hierarchy, and plagued by unrest that was their own making, the alliance government seems out of sorts. Conspicuously the wanton greed of a section of fortune seekers masquerading as either party adherents or politicians or bureaucrats has brought the country to the brink of disaster and consequently the fortunes of different groups diverged not in the favourable directions and that divergence still continues.

Undeniably true, with most of its members falling prey to poverty, the middle class is getting extinct. For many families it takes two jobs to get by. What is most alarming, the schooling for the children puts the middle class to an ever increasing strain almost unheard of in those good old days. Savings required to send even one child to either school or college and give him/her the type of education that can fetch the incumbent an employment or avenues for further studies in a university or abroad puts millions of middle class parents on an ever increasing treadmill. Expenses of studies in a private university is almost 40 percent of a median family's total income. Many families have more than one children in college or university at the same time. How can they make both ends meet in such a desperate situation?

But many parents feel they have no choice. A college or university diploma, once the passport to upward mobility is becoming a necessity just to avoid falling out of the middle class. Precisely told, the dream of the middle class was being strangulated by spiraling prices, lack of job opportunity for the educated members of the family and absence of adequate incentives for the small savings they have managed through hard

toils and extreme economic measures. Ironically, during the last one decade wages or incomes rose less than the prices of essentials rose putting the tax payers into higher brackets forcing them to pay higher bills on gas, electricity, water and municipal taxes. The double dilemma of higher prices and higher taxes in an ever increasing form cut the purchasing power of the middle class down. What the government could do, and should do right now, to bring about equality in social structure and stability in the society is to offer social security net to the unemployed youths in line with the advanced countries by levying proportionate taxes on the richer section.

Most worrisome, the trend toward inequality is rife with the potential for social conflict not just between classes but within the middle class itself. The differing prospects for its university educated members and those who go no further than high school is one potential source of antagonism. Another is the growing cleavage between young and old -- while younger couples wonder if they can ever buy a house, some people of their parents' generation are sighted as virtually sitting on a gold mine. Many of them bought a 10-katha piece of land, now under the metropolis, with just Tk 80,000.00 thirty years ago which is now worth several hundred times of that. No wonder this growing inequality could even threaten those who benefit from it, by putting an end to the economic expansion that the nation envisions so much.

This signals a great depression that the nation can't head off even with the best of rhetoric, astute and pragmatic planning done within the four walls of the cozy govt. buildings. Think of the inequality of rent for a house built in the Uttara residential area and the other built in either Baridhara or Gulshan area of the Dhaka metropolis with almost the same amenities and almost the same expenses. Economists must say how this growing inequality can be addressed. The danger is that growing disparities in wealth and living standards will undermine the sense of community and optimism that have kept the country from being riven by class resentments.

The saddest part of the truth is that life is simply getting harder for middle class citizenry now. Not that this middle class ever lived very well but most could afford the basics. Today the soaring prices and the diminishing value of currency have eroded even the minimum standard of life. Without a shadow of doubt, the middle class spans the whole country. They are working in government offices, business firms. technical installations, factories and industrial plants as the brain behind the machine. Given proper incentives, ideal conditions of employment and last of all, better housing and schooling facilities for children, they can provide a steady support to the demand for national development and economic growth of the country.

Md Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.