Professor Mohammad Abu Yusuf said NBR took up many initiatives, but these were not implemented. Now NBR says that the finance ministry would impose targets on them and they could do nothing.
CPD senior researcher Toufiqul Islam said the government would create data and statistics in the same manner as it generated its various narratives.
Professor Sharmind Neelormi spoke about mismanagement in the health and education sectors.
Zahid Hossain said, on one hand there were systemic problems with data and statistics, and on the other there was the government’s intervention.
He said, a big question now is how to create accountability within the government. There are talks about reforms. But at the end of the day, it is accountability that will determine politics.
Selim Raihan said there are two types of institutions — one is political and other is economic. There are serious problems in both areas. Broadly speaking, the problem began with the incredibly flawed election of 2014. Political legitimacy is essential for any government to survive. That crisis in political legitimacy began from the 2014 election. The development narrative gained currency from then. And the endeavour to lend legitimacy to such development gave rise to a huge leap in crony capitalism.
Debapriya Bhattacharya added that he had dubbed crony capitalism in Bangla as “chamcha pujibad”.
Selim Raihan went on to say the project-dependent corruption also saw a huge leap in the last decade. A handful of business groups would benefit from state policies. The elite at the centre of ruling politics were with them, as well as a section of civil and military bureaucrats. They created a group and tried to give the development narrative a permanent shape.
He said there had been talk of reforming the institutions at various times, including the National Board of Revenue (NBR), the banking sector and so on. Now the basic question is, why were these reforms not carried out? It was because the alliance that had been formed had created an anti-reforms group. They foiled reforms at every step because these reforms went against their interests.