বাংলা | Epaper

বাংলা E-Paper 📍 Dhaka 📅 Wednesday | 4 November 2026, 19 Kartik 1433 PID registration number 06

HEADLINE

● Wage board meeting underway in Segunbagicha ● Prepaid meter recharge to remain suspended for 24hrs: DESCO ● Border management vital for security and growth: Home Minister ● Democratic Party wins majority in Senate ● PM releases commemorative postage stamp for Nov 7 ● Govt replaces wage board chairman three days after formation ● Chinese Minister Liu Haixing pays respects at Zia, Khaleda graves

The Moral-Material Element for Development Planning of New Bangladesh

Published : Wednesday, 4 November, 2026 at 12:00 AM

Masudul Alam Choudhury

Today, the global humanity in general feels the need for, or cowers under the shroud in darkness, avoiding the moral duty of combining wellbeing with growth. By this moral awakening by command or quiet condescension, the parting of the age of sheer calculative economics, is giving way to the dawning of the new age of socio-philosophical economics. We find this to be the case of the most erudite minds among academics and development planners -- Amartya Sen, John Rawls, Dworkin, many others of whom not the least is the Nobel Laureate, Professor Dr Mohammad Yunus on the economics of poverty alleviation.

A GLIMPSE TOWARDS MORAL RECOVERY OF A BENIGN DEEVELOPMENT PLANNING WORLDVIEW

Their contributions on the role of the philosophy of morality like freedom embedded in the objective meaning of economic development have excited the indispensable thinking in the moral centrepiece of our holistic understanding of socio-economic development. The market-institutional conjoint approach to the formation of a good society of moral gifts and exchanges of goods, services, and technology, laments for systemic unification. The extension of the moral consciousness in human experience can also be found in Dworkin’s theory of law. On this matter is written, “Dworkin argues that, moral principles, which people uphold dearly, are often wrong. This legal contradiction is found even to the extent that, certain crimes are acceptable if one’s principles are skewed enough.” Dworkin’s moral theory of law has indeed, impelled the need for normative interpretation of law, contrary to its evidential procedure followed by the courts under positivism.

Professor Mohammad Yunus’ moral calling in socio-economic perspective is expressed deeply in his poverty alleviation project of the Grameen Bank, and in his later academic writing entitled, A World of Three Zeros. The publisher of this book writes, “By creating a world with zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emissions, Yunus presents his vision of a world bereft of neo-liberal capitalism for a new economic order based on social business and sustainability.” The constellation of such thoughts and their enaction in the whole of the knowledge-centred world that yearns for the moral worth of the civil society and the ideals of participative development worldview, today forms the holistic meaning of socio-economic development, law, geo-politics, and all.

In the case of Bangladesh, the moral element of holistic socio-economic development ought to be the new framework of her programme of reform post-Sheikh Hasina’s downfall in every respect - moral, economic, social, and mature demise of an enlightened nation.

BANGLADESH CONSCIOUSNESS TOWARDS A GLOBAL MORAL-MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT WORLDVIEW

Premised in the moral paradigm of development, Bangladesh and the world nation of Islam (ummah) ought to deepen the moral meaning to the world at large by the new awakening. In the case of Bangladesh, the moral element of holistic socio-economic development ought to be the new framework of her programme of reform post-Sheikh Hasina’s downfall in every respect - moral, economic, social, and mature demise of an enlightened nation. In the case of the moral element of OIC, as in the original and continued value of her founding preamble, the moral value complemented with the material gains ought to frame the progressive sustainability of socio-economic development.

Unfortunately, such is not found in the presentation of the Bangladesh Adviser of Education and Planning, in favour of the kleptocratic capitalism that remains entrenched in the neo-liberal neoclassical micro- and macro- economic school. His questionable comment on the present thought-provoking paradigm of establishing and sustaining participative complementarities on the moral-material essence of development was as follows (the Star newspaper has confirmed the Advisers comment): “‘Now it has become a moral issue whether to buy dialysis machines or invest in public health,’ he said, adding that even seasoned economists and philosophers like Amartya Sen and John Rawls may not be able to come up with a solution for such a moral dilemma.” This is a dispelling maturity view. It should be revamped in Bangladesh future outlook in favour of the imminent development worldview of interfacing moral and material pressing needs of the time. This will spell out the sustainable and participative human ecological worldview of mature thought. Unfortunately, Today, Muslim thinkers and academics have failed to inculcate such a mature thinking and approach in their outmoded erudition. Instead, they have followed the outlandish ideas of trade-off and marginalized wellbeing in the moral value being dissociated from the material growth sectors. Bangladesh society like all other ones of the ummah has remained in the immiserating grips of neoclassical economic assumptions.

The attainment of moral-material participative complementarity in the ummah has been the sustained goal of the OIC. The possibility for attaining this goal has always been on achieving trade and development, and rural sector development interfaced with urban sector development. Wellbeing in its multidimensional aspects were aimed at attaining economic growth and economic efficiency by the circular causation medium of inter-relational sectoral wellbeing, shareholding in productive assets, and product- and risk-diversifications. These enabling qualities are the sustained cause and effect of a well-planned collective ummah according to its functioning in adherence to the law of unity of knowledge prevailing in every sector of the participative ummah. The same kind of participative criteria ought to be phased in Bangladesh educational and development planning as the core of her post-Hasina kleptocratic ravages of the Bangladesh nation.

A BANGLADESH PARTICIPATIVE MORAL-MATERIAL, WELLBEING-GROWTH DEVELOPMENT PLANNING PARADIGM

Change to the contrary participative socio-economic moral-material embedded worldview is the order of today. Indeed, this area of profound epistemic thought constitutes a most significant pathway for socio-scientific thinking and application in the present emergent vista of ontological-epistemological freshness. The academic profession, political foresight, and sustainable evolution of Bangladesh society, ought to derive and establish the originating praxis of knowledge breeding the moral-material architecture of an educated, productive, and creatively thoughtful young Bangladesh society of now and tomorrow.

The comprehensive moral-material complementary framework of a good and sustained Bangladesh nation rests upon this vision of her development planning. Socio-economic sustainability then unfolds the prescription of the maturing national young minds. Indeed, the inherent potentiality of the young in Bangladesh shows this strength that has long been pent up due to the misguided model of development planning aiming at debt-ridden economic growth. Wherewithal, the overarching benefit of wellbeing with growth in a participatory socio-economic development paradigm has been left out of sustainability paradigm. Reinstating a systemic participatory development planning for Bangladesh in her global resilience of a purposive nation is the order of the age.

The writer is a retired Professor of Economics, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia, Canada