About twelve years ago, Stephen Walt ( Theory and Politics in Public Relations)
International Relations ), renowned professor at the Kennedy School, the School of International Relations at Harvard University, Stephen Walt published an article in the Yale Journal of International Affairs that led readers to imagine the reasons why we were so little heard by politicians. He questioned the role of International Relations theories in political processes, the limitations of theories, our truncated language full of conjectures that simply do not match or dialogue with all the structuring emergencies of national and international contexts. At the same time, Walt proposed a set of changes in attitudes that would be taken into consideration by elected politicians and policy managers and decision-makers.
They would be:
a) giving greater weight to Real-World Impact in the development of decisions;
b) encouraging professional associations with respectable public Impact;
c) facilitating young intellectuals to gain more political experience;
d) engaging politicians in research processes;
e) convincing university administration to value contributions to the real world;
f) expanding the discussion of ethics and academic responsibility.
Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, for creating a microcredit bank
for poor people, the result of which was an attempt to reverse the feminization of poverty,
considering that almost 98% of the microcredit borrowers from their banks were
women who ended up also becoming shareholders, was acclaimed by the leaders
students protesting against the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Chronic poverty and semi-squalor scenario in Bangladesh
With a legal ban on workers unionizing and mass export of workers to the super metropolises of the Middle East, such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai and a minimum wage below one hundred US dollars, Bangladlesh has become the main producer of several sustainable products for the Walmart chain, especially those made based on jute, abundant in the country. As they are not industrialized articles, they add greater market value especially for the green market. Because they are sold at low cost, makes the Walmart brand both sustainable and competitive compared to others competitors in the world market. However, overexploitation often reaches a physical and mental limits of workers and, more often than not, result in an explosion general.
Will the Yunus administration have the courage to elevate workers from Bangladesh to a minimally acceptable level of exploitation, restore reserves environmentalists of Bangaldesh and bring together the semi-enslaved diaspora around the world for the building a united platform for fighting and overcoming the contradictions of capitalism Or should we not demand or expect more from intellectuals?
Whether intellectuals should be spared criticism when they take over the management of politics national, how to resolve the issue proposed by Professor Walt? If, on the one hand, we have students engaged in politics who pray for the rise of an intellectual to power, Does Bangladesh have everything it takes to succeed or will it take student activists, the Yunus, the old guard of Bangladeshi politics, international corporations and the foreign governments that benefit from Bangladesh's extreme poverty will be able to resolve its strong structural contradictions within domestic politics?
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