Browsing by Author "Ullah, S.M. Akram"

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Democracy in Bangladesh: Role of Student Politics (1972-2002)
(University of Rajshahi, 2009) Ullah, S.M. Akram; Rahman, Md. Aminur
This thesis explores present state of student politics and its relationship with democracy. How students are getting involved in student politics? What impact they have upon democracy of the country? What are the problems and future of student politics in Bangladesh? This study demonstrates historical approaches to democracy and struggle for democracy over the past. Students played a significant role in bringing out qualitative change alone with some negative roles, such as unrest on campuses, closure of institutions and session jam. Student's activities were catalyst, to some extent, to ensure Bangladesh to journey towards democracy. This study has been incorporated with data from various newspapers and magazines along with respondent's opinions form the survey carried out. The study has employed primary and secondary sources of data. The data have been included on the basis of relevance. Comparative evaluation, logical argument, critical reasoning and rational judgment have been used in this dissertation. This thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter encompasses introduction, discussion, definition of key terms, justification of the research, objectives of the study and methodology. A historical overview of democracy from British colonial rule to modern times (up to 2002) has been described in chapter 2. Chapter 3 encloses a historical sum-up of student politics in Bangladesh. Chapter 4 traces the causes of involvement of students in political activities with comparative analysis. Chapter-5 shows respondents· opinion concerning present trends of student politics. The concluding chapter 6 reinforces summary of the study, findings, offers recommendations for policy makers and some guidelines of future research in which future researches can be done.
People’s Voice in between Elections: Democratic Public Sphere and Accountability of Elected Representatives in Bangladesh
(University of Rajshahi, 2015) Hossain, Abu Rusho Muhammad Toab; Ullah, S.M. Akram
A democratic public sphere is conducive to make the elected representatives accountable to the people. Civil liberty, free flow of information, platform for citizens and communication channels consisted in public sphere are significant to create non-electoral vertical accountability of the elected representatives. The state of public sphere, public opinion formation and non-electoral vertical accountability of the elected representatives of Bangladesh have been analyzed in this study to find out the nexus between democratic public sphere and accountability of the elected representatives in Bangladesh. To do this, three objectives have been examined profoundly. The first was to reveal the state of the democratic public sphere in Bangladesh for analyzing to what extent it acts its due role in terms of representative accountability. Secondly it has been assessed whether the democratic public sphere forms public opinion associated with common concern, predominately the issue of corruption, in terms of representative accountability in Bangladesh. And finally it has been explored whether public opinion can convert public issues into representative accountability mechanism in Bangladesh. The study is predominately qualitative in nature using data from both primary and secondary sources. For the validation and reliability of the data and triangulation, four tools i.e. SLR (Secondary Literature Review), KII (Key Informant Interview), FGD (Focus Group Discussion) and QS (Questionnaire Survey) have been used. The study shows that the state of democratic public sphere in Bangladesh is of mediocre type. This situation has been exemplified by the negative impact of the vested interest groups regarding freedom of opinion and expression affecting civil liberty. It is also identified that access to government information is very difficult which influences free flow of information negatively. Poor performance of the media adds to this dysfunctioning as debate creating nature of media coverage and political pressure on media affect the performance of communication channels. Therefore, citizens’ platform cannot become the people’s forum due to the lack of democratic structure and leadership. It is also clear that protecting business interests and self-censorship of media, elite and self evading voice of talk-shows’ participants and lack of authenticity of facebook’s posts and fear of political color of facebook users affect communication channels negatively in terms of public opinion formation. Hence, public sphere produces public opinion only partially. Furthermore, the elected representatives’ negative response to public sphere and seldom behavioral change imply minimal nexus between democratic public sphere and non-electoral vertical accountability of the elected representatives in Bangladesh. Finally, the absence of formal mechanism like deliberative democracy compels public sphere having a “limited” impact on the non -electoral vertical accountability of the elected representatives in Bangladesh.