Session 5: SOCIAL TRANSITIONS

Wednesday, Dec 8, 2021 | 6:00pm – 7:45pm | Bangladesh Time (GMT+6)

Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya
Distinguished Fellow, CPD

Paper Title – Understanding Civil Society in Bangladesh: Evolution, Issues and Challenges

Abstract:

The difficulty in defining “civil society” explains how complex the idea is, particularly in the context of Bangladesh. Dominant theoretical approaches and their diverse variants have been found inadequate in convincingly identifying not only the constituents of the country’s civil society, but in articulating its emergence and the factors underpinning its transformative progression. The paper, building on the above, seeks to trace the genesis of civil society in Bangladesh in the pre-independence period and its novel role after the country’s independence in 1971. The subsequent evolving trends within civil society in Bangladesh and their distinctive features have also been explored in the paper.

The phases of evolution of the civil society in Bangladesh have been broadly explained in relation to the state power; where the defining factor has been the state of cooperation and contestation between the political and civil elites. In this connection, the paper provides a critical perspective concerning the dominant agenda of the country’s civil society and highlights the major critiques regarding its operational modalities. The paper concludes by underscoring the challenges faced by the civil society in Bangladesh in the context of its shrinking space and reflects on the outlook.