Economic theories become ineffective in society without rules, ethics

Economist Wahiduddin Mahmud on Monday said economic theories could not bring any good to a society where rules and minimum ethics did not apply properly. 
He made the observation with an oblique reference to the abysmal condition of the country’s banking sector.
He noted that proper implementation of rules and laws were imperative for overcoming the problems in the banking sector.
Professor Wahiduddin was delivering a lecture on ‘Economy, Ethics and Literature’ at RC Majumdar Auditorium of Dhaka University. 
He said that social capital, one of the key elements of business, was nowhere to be found in the country’s banking sector.
But millions of businessmen in the country’s rural area still maintained the social capital and operated in the traditional market economy, he added.
Over an hour long speech, Wahiduddin, also former caretaker government adviser, narrated that corruption in a society will grow if people got higher economic benefits by undermining rules and regulations against the backdrop of an ineffective watchdogs like Anti-Corruption Commission not doing its job.
He said if the number of corrupt people crossed the tipping point in a society there would be a need for a big push.
Wahiduddin was critical about importing policies from abroad and applying those in a place without understanding the traditional social condition of that place.
‘Such policies backfired,’ he said while talking about a donor-driven irrigation project in Nepal.
He stressed the need for proper economic policies in line with rule and ethics for betterment of the society.
Time was due to link economics with social science, philosophy, psychology and literature, he said. 
He was also critical of the neo-classical economic theorists who renamed the capitalist economy as the market economy.
He noted that market economy had limitation as it hardly cared for the equal distribution of economic gains.
That’s why the economists should take help from books dealing with ethics, he said. 
Wahiduddin also took questions from the audience.
Binayek Sen, a research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, presided over the event organised by Banglar Pathshala Foundation.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net