THE floor of the parliament is meant to be a place for democratic accountability, where the vulnerabilities of citizens are converted into state protection. But in a recent session, it transformed into a theatre of elite indifference. When Mohammad Akhtaruzzaman Bachchu, lawmaker for the Mymensingh 10 constituency, stood to tell a harrowing tale that 10-11 people had died by electrocution, coming in contact with sagging electric lines in two months at the place, the response of Iqbal Hassan Mahmood Tuku, the power, energy and mineral resources minister, was not one of contrition. It, rather, sounded syllogistic.
The minister said that the occurrence conclusively disproved allegations of power outage in the region as electrocution requires active electrical current. This response reflects an ethical decline which uses human lives as instruments for grid validation. Efforts to leverage the physics of electricity conduction to mask institutional failures is a malicious form of psychological manipulation. By saying that a lethal current equates to administrative efficacy, the ministry tries to convert negligence and unmaintained wiring into a metric of bureaucratic success.
The implicit, insulting message to the families of the deceased is that their relatives are merely statistical collateral to prove that the grid is active. Worse still, the remarks did not provoke collective outrage. They were met with chuckles and laughter inside the chamber. This alarming in-group dynamic shows a severe disconnect between the ruling political elite shielded from daily hardship and the rural people who pay for infrastructural decay with their lives.
Such cruelty is enabled by entrenched clientelist political structures. Rather than pressing for a formal investigation, the elected representative quickly retreated into deferential language, addressing the minister as ‘priya manush’ or the beloved person. In a highly centralised political ecosystem, lawmakers are entirely dependent on the cabinet for the development budget and patronage. Directly confronting executive failures risks cutting off a constituency from state funding, forcing representatives to minimise the urgent physical safety of their voters to preserve their political access.
Yet, no amount of rhetorical evasion can obscure the reality of an unmaintained grid. Media reports show that the power distribution system overseen by the Rural Electrification Board and cooperative societies such as Mymensingh Palli Bidyut Samiti 2 are in a state of severe disrepair. The fatalities are not isolated accidents. They are the predictable consequence of institutional failures.
The government’s narrative relies on the convenient fiction that persistent power disruption is localised, temporary outcomes of summer storms. The crisis is, however, fundamentally structural, driven by fuel constraints, debt and severe geographic imbalance.
While the ministry boasts of a large, theoretical capacity of roughly 29GW, the grid remains severely crippled. The peak summer demand goes ranges between 16.500GW and 18.5GW. Yet, the generation frequently ranges between 13GW and 15.5GW. The deficit is fuelled by gas and coal shortage, leaving many plants running well below the installed capacity. The deficit stems from the financial collapse of the single buyer Power Development Board.
Trapped in a debt spiral because of high bulk purchase costs and capped retail tariffs, the government owes private independent power producers more than Tk 200 billion. Delays in the bill settlement by six to nine months mean private operators cannot open letters of credit to import fuel, triggering ‘forced outages’ born entirely of state insolvency.
The consequences of the deficit are not borne equally. Although the government has recently decided to introduce more power outage in Dhaka, reports from districts continue to document far longer power cuts, with some communities experiencing outage of up to 10 hours a day. Rural households, farms and small enterprises consequently shoulder a disproportionate share of the economic and social costs of the energy crisis.
This calculated deprivation has triggered an economic downturn across the economic lifeline. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association reports that the apparel sector has seen production capacity plunge by 20–30 per cent, forcing factories to rely on captive power and costly air freight to meet the deadlines. This has severely eroded profit margins and led to a year-on-year export contraction. Agriculture is trapped in a crisis of fuel inflation and fertiliser scarcity. In a desperate bid to feed power plants, the government cut gas supply to state-owned fertiliser factories, forcing a reliance on expensive imports while local urea production collapsed.
Ultimately, the energy sector rests on a system of political clientelism that constrains independent oversight. In such a structure, the scrutiny of ministerial performance is weakened, allowing energy and economic failures to persist with limited accountability. If the country is to move past temporary rhetorical distortion and fragile financial band-aids, the government should implement comprehensive, structural reforms. The government must transition away from imported fossil fuels by reducing import duties on solar infrastructure to a nominal level to accelerate industrial rooftop solar adoption. Power allocation practices should also be reviewed to ensure a more balanced distribution of outage, recognising both the economic sensitivity of urban centres and the developmental impact of prolonged disruption in rural areas, particularly on farming and small-scale industry.
The government should also enhance accountability and reduce patronage within the power and energy sector by reviewing the agreements signed with independent power producers to cut down on overcapacity and bring down the payment of capacity charge, which is the amount of money that the Power Development Board pays power-sector investors even when the plants do not produce electricity, with an aim to cover the loans that the plants receive, along with interest, salaries of the employees and returns on equity.
Rafia Tamanna is an editorial assistant at New Age.
