Unheard Voices

Webster dictionary explains the meaning of corruption as
1. impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle, depravity
2. decay, decomposition
3. inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery)
4. a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct.

Where as world bank’s conventional definition of corruption is ”the ‘abuse of public office for private gain”. Liberating ourselves from the way World Bank wants us to think, if we stick to the broader and a more meaningful meaning of Corruption, as noted in the Webster, I believe corruption is not definitely something that was created during last 15 years of democracy.

For the sake of time and space I’ll confine myself to the most recent history of our political geography and will start on June 23rd. June 23 of 1757  was the day when general Mir Zafar betrayed his leader Nabab Shiraj ud Doula and helped Col Clive win the battle of Plassey. I don’t know whether Mir Zafar stole money from the exchequer, but I know, for sure, that his act of treachery/ corruption sold the independence of Bengal to East India Company.

Then we saw repeat of this history many times, Mir Zafars kept on returning on every act of the political theater of Bengal. British Raj created a Babu class who will act against the interest of their creed and the country for materialistic benefits. Material benefit drove people to sacrifice their loyalty, allegiance, virtue all throughout the history.
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Families move on rafts from their waterlogged homes in Sirajganj, 150 km (93 miles) from Dhaka, July 29, 2007. With floodwater pouring in through their windows, thousands of people affected by South Asia’s deadly deluge are being forced to share the limited high ground with venomous snakes, surrounded by filthy water. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman (BANGLADESH)

By Husain Haqqani, Special to Gulf News

Since the day he joined the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) as a cadet, General Pervez Musharraf is used to taking orders from his superiors and giving orders to those below him.

Based on his lifelong career as a soldier, he considers the people of Pakistan his troops and civilian politicians who joined the “king’s party” formed after Musharraf’s 1999 military coup as junior and non-commissioned officers.

Those protesting against him are seen by Musharraf as the enemy. The general is now beginning to voice the worry that his “subordinate officers” are failing to motivate “the troops” sufficiently. He is afraid that the failings of his officers’ corps will cause him to lose the most important battle of his life.

The training of a military officer prepares him for waging war not for effecting compromises or conducting politics. Former Pakistan army chief General Musa Khan used to say that he was trained to “locate the enemy and liquidate the enemy”.

He found this training useless when dragged into politics as governor of West Pakistan during the late 1960s.

Musharraf recently complained that the more than 1,000 elected officials of the ruling coalition are doing little to defend their benefactor.

His complaint reflected the surprise Ayub Khan had expressed when members of his Convention Muslim League disappeared soon after the popular agitation against his rule began in 1968.

Both Ayub Khan and Musharraf never grew into politicians and could not see that those who join the “king’s party” for perks and privileges are risk-averse individuals in search of benefits.

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Crossposted from Ihtisham Kabir’s BackToBangladesh blog

During my recent trip to Silicon Valley, I repeatedly asked my Non Resident Bangladeshi friends to at least think about working in Bd. So, how badly does Bd need skilled managerial, business and IT skills? Example: there are at least 100,000 Indians who hold high-paid jobs in Bangladesh (BOI has issued 65000 work visas to Indians, and the rest are there temporarily or with other visas). While I do not begrudge them one bit - they bring a lot of value to our businesses (eg, Unilever Bd, headed by a group of Indians, is one of the most profitable branches of Unilever) - surely, this number indicates the need for talent, right?

Guess what I repeatedly heard back from my NRB friends? “Yeah, sure, they will pay Indians or other foreigners well, but as soon as they see another Bangladeshi - no matter how much American experience they have - Bangladeshi organizations will not want to pay high salaries.”

Is this really true? Anyone have real experiences? Certainly my short experience with the BD IT sector indicates otherwise - there was no end to the ways in which the IT community made me feel welcome back home - but maybe I am an exception or did not have grand enough expectations?

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You said it, we heard you. First on the series from guest bloggers, reader tacit sends in the following, if you want to send yours, you can send it to blog @ drishtipat dot org for consideration.

One of the conspicuous features of this CTG has been the amount of passion it arouses in most of the politically active (either in thought or in action) Bangladeshis around the world. This is understandable, in that, the self-declared mandate of this government is to make a lasting change to the culture of governance and politicking in our beloved country.

I believe that part of the reason people have been so much at loggerheads over this government is that it is not well-understood. Even by the normally opaque operating procedures of Bangladeshi administrations, this one has been full of surprises. However, on reflection, that may not be all that surprising, because this current CTG is similar to a scripted performance, a play if you will, in which the first and second act were performed without any observers. The third act, the one comprising the actions of the current CTG, is the first in public viewing, understandably leading to the difficulties in comprehension.

To elaborate, the first part of the play consisted of the various key players of today’s CTG assuming their positions. Some of the highlights in the first act? Setting aside Dr. Moniruzzaman Miah, whom Begum Zia had finalized to her cabinet colleagues a day earlier, Dr. Iajuddin Ahmed was picked as the next President of Bangladesh. Disregarding a note of dissent, then Major General Moin U. Ahmed was promoted to Lt. Gen and made Chief or Army Staff. Maj. Gen. Masududdin Chowdhury was given control of the strategic 9th division, ignoring his medical condition.

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THE man was weeping and asking the simplest of question.

“What will I do now? What will happen to my family? To my children?

How come those who decide to close [jute mills] always make it and those who get sacked never make it. How come the rich always decide what happens to the poor?

How come we are relieved that a loss making unit is closed without understanding an iota of what that means?

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WE were sitting in a school in Adamjee. The young girl who sat opposite me was smart and surprisingly confident for a 14-year old.

” I want to give you a gift?’

“What gift? I don’t want a gift? Please.”

“Don’t worry Bhaiya. You are a bhadrolok and I know that. What can I give you? I will give you a song to remember.”

” That gift will be a pleasure. Sing.”

She held me in a steely gaze and sang.

“Amar sonar bangla, ami tomai bhalobashi.”

She wept as she sang.

Why that song of all the songs?

– From the “epitaph for Adamjee” by Afsan Chowdhury

Four years later, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal has again pointed to us where we should be pointing our attention to — to the unfolding tragedies of Khalishpur (thanks robot for pointing this out)

Please read the whole article here

Is this the price of efficiency? 14,000 workers are staring at the barrel with their families. Could this have been phased slowly by ensuring alternative arrangements? When the blood sucking Biman corporation is allocated 300 million dollars to pay its employees for retirement, why nothing is being done for the workers of Jute Mills? Will the prescribers from World Bank please answer?

Take a look at the pictures taken by Munem Wasif here

Lastly, can any one of the readers care to translate this piece for publication in Daily Star which is read by the honchos of World Bank and IMF?

Previous stories covered on this in this blog.

Afsan Chowdhury on Adamjee Closure

In Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s literature, you would not be able to finish a full sentence without getting the description of dozen of different flora, starting from the century old shade trees to the little grass flower. Bibhutibhushan was the master in bringing up the real nature of Bengal in his letarature. As clearly depicted by Bibhutibhushan, an exceedingly lively nature and rich biodiversity made the landscape of Bangladesh.

 Several years ago, I had an opportunity to travel to the Chimbuk hill at BandarBan hilly district. While I expected a visual commentary of Bibhutibhushan, I was shocked and saddened to see an indiscriminate massacre of nature. The arakan mountain range that runs parallal to the coast line through Chittagong or the more intimidating landscape of the hill tract districts used to be home of dense lush green rain forest and was inhabited by an amazing range of creatures. Wild elephants used to roam along the foot of the hills in dense jungle, they also used to have leopards, porcupines, gibons, orang otangs, deers, bears, pythons, Nil Guy etc. Now-a-days, this dense green rainforest has turned into governments fruit gardens.

For many decades, there have been government programs of planting fruit trees along all the rainforests and to accomodate more fruit trees there have been more felling of trees that were meant to be there naturally.

Tagore wrote, “Oi Maloti lota dole, pial o toru ro kole”. As both  Maloti lota and pial toru are not lucrative, they have to give way for genetically modified new species of rapid growing trees or amra/peara gardens.

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I had initially planned on continuing with the reform theme, following on from term limits and presidential powers. But then, I started to wonder whether there was any point in writing when things like this suggest that guns are more powerful than pens (or keyboards). But to stop writing would mean letting guns have their way. And even though I’m not sure I want to write about reforms under the current circumstances, I can write about things other than politics, as pointed out by some readers in the open thread. In this piece, I’m going to discuss economics.

What is Bangladesh’s current economic condition? I’m going to explore this question, using this article as a starting point. Then I’ll move on to the economic records of the democratically elected governments compared with those of the military-dominated governments. Here, I’ll use this piece as my starting point. Hat tip AsifS for both pieces. As usual, looking forward to a good discussion.

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… shouting for silence in a library. Well, that does not quite have the ring of the original slogan popularised during the Vietnam war protests in the U.S., but we have to keep UV family-friendly! It does vaguely capture the sentiment of the original: namely that you cannot hope to achieve a goal through means that are fundamentally contrary with that goal itself. This is exactly what a lot of us are protesting in Bangladesh.

Last week’s arrest of Sheikh Hasina has led to a familiar debate between those who want due process and the rule of law to reign supreme and those who feel that exceptions to these must be made for her and other politicians currently behind bars, especially since they themselves may not have respected the rule of law and the right of others to due process when they were in power. I count myself among the former, and my reasons are those that I put forward above: namely, you cannot hope to establish a “corruption-free Bangladesh” (ostensibly the loudest, if not the most important, goal of this current CTG) by means that breed further corruption - such as lack of due process, unequal application of the law, and subversions of the law itself.
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This is a somewhat dated issue, but I recently came across this wonderfully well document example by Abul Kalam Azad of how the WTO can work for developing countries like Bangladesh.

The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is a by-product of the WTO’s Uruguay Round that many developing countries felt was something that they had little use for. The utility of this treaty however was fully realized by none other than our own Miles, when Anu Malik (aka the Captain Morgan of Bollywood’s music industry) tried to swipe “Phiriye Dao Amar Prem” for the Bollywood film Murder. Although it took them a while to work through the due process, Miles was eventually able to get some copyright-style justice:

“As compensation for the ‘injury’ caused to the business interests of the petitioners, 50 million rupees were demanded from Anu Malik, Mahesh Bhat, Saregama India Ltd and RPG Global Music; in addition, ‘total reimbursement’ for the expenditure incurred in filing the case also was demanded. A court order was also sought for appointing a receiver or special officer to seize the entire lot of soundtrack software from Saregama’s Dum Dum studio. Besides this, the band’s lawyers demanded that the respondents ‘should be directed to disclose upon oath details of cassettes and CDs distributed by them to various vendors and retails’.” - (Rock ‘n Roll in Bangladesh: Protecting Intellectual Property Rights in Music, Abul Kalam Azad)

This just goes to show that when properly informed, countries like ours really can make the most of otherwise obtuse treaties.

Please raise some topics here that you think we should discuss in the blog. As always, very many thanks from all of us for keeping this forum lively, exciting and informative. We truly appreciate your support. We recently have had complaints from both side of the aisle that admin has not been strict enough and similarly admin is being too harsh. We learn from the mistakes but we also try to keep the debate focused as it can often degenerate into name calling which would put off a lot of users. Comments are deleted rarely unless it violates our posting rules. We hope you understand. Please offer suggestion on how we can do better, what you like and what you don’t like here. It is an interactive forum and with your input we can do better.

Picture: the survivers

Over the last few days we heard a lot about reforms and we saw informal break ups of LDP, Awami League, BNP and JP. Amazingly, Jamat is completely missing from the picture. Neither they are talking about any of reform, nor their leaders are banned from travelling abroad in spite of having criminal cases on them (unlike some others we know). When Barrister Mainul Hossain was asked about this apparent favourtism, he expressed his ignorance and said he did not know Mr. Mujahid. Now Deshivoice blog exposes an old video of a conference of Islami Chatro Shibir where Barrister Mainul Hossain was present as a special guest sitting not too far from Mr. Mujahid and Delwar Hossain Sayeedi. If these two cases of favourtism and lying on camera was not enough, here is the most troubling news of institutionalizing presence of Jamat-i-Islami in the voter list creation by the election commission.

Election Commission has recently selected Bangladesh Masjid Mission to “be given the responsibility to encourage the people through mosque-based publicity to be enlisted in the voter enrolment with photographs.” Now first of all it may seem innocuous thinking that it is trying to encourage the picture taking of conservative Muslims through this mission. But let’s not make any mistake that this is indeed giving formal power to an organization that lists as its aim:

Making the mosques a living center to Islam to address all sorts of human problems & suffering in light of Masjid-e-Nababi. Even this would not have been so problematic had Bangladesh Masjid Mission wasn’t so close to Jamate Islami. Their website is adorned with pictures of Jamat Amir and former chief of Albadar Al Shams and a collaborator in our liberation war and alleged war criminal Matiur Rahman Nizami.

Here is a picture:

Also, here is another news story of Nijami and Babar using BMM’s platform to say Bangla bhai was a creation of India. If this doesn’t convince you of the link. Consider this — Bangladesh Masjid Mission was founded by one Maulana Alauddin Al Azhari who is brother in law of none other than our very own Golam Azam. The reference is from the Golam Azam’s own website.

Now that’s the kind of news that makes you go hmmmmm…

While I’m sure the recent arrest of Sheikh Hasina has captured the attention of every other Bangladeshi from Dhaka to Barbados, let us not forget the multitude of silent heroes that are able to work through the partisan chaos and do us proud in the global arena.

One such hero is a young HSC student named Tarif Ezaz. Over the past year, Tarif has been in the vanguard of a movement - conducted mostly on a cellphone - to make the “Bangladesh Language Movement” entry on Wikipedia a Featured Article. As many of you may know, getting an article to the status of “Featured Article” on the famous online encyopedia is a long slog up the mountain of peer review and consensus building.

Ragib Hasan does a great job of chronicling the struggles of Tarif and his colleagues as they worked to bring this inalienable piece of Bangladeshi history to the center stage. I’m not a superstitious man, but it seems almost portentious that something representing the soul of the Bangladeshi nationalist movement would be brought up in a time when our country continues to face tough choices about its fate.

Great job Tarif. We need more young people like you to bring us back to basics.

While we mindlessly debate pros and cons of the Hasina’s arrests, not a single person cared to discuss the merit of the case. You can hate Hasina or Khaleda as much as you want and you may think public hanging is the only possible punishment for these two leaders, but you, at the same time can not forget that we are not living in a jungle where we can do to people whatever we want. So let’s step back and take a look at the facts. But before AL supporters start cheering on the tone of my post, think for one second whether you asked for due process when Tareque Rahman was arrested in a similar extortion case. If you did not, then you have also lost your moral right to ask for due process in Hasina’s case. Its not about supporting one person over another or being AL or BNP or army sympathizer. Its purely about what kind of precedence this government is setting in the name of checking corruption. Now those who talk about people not caring about this case and caring more about inflation amazes me that they think these issues are not related. Why we shouldn’t be caring about this issue which is setting the trend for the coming days? Yesterday it was Tareque, today it is Hasina, tomorrow it will be you.

Now let’s look at the case for which Sheikh Hasina was denied bail. The CTG is not accusing Hasina or Joy to have made 300 million or for creating a shopping mall in Florida as suggested by some commenters. Court of law can not run on rumours and hearsays. But the accuser is accusing Shaikh Selim of extorting money from him for a business deal and because Mr. Selim threatened to use Hasina and her power if he didn’t get his way, it implied that Hasina was a party to this scam as well.

One Mr. Ajam J. Chowdhury filed an extortion case in June 13th this year. The exact case report in verbatim is here:
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The Daily Star reports,

 ”Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina picked up by law enforcers
 

Law enforcers early today picked up former prime minister and Awami League(AL) chief Sheikh Hasina from her Sudha Sadan residence. Several hundred law enforcers had cordoned former Prime Minister and Awami League Chief Sheikh Hasina’s house in a pre-dawn raid. They entered the premises of her Dhanmondi road number 5 residence, Sudha Sadan, at around 4:50am and left the premises with AL chief around 7:30am…” A follow up report says, “AL chief Sheikh Hasina sent to jail in an extortion case…”