Drishtipat Blog

National ID Cards: In the Interest of Surveillance?
Rahnuma Ahmed
New Age, September 29, 2008

Official:  “You ought to have some papers to show who you are.”
Protagonist:  “I do not need any papers. I know who I am.”
Official:  “Maybe so. But others are also interested in who you are.”
– Kafkaesque journey of American sailor who has lost his identity papers, B. Traven, The Death Ship (tr. 1934) (more…)

Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, head of Kandahar’s department of crimes against women, was shot in her car as she was about to leave for work.  Her son was also wounded in the attack, and is said to be seriously injured.

To know more about this brave hero, you can read an in depth report on her and her interview here. 

“The Taliban may threaten me,” Malalai says. “But because of stories like rescuing this woman, the women and children love me.” “The Taliban may threaten me,” Malalai says. “But because of stories like rescuing this woman, the women and children love me.” (more…)

Bringing you the latest from AT capital as its currently the only source providing in depth research reports on Bangladesh economy.

Bangladesh Overview and Special Focus:

·          The retail industry in Bangladesh presents tremendous potential, considering two of the largest drivers for growth within the sector are urbanization and income per capita.

·          Prospects for Indian Retailing and lessons for Bangladesh

We often wonder whether the foreign policy of US toward Bangladesh will be any different whether its Obama or McCain who is in power come January 20th.  Last night’s debate had a revealing exchange which says a lot about how the attitude towards military in South Asian countries would be under a McCain and Obama administration.

Regarding Pakistan:

McCain: Now, the new president of Pakistan, Qadari [sic], has got his hands full… And the Pakistanis are going to have to understand that that bombing in the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was a signal from the terrorists that they don’t want that government to co-operate with us in combating the Taleban and jihadist elements.

Obama: The problem, John, with the strategy that’s been pursued was that, for 10 years, we coddled [former President] Musharraf, we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were anti-democratic. We had a 20th Century mindset that basically said: ‘Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he’s our dictator.’

McCain: There was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power.  Everybody who was around then and had been there and knew about it knew that it was a failed state.

Though Pakistan was wrestling with problems like tensions with India and serious poverty when Musharraf took power in an October 1999 coup, it had a democratically elected government and was far from being a “failed state” - a country in social and economic collapse where the government no longer exercises authority.

In effect, McCain is okay with dictators as long as they are his own.  So much for spreading democracy and freedom!

‘Name war criminals by Oct 15′, said the sectors commanders.  But they don’t tell us how they will be identified.

Just like this picture, the progressive movement  in Bangladesh is toothless, gimmicky and resides safely under the cover of media and a one that is cofined in a drawing room.  No offence to these good folks and commanders but there has to be some new direction to this madness movement.  When will media stop focusing on these gimmicks and start highlighting the real thing?  How about starting with ONE war criminal and bringing specific charges against  him before launching into such grandiosity.  Prabir Shikdar, we need you.

Annisul said: “Like ordinary people, we too believe that a meeting of the two leaders would be good for Bangladesh and resolve the political crisis in the country,” he added.

What is he smoking?

- Catherine Masud

For months we had been searching for a village location for our next film. Our requirements were very clear: a clay house with a broad grass lawn in front, bordered by coconut trees, on raised land overlooking a paddy field that would flood in the monsoon. As we scoured villages in Manikganj, Dhamrai, Gazipur, Pubail and Keraniganj, we became increasingly frustrated. One or the other of our basic requirements was always missing.

Then one day in January, we decided to visit Tareque’s village home in Faridpur, after a gap of one and a half years. Although my in-laws live there, it had always been a hassle to travel to, perilously navigating between careening trucks and buses on Aricha Highway, jostling with other vehicles to squeeze our car onto a ferry, sweating out the 4-hour journey amidst the heat and dust. Our visits there, though relaxing, were also associated in my mind with a romantic sense of “roughing it out” without the modern amenities of urban life. However, this time, as we walked along the path leading from the road, we began to see the house with new eyes. The broad open space with a line of coconut trees in front, the raised land, the paddy field… The house itself was obscured by a jungle of randomly planted trees and bushes, but if we cleared the jungle, and planted grass, and built a clay house façade…here was our location!

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A butterfly flaps its wing somewhere in Borneo, setting off a perturbation in the weather system that eventually leads to a depression in the Bay of Bengal, and millions in the coastal Bangladesh fear the worst. This is a popular characterisation of chaos theory - a branch of mathematics that says that small changes in the initial condition has big impacts in the final outcome. I don’t know whether Arifur Rahman read about chaos theory or not, but when one of his cartoons was published by the Daily Prothom Alo last Sep, what happened was pretty close to chaos. This is how we covered the issue when it started.

This was a time of fraying nerves. Tazreena Sajjad describes the zeitgeist of the time here. It was within weeks of the Dhaka University riots. For a while, there were rumours of Prothom Alo being shut down. In the event, things calmed down after Prothom Alo editor, a one-time communist, apologised to the Imam of the national mosque in the presence of the information minister of the military-backed regime.

After a year, we can think about the controversy with a calmer mind. That’s what this post attempts. First it notes the role played by a new generation of activists - online and in the ‘real’ world - during the crisis. Then it notes that this wasn’t the first incidence of its kind. Finally, it discusses where and how we might draw the line between freedoms of speech and faith.

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Open thread for election related discussion as the date for the much awaited election has been announced.  The race begins.   The players have not changed and neither the debate.   But can we interject some new ideas in the way how debates are shaped around politics.  We hope to cover the election and the debate extensively from the blog.  This blog will soon move to a new platform and will be reintroduced.  Stay tuned.  In the meantime, opening up the thread for discussion on the election.

The other side…

Here is an alternate view by Zafar Sobhan
Ami bidrohi, I the rebel warrior
I have risen alone with my head held high

– Asian Dub Foundation

If there was any doubt as to what motivated the 13 Bangladeshi cricketers to sign with the ICL and whether they were justified in doing so, such doubt was removed by the draconian punishment handed down to them by the Bangladesh Cricket Board on Wednesday.

The ten year ban is totally disproportionate to any offence the players might have committed, and as one-time captain of the national team, Habibul Bashar, points out, this is the kind of action one would expect against someone involved in match fixing or some other kind of egregious practice, and that the players who have chosen to join the ICL have committed no crime that merits such punishment.

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We always felt it.  We always thought about it but never really entertained the idea for long.  But now the proof is in the pudding.

11 national cricketers prefer MORE MONEY than the honour of playing national cricket for Bangladesh.  While this is understandable for cricketers like Bashar who are past their prime.  But for cricketers like Aftab, Nafis etc, its a position of clearly choosing money over national interest.   They are perhaps counting on the fact that Bangladesh cricket team needs them badly and once the money comes to them to roost,  they will simple play a year of IPL and return to Dhaka and ask for clemency.  However, I was willing to give them a benefit of doubt thinking this was an economic decision for some who came mostly for poor family.  In that case, let’s call spade a spade and say it that they did it for money.  But no.

Here is the bone chilling outrageous bit about their decision.  After doing this for money, these non performers  have apparently blamed the system for their decision.  Take a look at the once thought of as potential skipper Shahriar Nafees’ statement:

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[Daily Star printed this expanded version of a blog that originally appeared on DP.]

DAILY STAR, September 15, 2008
End The Grand Experiment
By Saher Zaidi

“It’s time — it’s time you were gone”
- Anton Chekhov [Agafya]

Sitting in traffic and calculating how long it would take my 10 minute ride to mutate into 2 hours, I thought about traffic as a metaphor for the country. Then I cracked open the newspaper and found I was not the only one. H Khondker calls it “Spaces of Despair” in The Daily Star, although his recommendations (headlights on rickshaws, teach rickshaw pullers the rules) smell like the same philosophy (danda mere thanda, and always blame the subaltern) that landed us in this national mess.

Putting hard facts to the exploding traffic crisis, Kailash Sarkar of Daily Star informs us that a 10 km ride (Bangla Motor-Bangla College) is now a 3.5 hour ‘odyssey’. People are using apocalyptic language: “Commuters say the entire city traffic system has collapsed”. But here is the key statistic that will make the metaphor even more solid: 1 lakh vehicles out of 6 lakh were withdrawn by CTG after 1/11, but all those vehicles have now returned. 175 community policemen were deployed by CTG, but they have no reporting to police and are now seen as totally ineffective. DCC has licensed 87,000 rickshaw, but there are 5 lakh rickshaws now in Dhaka with another 1 lakh expected before Eid.

As I ditched my transport and walked (something I do every morning now to get to work on time) I kept thinking of traffic. I thought of those vehicles that the CTG boldly banished, which are all now back. Actually, everything is back. Everyone is out. Everyone is well (or sick)? Everyone regrets! Everyone has learnt a lesson!

And while a natok plays out on the national stage, I look at gridlocked Dhaka city, and come to this realization: No one is running the country. (more…)

The Manna factor is in play again.  The two leaders are out now.   The bitter truth for some that was hard to accept a few months ago, is a reality.   Making the two leaders irrelevant is impossible.   We talked about a possible deal in this blog between AL and the government and mused aloud what the deal meant.  Obviously another negotiation has gone through with Khaleda as well and for the time being it seems like the deal means temporary forced retirement of Tareq Rahman from politics.  However, the most pleasant surprise of today was Khaleda’s unequivocal response about participating in the upcoming election.  With that it is now guaranteed that we will have hard fought full fledged election in December.   At the risk of sounding I told you so, we argued this from the very beginning that without political participation that is meaningful, no reform or election will be meaningful.

With those who are doing hai hai about the release of political leaders from jail, well if you have thought people would be in jail forever on bailable crimes, you were sadly mistaken.  If the government was sincere about trying corruption, they would have focused on finding evidence rather than focusing on keeping them in jail by force using unconstitutional means.  The sad reality is because of the strong arm tactics, now even the real cases of corruption will be shoved under the carpet or be made a political casualty.  We argued this repeatedly in this blog at the risk of sounding pro corruption.

So what next?  Business and country do not like risk.  So at the minimum people will be relieved that the political governments will be back.  The repositioning of newspaper editor like Naimul Islam Khan is in full display (he wrote the ultimate brown nosing open letter to Tareq Zia a few days ago) .  General Moeen is in the papers very little these days.  Is this a tactical retreat?  Will this war against ‘old politics’ will continue after election by proxy as it is being done in Thailand?  These are good questions to ponder.  But whatever scenario that is plot, the two parties in our country, for their own sake, have to find a meaningful working relationship between each other.