Unheard Voices

I represented Drishtipat in a conference titled ‘Changing Asia: forging partnerships, building sustainability’ held in Manila on 29-30 Aug. The Conference was held by the Asia Forum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Magsaysay Award, and more details are available here. Other representatives from Bangladesh were: the Prothom Alo editor Matiur Rahman; Father Richard Timm of Human Rights Hotline; and Sharif Kafi of another NGO.

In what follows, I summarise the Conference proceedings, and where appropriate, my take on things.
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This is a tough brief. Perhaps I would have better luck writing in defence of serial killers or kidnappers or puppy-punters. Even writing in defence of lawyers, it seems to me, would be a safer undertaking that would garner me fewer brickbats. But if a columnist cannot take an unpopular position every now and again, then what use are we (don’t answer that question).

Sometimes we have to stick our necks out and defend the very people who are being pilloried, the lowest of the low, the scorned of society, the outcasts, the pariahs, those who are utterly beyond the pale.

In post-1/11 Bangladesh, or at least in the eyes of a considerable segment of the chattering classes, the bien pensants, the intelligentsia, there is no doubt as to the identity of the primary villains of the day. It is not corrupt politicians or crooked businessmen. To the contrary, the lion’s share of anger and contempt is reserved for that ill-defined yet curiously satisfying punching-bag, civil society.
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This is how author Tahmima Anam of Golden Age fame, daughter of Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam, was captioned in New Age yesterday. Perhaps it is an honest mistake. Perhaps it is not. If it isn’t, then this is so silly that its almost embarrassing and disgusting at the same time.

As the CTG govt suffers in identity crisis, in stead of getting caught up in the label, if we look at the component in the government, something interesting will appear. A few months ago, we discussed this in the blog which resulted in an op-ed in Daily Star. One of the telling lines of the article was this:

Elitist politics of the top-down variety not only leads to bad governments, but more importantly, it could lead to populist backlashes that produce equally bad — if not worse — governments, since succeeding regimes have popular mandates but few institutions where the information flows from the bottom to the top. That is, we feel, a good description of the kind of governments we had for the last 16 years.

At the thread, Mahmud Farooque exploring the elite of the elites who are calling the shots had this to say:

…my frustration with the elite of the elites is that I have found them to be mostly followers and not leaders. Their education and training allows them to manage well only under steady state conditions. They generally come up with brilliant analysis only after the fact when anomalies, good and bad, occur. They are generally risk averse but power hungry. A Korean analyst once told me that had their leaders listened to the WB-types, they would still be counting on planting rice to grow out of poverty. In our case, contrast the performance of our garments sector, where WB had limited role, with the jute, energy or the IT sector, where it had been a major driver.
… taking my past frustrations into account, I try but cannot gather sufficient confidence in the abilities of the current group of “managers” to separate them from my generalized observations and believe that they will be able to master the creativity, imagination, and entrepreneurship necessary to dig us out of the hole we find ourselves in at the moment. In addition to the political crisis, we have a looming power and inflation crisis at hand that continues to inflict heavy toll on the most economically and socially vulnerable, about which the CTG still hasn’t been able to come up with an effective response.

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Suddenly the water turns black and all the dead fishes, alligators and sharks start floating at the rivers adjacent to the Bay of Bengal in the Sundarbans (The last remaining unadulterated forest in Bangladesh). A commercial liner is reported to be in trouble nearby. Blogger AsifY posts a blog on this issue. Not a single reader takes part in the discussion, while hundreds of comments flood the posts on politics, the leaders and their sons. And nobody in Dhaka chattering class makes a single sound about it.

All the sewer wastes of 7 million Dhakaites are collected, processed in 16 large lagoons near Dhaka. Many years ago, some evil traders start raising fish in those sewer collecting depots. These fish are sold in Dhaka markets for years. Government decides to stop it. They poison the fishes and try to collect the dead fishes for burning. Suddenly thousands of local people storm the area, battle with the police, loot the fishes, and run back with the poisoned dead fishes grown in sewer lagoon.

Probably the cry of hunger was a little too intense.

While all these happen, the beastly cry at Dhaka zoo gets louder for a couple of days. As a result of some government bureaucratic entanglement, administrative inefficiency and extreme indifference to the core duty of the job, the animals of Dhaka zoo starve for 3 days. Apparently the budget to buy meat etc for the animal needed some signature at the secretariat. The agriculture advisor, upon hearing the story from media men, call in the zoo officials, some emergency fund is managed and several cows are collected from nearby Savar Dairy farm to feed the zoo animals. These animals would have fed themselves if they were allowed to live in their natural habitat. Now as their natural habitat has been destroyed and they are held captive, it is the responsibility of the captors to feed these animals.

And all these happen when this glowing Dhaka breaks into the list of top ten countries in high tech mobile phone sells.

A “bhodroloke” revolution is said to have taken place in Bangladesh. At least that is how it was being advertised to foreign audiences, as Jyoti reports, by the Foreign Affairs advisor speaking at Australian National University last week.

While what happened on 1/11 is a lot more complicated than the simplified picture put forward by the Foreign Advisor, that simple picture by itself is highly important. In politics, as in marketing, “packaging” and “image” matter. What is so worrying about the “bhodroloke” ideological package?
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I wanted to write something at length about CRP for sometime now but I never could muster the outrage that I was feeling in my writing. However, nothing captures the raw emotion like this article.

Of course, some and I would always say the there can not be any mixing of emotion with business. But the people who tried to push Valerie out of CRP forgot that it was not just a business and without emotion Valerie could not have built an organization like CRP.

Details in Bangla

Details in English in Star Weekend magazine.

A more thorough reporting from New Age

Muhammad Zafar Iqbal chimes in.

Notes from the Citizen’s committee

Some people have used this example to trash civil society. But let’s not forget the people who are standing up for Valerie Taylor are also part of this civil society. So far the fight back has been tremendous.

“Perspectives need to be reshaped and redefined. And one way of doing that is through hearing the voices of the young”, says DS in its intro for the roundtable it did to find out what the younger chaps in desh are thinking. But how are you going to “reshape and redefine perspective” when you are perfectly happy to just interact with people who are just like you? Going through the list of participants in the roundtable, the first thing that struck me was how undiversified the group was. This was a group of people who probably bump into each other in social gatherings on a weekly basis. Yes, I am talking about the representation of the wider spectrum of the society in such talks. For a change, it was refreshing to see the young bloods in the round table. But when at the end of the discussion with the youth reps of Bangladesh, the moderator says, “One thing that did not come up today is employment. There is a large number of youth in Bangladesh. How can we employ them? The unemployment problem is pushing people into drugs and crime. This needs to be addressed. “, you just know there is something wrong with the representation in that talk. (more…)

By wearing a black badge and/or wearing black flag, SAY YES TO FREE AND FAIR ELECTION and SAY NO TO STREET VIOLENCE AND PEOPLE’S SUFFERINGS !! No matter which party you support, you should be able to support both of these missions. Let’s take back Bangladesh from this madness.

This was just sent by Kaiser Kabir who has had enough and decided to take a stand and do something about it:

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WEAR A BLACK BADGE

We all want free and fair elections.

It is widely agreed that neutrality of the Caretaker Administration and Election Commission is a pre-requisite for free and fair elections.

The Chief of the Caretaker Government, it appears is neither non-partisan nor neutral, and the conduct of the Election Commission has hitherto been shocking.

At the same time while many in the Nation agrees with the 14-party agenda in regards to securing free and fair elections, their destructive methods have precluded public participation on a mass scale.

Yet, we wish to participate in the destiny of Bangladesh. We want free and fair elections.

It is time that we the general public take a stand.

Back in 1969-71, wearing a small rectangular BLACK BADGE on the arm or chest became a powerful symbol of protest against the vile political machinations of the Pakistan Government. Virtually everybody wore it. The BLACK BADGE expressed the single-mindedness of the people in their quest for justice.

It is once again time that we the general public take a stand.
Starting November 20th, 2006 wear a BLACK BADGE on your arm or chest, or fly a BLACK FLAG on your roofs to protest against election engineering and also the violence that is being done in our name.

Free and Fair Elections is one of the basic entitlements we have as a citizen of this great nation. It is now upon us to protect it.

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