The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE least developed countries (LDCs), a category to which Bangladesh belongs, are not always expecting increased developmental assistance from donor countries and organisations to beter their lot economically. They are more keen, as in the case of Bangladesh, in beter terms of trade from the developed countries to help them to overcome their problems. Adverse conditions in markets of developed countries are often found to be detrimental to the efforts of the LDCs to increase their export income. Such increases in export have clear linkages with poverty reduction. Stepped up export activities means more mobilisation of the factors of production in a poor country including added employment of workers. This can be very useful in alleviating poverty with employment and income opportunities rising. In most of the LDC countries, the external markets are limited in size. Thus, the only way for them to achieve fast economic growth is to substantially expand their production activities with an eye for the external markets and these markets are mainly in the developed countries.

Some LDCs have been blessed with duty-free market accesses for some of their major export items to the developed countries. But this has not been the case for others. Bangladesh, for instance, has not been given duty-free entry of its main export product, ready-made garments (RMG) into its single biggest market in the USA. Therefore, the LDCs are waiting to be benefited from further promotional activities on the part of the rich countries for market access of their products. Market access conditions can improve not only from declaring concessions in the areas of tariffs; practical supports extended to the poor countries in the form of technical and advisory services to them can also be of much value in augmenting their export activities. LDCs generally are in need of developing production and trade capacities in the very competitive international trade environment There is a big need to much increase such technical and advisory assistance for the creation of greater capacities within the LDCs to export more.

It was observed in the Shanghai conference on poverty alleviation that there is a great deal of expectation from the rich countries that the poor ones ought to work harder towards the atainment of the millennium developmental goals (MDGs) that mainly require them to score beter results in downsizing poverty. But the realisation of the MDGs calls for, on the one hand, a much greater channelling of developmental assistance by the developed countries to the poor ones and substantial facilitation measures extended by them for the later on the other. It is obvious that these expectations have not been adequately fulfilled by the developed countries. While internal conditions of lack of competitiveness create hazards for the LDCs to increase exports, they are no less frustrated by practices in developed countries to impose sometimes irrational non tariff barriers based on labour and environment issues without considering their national developmental levels.

THE farmers in certain districts are once again in dire necessity of rehabilitation. The first wave of flood till the month of August left a trail of devastation. Almost 10.5 million people of 39 districts were affected. More than nine and a half lakh houses and crops of more than fifteen lakh acres were damaged. As soon as the floodwater started receding, the farmers started to cultivate whatever crops they could. But no sooner had the new seedlings penetrated their roots into the soil than a second wave of flood swept over 46 districts raising the total death toll to about 1040, according to official statistics. Crops of about 18 lakh acres of land were damaged either totally or partially.

Now the farmers, especially the small and marginal ones, find it difficult to figure out how to survive and grow crops again. Although the time for the Aman cultivation is practically over, some farmers are still trying to plant Aman seedlings. In this situation, the practical option is the cultivation of 'Rabi' crops like pulses, onion, garlic and vegetables. Immediately after the August flood, the affected farmers, especially the small and marginal farmers, were in dire need of agricultural inputs, fertilisers and insecticides as well as funding support

The situation of the farmers hit by the second spate of flood is even more serious. They are in an acute need of highly subsidised inputs for Rabi crops. The demand for seeds of Rabi crops is reported to be 2000 tonnes. But under the grim prospect of the Aman crop the demand for seeds is almost sure to increase. The government must make all arrangements to make seeds, other inputs and loans available to farmers.

The agriculture sector of Bangladesh still accounting for employment of about 70 percent of the labour force is also a field of disguised unemployment and under-employment So, the government may start a large scale food for works programme to create temporary employment opportunities for agricultural workers and ensure the repair and rehabilitation of rural infrastructure damaged by the floods. The vulnerable group feeding programme should also be expanded simultaneously to make sure that poor and helpless families do not go unfed till such time that they can get back to their normal income generating activities.

Maswood Alam Khan

Former President of India Mr. A P J Abdul Kalam once asked a young girl when she asked for his autograph, "What is your dream?" The girl instantly replied, "I want to live in a developed India." Kalam later, before the expiry of his tenure as President, dedicated to that girl a book he wrote along with Mr. Y. S. Rajan: "India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium."

Anyone who paid a visit to Malaysia must have noticed a slogan, on billboards and topiary gardens, writen in both Malay and English: "Wawasan 2020" or "Vision 2020"---a Malaysian ideal the then Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohammad introduced while tabling the Malaysian Development Plan in 1991, to turn his country into a fully developed nation by the year 2020. Neither a city nor a souvenir shop you will find in Malaysia where this slogan will not draw your atention. Malaysian boys and girls will pay an extra Ringgit (Malaysian currency) for a cap with the 'Vision 2020' slogan embroidered on the visor. Any important ceremony in Malaysia must conclude with Wawasan 2020, also a patriotic song on the same idea sung in Malay the last few lines of which are: Wawasan 2020, Satu pandangan jauh, Bukan impian malah kenyataan, Bersama kita jayakan (Vision 2020, A far view, Not a dream but reality, Let us all achieve it).

On an occasion in Kuala Lumpur in 1997, thanks to my stay there for a couple of years on my official assignment, I was lucky to hear the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir deliver a lecture from a distance of only 10 yards. Mahathir, in his cute style---as if he were grinding something with his jaws---addressed the gathering for only 10 minutes in his avuncular tone exhorting his compatriots to learn how to smile while greeting a tourist

He urged his fellow citizens not to build their country as a duplicate of those developed countries like USA or Sweden but develop their country in their own mould. I sat on a chair simply frozen hearing his advices in English, his most appropriately chosen words woven with a fusion of orders, instructions, love and patriotism. Would our country ever be blessed with such a towering leader, I wondered at those mesmeric moments, who could lead Bangladesh with such an enthralling command? One who saw the state of affairs of Malaysia in early 70s and later visited the country under the premiership of Mahathir can very well infer how leadership can transform a nation from a molehill to a mountain.

Mahathir of Malaysia and Kalam of India were not the only leaders in the world who envisioned bright futures for their countries in 2020. Patrick Manning, Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, also introduced his Vision 2020 development plan for his country to atain the status of a developed nation by the same year, a year that beats more rhythmic as 'twenty-twenty' than 'two thousand twenty'.

With cricket of limited 20-overs gaining tremendous popularity as "twenty-twenty" tournament, people the world over after 13 years would love to pronounce the year 2020 as twenty-twenty, not two thousand twenty. 13 years, nevertheless, is a long period and it is not easy to visualize how life would be like in Bangladesh after more than a decade. Things in Bangladesh, after all, change very dramatically.

In 2020, the baby who is now studying in a nursery would be a matured boy or a girl studying in a college or a university and we are still in the dark how our government would be like then. Would it be a presidential form of government or would continue as a parliamentary form? Will the system of caretaking government continue? Who will then be our Prime Minister? Would our population be more than 200 million or less? Will people be as enthusiastic as we are now in politics? Will Bangladesh win World Cup in cricket? Will rickshaws be plying on the streets of Dhaka city? What ranking Bangladesh would be awarded in the long or short list of corrupt nations?

We humans are very thirsty to know what will happen in future. In the twentieth century, one of the few occult scientists who could quench human thirst of knowing the tomorrows was Cheiro who mastered all the arts of clairvoyance, palmistry, astrology and numerology.

He read palms and told the fortunes of celebrities like Mark Twain and the Prince of Wales. But, Cheiro like all other palmists of the past and the present while telling fortunes always used a vague language connoting to a number of alternative futures anyone of which, according to the science of probability, was highly plausible to occur in his client's future life, given his past track records and backgrounds.

Historians project paterns observed in past civilizations upon present-day society to anticipate what will happen in future. However, such anticipation in the present-day world of internet and webulation (revolution of WEB) has to be derived through a different calculus computer system analysts are more capable to grapple with than historians. Still, there are areas where the smartest computer scientists fail miserably to predict People in Bangladesh who used to lead regal lives and were voracious readers of history could not imagine in the early part of this year that some of them would have to spend the rest of their lives inside prisons. Indonesians on the Christmas night of 2004 could not presume that a tsunami wave would take away millions of their lives next morning.

We are living in a world where numbers are crunched at sonic speed, fashions are changed on monthly basis, models of equipment get obsolescent before the accountant can calculate their first annual depreciations and business is lost if decision is taken in the afternoon instead of acting in the morning. For our survival, we have to chase our goals at the same pace our counterparts in the rest of the world move. We cannot afford to indulge ourselves in the luxury of Test Cricket wasting five days as couch potatoes. Instead, we should opt for Twenty-20 tournament, which we can watch for three hours and then go to sleep.

In a makeshift school in a slum area in Dhaka, where I spend a litle bit of time on Friday afternoons, I asked a litle girl, "What is your ambition?" She promptly replied, "I want to be a teacher just like you." This girl, around 5 years old, would be eligible to cast her vote as an adult of 18 years in the Year 2020.

What awaits this girl in her country in the year 2020? Whom, among our leaders, may we ask this question? Is it not time for us, most of whom will die before 2020, to hoist billboards at strategic crossroads with a bold slogan: "Bangladesh will stand with her head high as a developed country in 2020" on the eve of her 50th birthday? Should we, who are already on the wrong side of the age, not be afforded at least a glimpse of a dream that one day Bangladesh will be on a par with any of those developed countries in the Occident----or at par with 'Malaysia of today', at least?

Alfaz Tarafder

Quazi Mahmudur Rahman, a goody-goody sort of person in the technocracy of broadcasting in Bangladesh, has done the job. True, writing a history of broadcasting in this deltaic part of the sub-continent was never his forte. After geting an M.A. degree in International Relations from the University of Dhaka in 1964 he entered in Radio Pakistan to begin the career of a radio professional heedless of mundane pursuits. He is beter known for his itch for penning a good number of popular radio dramas and producing effective radio programmes in his long tenure of services in Bangladesh Betar.

But after his retirement from Bangladesh Betar he was enthused by his colleagues and friends to accomplish the task. He however found a niche for himself in editing 'Betar Smriti' in 2007 and authoring 'Betar Katha' in 2005 much to the relief of the new-generation readers, the media researchers and the freshers in radio profession. These groups of readers have actually been reduced to mere starvelings because of dearth of reading materials on the evolution of broadcasting in Bangladesh. Mahmudur Rahman's puny litle effort might offer succour to them.

Smriti' is a handy, albeit quite interesting, compendium of broadcasting anecdotes recollected by the doyens of broadcasting in this country ever since its inception in 1939 down to the eventful high dramas of the War of Liberation in 1971 and onward. The book contains a pot-pourri of divergent thoughts and actions as narrated by the radio idols, mostly in-house personalities, who had to work and perform in a state-run radio station pussy-footing on a rugged terrain against mounting challenges to keep up professionalism in the 40s, 50s and 60s of the last century. Personalities like Shamsur Rahman, Singer Laila Arjumand Banu, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, Prof. Syed Zillur Rahman, Tagore maestro Abdul Ahad, Singer Ferdousi Rahman, Poet Abul Hossain, Prof. Askar Ibne Shaikh, Prof. Kabir Chowdhury, Poet Shamsur Rahman, Prof. Zillur Rahman Siddiqui, Vocalist Mustafa Zaman Abbasi, Singer Farida Yasmin, Prof. Abdullah Abu Sayeed, Zia Haider, Saiful Bari, Sports Commentator Abdul Hamid, Atiqul Haque Chowdhury, Abdullah Al Mamun, Singer Rowshan Ara Mustafiz, Abul Hayat and others have all recollected unforgetable mementoes of their time in broadcasting in their respective roles either as a professional or as a performer. All those biter-sweet memories of the first, second and third generation of broadcasting reveal one certain fact that radio was the solitary wonder-box of information, education and entertainment for the listeners. 'Betar Smriti' edited by Qazi Mahmudur Rahman is not a necklace of faux pearls. Scanning it by any curious reader will obviously lead him to a trip down the memory lane of broadcasting in Bangladesh. Specifically speaking, the greyhaired readers in their sixties and seventies might come across dozens of known names and faces who happened to be the pampered prima donnas of radio programmes.

In 'Betar Katha', the author poses neither to be a bonafide chronicler of divergent events happening in and around Bangladesh Betar, nor to be a historian par excellence of broadcasting in this country. But he has made some sincere efforts to pick and choose a number of significant national events and has beaded those to a synchronised wreath. That in turn speaks out the gradual evolution of broadcasting amid social, cultural and political milieu.

Ameer Hamzah

A Bengali daily printed from Kawranbazar, Dhaka ventured to publish a cartoon deriding the name of 'Muhammad' last week.. Verily it had hurt the religious sentiments of the Muslims of the world because 'Muhammad' is a holy name painted in their hearts. In truth, it is a conspiracy against the nation, the state and the people. Publication of cartoons deriding Islam and the Prophet (SM), whether in Europe or in Asia, under the pretext of freedom to press, is an offence of serious nature. In Bangladesh, it is new, perhaps, a test case to scan the unity, will and determination of the people against an calculative atempt to eliminate Bangladesh from the map of the world.

Political scientists have defined rights as an opportunity to explore one's talent, without, however, snatching the right of others. Professor Harold Laski said, "State is known by rights that it maintains." The state aims to guarantee enjoyment of certain number of basic rights required to lead a beautiful life. According to Hobbes, "Rights are what we expect from others, and others from us, and all genuine rights are conditions of social welfare." Thus, rights are conditioned by and correlated to his social responsibility. Wilde defines rights, as a reasonable claim to freedom in the exercise of certain activities.

Rights are not unlimited, on the contrary, every citizen is destined to exercise his rights taking into account rights of others. Rights are based on intelligence and good behaviour. None has the right to spread evils and corruption in the society. None can go against the interests of the society. None has the right to take the society to the 'State of Nature' as pictured by Hobbes.

The daily in question has violated the rights of others, purposefully tried to destroy harmony that prevails in the society and spread persecution in the land. Allah declares: Persecution is worse than slaughter- (Ref: 2/217). Regarding the nature of punishment to be awarded to the persecutor and destroyer of peace in the society, the Quran decrees, "The only reward for those who make war on Allah and His Prophet and spread evils in the land will be that they will be crucified or killed, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of land,"-5/33. However, Islam is generous enough to pardon a wrongdoer if for the first time provided he or she apologies unconditionally with promise not to repeat

Anyone who draws a cartoon, composes poem or prose, writes story deriding and criticising Islam and the Prophet (SM) has commited a great fault in the eyes of Allah and according to law of the land as well. None has the right to misuse freedom of press, none has the right to destabilize the state and the society and to jeopardize the communal harmony. The cartoonist and his patrons are the people about whom Allah says, "They have hearts wherewith they understand not, have eyes wherewith they see not, and have ears wherewith they hear not,"-7/179.

We learn from verse no.6/108 that Islam does not permit a Muslim to abuse the deities of a non-Muslim. This is why no Muslim writers and scholars, and imams of mosques speak anything against the deities of other communities. Rather, peoples of other communities patronise a misguided writer like Taslima Nasrin to spread imaginary scandal about Islam.

Islam is not the sum-total of few worships. It is a complete philosophy of life. It works to present a society based on the Quran and the teachings of Hazrat Muhammad (SM). He said, "If a Muslim oppresses a non-Muslim, I shall stand by the oppressed on the day of Judgment as I did in the earth." He showed the people the way to an ideal life free from corruption. About him, historian Josephine Hale said, "Muhammad was such a personality in absence of whom the world would have remained incomplete." A Leonardo said, "If any one in this world has known God and if any one in this world has done good to mankind, it is Muhammad."