The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE International Alert, a group of experts which works for noting the effects of climate change over the years, has reportedly prepared a report on the subject. Based on data obtained from forty-six countries, which are threatened frequently from climatic change, the report reveals that heavy rains and flooding of rivers have not only damaged habitats but also affected the production of the primary sector of the economy. Millions of people in the affected countries bear the brunt of the destruction of habitats and loss of production.

The report entitled "A climate conflict," may be released this week and made available to relevant agencies and quarters of the society in countries in Asia, Africa and South America. The effects of climate change have already started being felt in many countries. The erosion of land, melting of glaciers, rises in the sea levels and flooding of rivers and riverine areas have affected the life and living of the people. In countries like Bangladesh droughts in the dry season and flooding in the rainy season have repeatedly affected production. The people affected adversely migrate from their parental homes to safe zones, including urban areas for survival. The migration of people to neighbouring territories often leads to conflicting situations. The migration of people from environmentally degraded areas to safe zones and neighbouring countries would increase in the coming years. Concerned countries try to send back the environmental refugees to their countries of origin. Legal actions taken against the migrants not only affect them but also create tensions between the home countries of migrants and host countries. Millions of migrants in Asia, Africa and South America thus face uncertain future.

Climate change in the world is related to global warming in general and exploitation of natural bounties including water, oil, gas, coal, forests, hills and mountains. The use of energy for industrial complexes by developed countries has increased. They have started updating their technology used for aircraft, ships and industries. The effects of the unrestricted use of energy have started appearing in the form of global warming. The snow in mountains are melting in accelerated rates, water of rivers as well as other natural bounties have already been over-used. As a result, the climatic conditions in the world continue to turn dangerous for human beings, animals and plants. That being so, use of natural resources has to be made sustainable. The flows of water in major rivers should be preserved. Otherwise, the availability of fresh water may be reduced and people in different countries may suffer from different problems including diseases. Environmental migration can be stopped only by slowing the pace of environmental degradation with a view to achieving sustainable development in the long run.

Promoting dairy farming

THE government is reportedly planning to form a National Dairy Board to evolve a mechanism to help stabilise the prices of liquid milk in the market. Mentioning the arbitrary fixation of milk prices by three private companies, LGRD and Cooperative Adviser M Anwarul Iqbal the other day indicated the justification of forming such a board. The Adviser alleged that the private companies are increasing the prices of their brand products suddenly and unexpectedly. This has thrown Milk Vita, a state-owned milk cooperative enterprise, in an awkward position to face unfair competition. The situation is such that if Milk Vita does not increase prices, farmers will not supply milk to Milk Vita and turn to the private companies for higher prices. If the proposed board is created, there will be rules and regulations to reign over the unfair competition.

People in the country suffer from a serious shortage of milk and milk products. They are dependent mainly on imported dairy products. But they have to pay high prices for them. So, rationalisation of prices of milk has become imperative. The option for the creation of a National Dairy Board sounds good. It is not desirable that the national economy of a country remains dependent on import of a wide range of goods. Bangladesh is running short in the supply of a host of consumer goods. This cannot go on forever. There is a bright prospect of milk production. The alluvial soil of the country is favourable for the production of animal fodder. So, if proper strategies are in place a large part of her demand for meat and milk can be met from domestic production. The government must give necessary incentives for dairy farming by imparting training and capital to youths for the purpose.

Dairy farming can play a positive role in the national economy. This will help save huge amount of foreign exchange by ensuring the supply of liquid milk as well as meat to meet the nutrition demand of the people. Dairy farming in Bangladesh is labour-intensive. So, this will create maximum employment opportunities for the unemployed youths. Dairy farming will deliver other by-products like fertiliser and biogas from cow dung. From the statement of the adviser it seems that the main task of the proposed board will be to stabilise the prices in the milk market. But this regulatory function of the board is not enough to mitigate the sufferings of the consumers; it must also promote dairy farming in the country. Without sufficient production of milk and milk products locally, stabilisation of prices will not be possible. The proposed board may act as a springboard for the promotion of dairy movements in the country.

Sudhurendar Sharma

If you are one who is worried about illicit drugs afflicting your college-going children you have a profound reason to be so, as farmers in Afghanistan have began sowing seeds of what is expected to become the biggest and most lucrative opium poppy crop yet. For the poor farmers in this war-ravaged country, poppy harvests secure their livelihoods. It is however another matter that field upon field of beautiful bloom also fuels $ 400 billion worth of global trade in illicit drugs and several billion worth in arms trade.

Should Afghan farmers be held responsible for misuse of opium that has medicinal properties? Can they be dissuaded from growing poppy? They might oblige provided alternate crops are as lucrative! Researchers have burnt their fingers with alternate crops like saffron and mint, none fetching as much as US$ 122 to a kilo for poppy. For negligible input costs and a longer shelf life, poppy remains the best bet. No surprise that opium's export worth at US$ 3 billion contributes 40 per cent to Afghanistan's GDP.

Undoubtedly, there are good reasons for farmers to grow opium poppy and for the rest of the world to be uneasy at the same time. Does this not leave the world exposed to the menace of drugs? So it seems, as the political economy of a country weakened by ongoing war finds itself vulnerable to the divisive forces that exercise control over peoples' lives and livelihoods. With its growing influence, the Taliban have encouraged poppy cultivation to obtain a large part of their funding through trade in illicit narcotics.

And, they have indeed been successful as neither the $ 100 billion a year war been successful nor the piecemeal efforts to wean farmers from growing poppy. The crucial question remains: If Afghanistan were to somehow able to reduce opium production, who would benefit? The Taliban and black market entrepreneurs, whose stockpiles of opium would skyrocket in value. Thousands of Afghan peasants will plant illegal harvest, utilising guerrilla farming methods to escape eradication efforts.

It is good time for the Afghan farmers though, as the world debates its strategy to control opium growth. The crop of 2007 was up by more than one-third from 2006. It is quite likely that the current annual harvest of 8,200 tonnes, over 93 per cent of the world's harvest, will be bettered the coming year. Afghan farmers make profit but the problem is that they are producing 3,000 tonnes in excess of the global demand, fueling illicit opium trade worth US$ 20 billion.

Poppy is a medicinal crop that the world cannot live without. Else, it would have long sprayed the crop to extinction. Heroin and morphine, two of the common drugs, can be derived from the gum in opium poppy seed heads. Morphine is in great demand as a painkiller: in North America, average annual morphine consumption is 55 milligrams per person, in north Africa and the Middle East this plummets to 0.29 milligrams per person, and in the Asia Pacific region it is 0.67 milligrams per person.

There are no evidences to suggest that morphine is in short supply as licit opium produced in India, Turkey, France, Spain and Australia meets majority of the global demand. Yet, trade in illicit opium flourishes at the behest of narcotics trade that is worth 6 per cent of the total worldwide trade in all goods. Not only is opium economy politically deeply entrenched but its stakeholders are as diverse and powerful, manipulating the demand-supply equilibrium in its favour.

Internationally, the consensus is that the situation in Afghanistan is at crisis point, but there remains intense disagreement on the best course of action. First, it isn't clear who the real enemy is: opium harvest or the terror network? While the United Nations Office in Drugs & Crime (UNODC) considers eradicating poppy as a means to control illicit drug trade, the United States sees poppy eradication as an opportunity to decimate the Taliban.

There are strong indications that if harvest was up next season on 2007's, the US would absolutely spray this coming year. If history has any lessons, the US will clearly be knocking at the wrong door.

The carrot & stick of crop eradication has been tried and failed, because usually production gets shifted: opium production moved from Pakistan to Afghanistan; coca from Peru to Colombia; and cannabis from Mexico to the US. While impoverished farmers did suffer, the global supply remained unaffected.

Is there a way out? The European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs has issued a report recently calling the Afghan government to turn part of the poppy crop into legal analgesics, such as morphine and codeine.The Senlis Council, an international think tank with an office in Kabul, has sought control of opium production by local communities, with license to produce morphine powder from their crop.

Expectedly, the US state department is not convinced if `legalization is an option.' One would only expect the British to agree, who wonder if the Afghanistan government is equipped to enforce legal provisions at the cost of confronting the narcotics traders. For the US and its allied forces, any excuse that justifies war is a trade off worthy of consideration. Opium is just the right excuse for the US to keep pounding the Afghan territory.

Can the world be immune to current developments in Afghanistan when its borders are porous to the outflow of illicit trade in drugs, arms and crime? India has invested in rebuilding efforts in the war-ravaged country but has made pretty little contribution to help develop a clear perspective on poppy, drugs and terror. It has rich experience in poppy licensing that can be transferred to Afghanistan. Afterall, India has faced the worst of terrorist violence in the past decade.

M.T.Hussain

Of late we hear a lot of lamentations followed by urging relevant others even from the highest level to provide quality education from the lowest primary to the highest university classes. The lamentation and the suggestion put forward are not without good reason but very much obvious in view of the falling standards of learning attainments in Bangladesh at all levels having though some rare exceptions for a few reputed educational institutions. However, it is not only the critical problem of falling standards of education but also of conspicuous erosion of moral values among the new generation of 'educated' lot in affluent class.

Providing quality education and learning is easier said than done. Even in advanced affluent countries, they continue to work very hard for maintaining standards high in schools and colleges and yet standards vary from institution to institution. In poverty stricken society it remains more difficult to attain first, for intake physical quality of the pupils and students or for poor physical health condition in terms of nutrition level of the learners. School meals/milk is almost an unknown subject in economically poorer and backward countries like Bangladesh that is essentially considered very much a common requirement in school programs in advanced countries. Because, they are well aware that ill-fed human body and mind, much less empty stomach, can scarcely foster full learning. In Bangladesh extreme poverty of nearly 40% of the people/guardian pass lives so difficult that they can hardly afford to enroll their children to primary school classes not to speak of giving them full nutritional level food at least two square meals a day. The provision made during the last few years for girl students' scholarship/Upabritti in cash/kind payments has been known to have made some improvement in official enrolment figures but the reality remained dismally different not only in actual attendances in school classes but also in attainments in learning by pupils. The dropout rate in primary schools (One to Five), it is known, has risen from 35% in previous years to 46% in 2006, despite continuance of the Upabritti in even larger scale. The statistics, not unreliable one, clearly tell us that there are other missing issues that need to be addressed for one to expect quality in learning particularly at the primary level. However, the issue mentioned here is particular to the primary school quality learning attainment question having bearing on to other two levels, as well.

For Secondary and higher education, quality question, in addition, is dependent on other common issues like (1) quality of primary learning, (2) general teacher quality that is common to all levels, (3) content and quality of learning materials, (4) professional motivational levels first of teachers and of taught that is dependent primarily on teachers' motivational level and skill, (5) expertise of teachers dependent on their learning qualities they received before entering the teaching job, (6) quality of school infrastructure- labs, class room set up, etc and availability of learning materials (7) management quality and efficiency of the institution one to all, (8) efficiency of teachers dependent both on expertise and motivational level or commitment to teaching profession, and possibly some more like larger GDP allocation for education and on and on, one could go on expanding and adding to this list.

One could discuss problems relevant to all the above issues and others as one might identify for raising quality of education and learning in Bangladesh. Educators have unanimity on many of these issues. But I am afraid very few care to identify a critical major issue that I intend to point out here. Because, to me the issue remained in oblivion though it was certainly a critical and major one in my estimation not only contributing to falling standards of education but also in erosion of moral values.

The issue is obliviousness of imparting and internalizing the cardinal and essential human values in the psyche of each and every learner. Some would argue that it is not essential as it might come up automatically in the psyche from family level and informal learning outside school campus. Well, the argument would be acceptable for well-organized and advanced societies wherein school system is not isolated but fully integrated, which unfortunately, I am afraid, the system in Bangladesh is not that fully integrated. Because, the Western advanced countries developed their education for long time over centuries from within based on their own value system originating in Christianity nourished and practiced for hundreds of years. The early British schools like Eaton, Harrow, Winchester etc and the oldest Universities like Oxford, Cambridge etc well known to be imparting until these days the highest standards of teaching-learning had their bases in Christian value system. But Bangladesh very much amazingly having had her 'modern' education accepted from the British colonial rulers differed from their system in peculiar way based not only in somewhat vacuum of substantive value system but also in many ways inimical to our own morality and value system. Unfortunately, despite our independence from the foreign rule decades ago, we failed as yet to de-colonize or to make up the voids of values in the system, much less made it conform to our own life and belief system. Thus our learning through the borrowed system is mainly directed to vocation or at best for remunerative professions that provide, undoubtedly, some material incentive, but certainly divorced from spiritual domain of life and so nothing of any spiritual incentive integrated in our own value system in the teaching- learning process.

Education and learning should necessarily aim at release of full potential of each and every learner. And as because human being by nature is not only spiritual in craving but also psychological in attitude, release of full potential can not be achieved ignoring either of these two aspects. Educations curricula plan although have some bits and pieces to meet psychological needs but almost nothing to satisfy one's craving for spiritual needs to firm up individual human psyche and morality. This is a serious lapse so far as release of full potential is concerned for attaining high quality learning.

Incentive is a motivation for quality learning that material incentive can provide some. Had there been, in addition, spiritual incentive, quality level could have been further enhanced. This is true for both teachers and taught equally. That is what is needed to include and incorporate not only in our curricula but also in teaching -learning process at all levels of education system that remains, I may repeat, as a big lapse for the quality issue that the teachers with rare exceptions have so long been oblivious to reckon. In the absence of due care to concentrate on this issue along with all other listed needed efforts though would produce some result only for partial release of potentials but not fully that full release as is needed for high quality in education and learning in Bangladesh for meeting challenges of competition in the globalization context. I would feel that unless we seriously take care of the spiritual issue so long remained in oblivion in our so-called 'modern' education system, it would be nothing but possibly beating about the same bush so far as raising quality of education is concerned.

(Prof.) M.T.Hussain (Retired and Former Director, Institute of Education, Darul Ihsan University, Dhaka)