The New Nation - Internet Edition

Dhaka veritable gas chamber

DHAKA city is turning again into a poisonous gas chamber causing serious threat to public health. According to a media report, pollution of air in the city with toxic particles has exceeded permissible limits in some areas. The concentration of harmful particles in the air has reached the highest range all over at present. As a consequence of this pollution, attack of diseases like cough, asthma, bronchitis and other ailments of the respiratory system has increased in the city. According to the Air Quality Management Project of the government, brick kilns, plastic factories, open air burning of rubber, plastic and polythene materials and outdated automobiles are contributing to the increase of toxic matters in the city's air. Faulty vehicles running on diesel are responsible for emitting 60 percent of the pollutants. Those vehicles discharge poisonous carbon gases, lead, nitrogen compounds and suspended particles in the air. About 4,000 brick kilns around the city, using coal with more than 4 percent sulphur, discharge toxic gases.

Some years ago, Dhaka city had been the most polluted city in the world surpassing Lima, the capital of Peru. Three-wheelers with two stroke engines were mainly responsible for the excessive pollution. Those engines along with other outworn automobiles emitted huge quantities of carbon dioxide and other poisonous gases. During most of the time of the day, the sky of the city used to remain overcast with thin black suffocating smoke causing adverse impact on human health. The number of patients with chest and respiratory diseases went on increasing alarmingly. Children and elderly people were the worst affected. To keep the pollution within tolerable limits, the government banned the three-wheelers and outdated motor vehicles from the city. Four-stroke three-wheelers were introduced in place of those. Measures were taken to increase the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) to reduce the use of fossil fuel. Brick kilns in and around the city which used to burn wood and low-grade coal with high percentage of sulphur were supplied with gas. Orders were given to increase the height of kiln chimneys. As a result of these measures, the situation improved to some extent. But it has worsened again.

It has thus become urgent to bring down the pollution level. The faulty automobiles must be identified and banned. Violators of environmental regulations among the brickfield operators must be given severe punishment. Inconsistent and irregular monitoring of the pollution situation in the city is also responsible for worsening of air pollution. Those responsible for this should not go unpunished.

Block allocation for UPs

LOCAL government bodies in the country so far used internal resources for providing services to the people and for increasing facilities like roads, water supply and setting up of educational institutions. The chairman and members of an Union Parishad usually interact with the people and note their grievances and demands, before taking substantive measures. The safety of life and living, peace and discipline in rural areas are also the major responsibility of these local government bodies. 'Chowkidars' are appointed by Union Parishads for preventing thefts, dacoities and pilferage of assets of people and rural institutions. The need for upgrading the local government bodies is quite pronounced and the major need is to augment the availability of fund for development activities.

The number of Union Parishads in the country is four thousand four hundred and ninety- eight. These bodies are run by elected representatives of the people. The tenure of the elected members is five years. The elected members and chairmen adopt their annual budget and use resources for investing in different projects. But the fixation of rates by the Union Parishads and their collection remain quite ineffective. That being so, members of the Union Parishads look for allocations and grants from the national treasury. The reported increase in block allocations under the Local Government Support Project initiated in 2004 may enable the Union Parishads to meet the ever increasing demand of local people. Under the provisions of the LGSP, an average allocation of four and a half lakh Taka will be provided to each Union Parishad. For this two hundred crore of Taka has been allocated under the current budget. This block allocation may be used by the Union Parishads for meeting demands of the people for schools, medicare centres and physical facilities like roads and culverts.

The mode of transferring the fund has also been changed. Instead of processing the allocated fund through the official channels of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives, it would be transferred to nearest bank branches. The chairmen of the Union Parishads may collect the allocated fund from the banks. The mode transfer of the allocated fund has thus been made simple. The use of the fund should be optimised by the Union Parishads. The geographical boundaries of the unions have been fixed in the past century. The sizes of population in the unions have increased and thus also the demand for more effective social service. Thus, the structure, power and functions of local government bodies like the Union Parishads, the Upazila Parishads and the District Councils plus municipalities have to be upgraded. The local government bodies must be made development-oriented and pro-people. The latest higher block allocation is expected to help the process.

Creative capitalism: Would it deliver?

Md. Masum Billah

Davos closed the annual meeting of the World's Economic Forum with some hopes, aspirations, promises and warnings. This year's Davo's event has drawn nearly 30 heads of state or governments, more than 110 cabinet ministers and several hundred corporate titans. More than 75 of the world's leading corporations easily eclipsed the 25 heads of states and governments present. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, British Prime Minster Gordon Brown, Ex-prime minister Tony Blair, US Ex -secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Ban Ki Moon. Rock star activist Bono, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and UN Chief steered the conversation on away from the global economy and geopolitics towards issues such as malaria eradication, poverty alleviation and climate change. Changing climate stands as a major concern across the globe jeopardizing the world economy. Their thinking to the right path has given a special momentum to this event this year.

Our Chief Adviser drew the attention of the participants at Davos highlighting the two major concerns Bangladesh constantly fight with namely the effects of climate change and lack of duty-free access to the EU and American markets. Tony Blair, cochairman of the forum, voiced strong support to Bangladesh in these two aspects as Bangladesh has to pay a heavy loss almost every year due to nature's wrath. The very recent devastating cyclone cidr brought untold miseries to the people of coastal region and putting a huge undue pressure to the government. The rising RMG sector has started experiencing serious blow due to labour unrest. It also faces threat and challenge as it has to vie with other ready made garments exporting countries. It further faces problems due to the lack of duty-free access to European Union countries and the markets of USA. Our CA has rightly pointed out the problems which gave food for thought to the participants who this year put emphasis on poverty alleviation and hunger extending opportunities to the resource starved countries like Bangladesh.

Asian Development Bank president H Kuroda said to Dr. Fakruddin Ahmed, "I'm greatly impressed with your government's performance, particularly the reforms brought about in governance and economic sectors". And he assured Bank's continued support for infrastructure and power and energy sector development in Bangladesh. Dr. Fakruddin urged foreign entrepreneurs to work as investment ambassador's of Bangladesh, representatives of foreign companies who have already made investment in the country called for implementing reform in the financial sector to attract more overseas investment. Foreign Corporation want to see the actual implementation of reforms so far undertaken by the government in financial sector. This fact was disclosed by Bangladesh's Permanent representative to UN Office in Geneva Ambassador Dr. Debaprya Bhattacharya who accompanied the Chief Adviser to Davos. Fakruddin and the CEO of seven leading companies made the interactions during a dinner at a hotel in the snow covered hilly resort town of Devos. He apprised them of the political and economic background before the incumbent caretaker government took over as well as administrative and economic reforms undertaken by his government in the past one year.

The business representatives appreciated the government's reformer agenda particularly the steps taken against corruption and said power generation is one of the fundamental elements to attract foreign investments and wanted to know if coal and gas in Bangladesh are adequately being exploited. Here lies our weakness. Still we have failed to ensure the proper exploitation of our natural resource like coal and gas. Definitely Bangladesh could have established itself as a flourishing industrialized country if her natural resource had been used properly. It can be attributed to political unrest and the non-commitment of the politicians. However, Dr. Fakruddin assured them that caretaker government is trying hard to create an ennobling atmosphere for foreign investment that Bangladesh has lot of potential for investment.

CEOs observed Bangladesh's image is better than many other countries of the world but they apprehend vulnerability of the country's economy. They wondered whether credible political leadership would be in place through reforms after the elections. Chief Adviser told them. The Chief Adviser gave them words that his government is going to arrange absolutely free, fair and democratic elections through which the countrymen would be able to see their real and able public representatives.

They suggested time-bound decision on investment and equal treatment for foreign companies like national companies. The government must give a serious thought to this issue. If the foreign investors don't get confidence, surely the flow of foreign investment will be staggering and thin curbing our economic development further.

The Davos event has long prided itself on showing the caring side of capitalism although participants have criticized for trumpeting big ideas on big issues in public while actually expending most of their energy on corridor schmoozing and backroom deals. From the Same Davos podium, the world's richest man Bill Gates announced a grant of $19.9 million over three years to initially help place improved rice varieties and related technology into the hands of 400000 small farmers in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Farmers expected to achieve a 50% increase in their yields within the next ten years. Rice is staple food for 2.4 billion people and provides more than 20% of their daily calories intake and up to 70% for the poorest of the poor. Gates said, "If we are serous about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers most of whom are women." The cash injection is to fund projects to improve soil quality, milk production, irrigation and seed development in a host of poor African and Asian countries. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would enable the International Rice Research Institute to acquire new funding to harness some of the biggest unresolved problems in agriculture. The grant to Irri is part of a package totaling $306 million that nearly doubles Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's investment s in agriculture Development initiatives in 2006

The session on 'Dividing the World Again' moderated by Dominique Rossi, stood out as really interesting. Ambassador Wu Jianmin, President China, Foreign Affairs University maintained that the agenda revealed the western psyche of following a policy of 'divide and rule' to dominate the world. Asian values believe in uniting the world by strengthening commonwealth and working out Compromise on contention issues. Corporate responsibility rather than profit took centre stage in Davos on January 25 as the annual get-together of business chiefs turned its attention to issues of health, aid and development the coordination of politics should not be entirely confined to the world's advanced countries but also be inclusive of developing country's stand point.

This was another important message of the meet despite the dividing rule policy surfaced in the meet. United Nations Chief Ban Ki Moon challenged the delegates at Davos 'to renew a commitment to the UN Millennium Goals aimed at halving the extreme poverty, boosting health and education and further improving women across the developing world by 2015." Bill Gates said, "The challenge here is to design a system project and recognition to do more for the poor". He finally called for a new form of 'creative capitalism'. And this new form of 'creative capitalism' can be achieved through the concerted efforts of both resourceful and resource starved countries of the globe.

Where's the Iraqi voice?

Noam Chomsky

THE US occupying army in Iraq (euphemistically called the Multi-National Force-Iraq) carries out extensive studies of popular attitudes. Its December 2007 report of a study of focus groups was uncharacteristically upbeat.

The report concluded that the survey "provides very strong evidence" to refute the common view that "national reconciliation is neither anticipated nor possible". On the contrary, the survey found that a sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups t and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis."

This discovery of "shared beliefs" among Iraqis throughout the country is "good news, according to a military analysis of the results", Karen deYoung reports in The Washington Post.

The "shared beliefs" were identified in the report. To quote deYoung, "Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of 'occupying forces' as the key to national reconciliation."

So, according to Iraqis, there is hope of national reconciliation if the invaders, responsible for the internal violence, withdraw and leave Iraq to Iraqis.

The report did not mention other good news: Iraqis appear to accept the highest values of Americans, as established at the Nuremberg Tribunal-specifically, that aggression-"invasion by its armed forces" by one state "of the territory of another state"-is "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". The chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, forcefully insisted that the Tribunal would be mere farce if we do not apply its principles to ourselves.

Unlike Iraqis, the United States, indeed the West generally, rejects the lofty values professed at Nuremberg, an interesting indication of the substance of the famous "clash of civilisations".

More good news was reported by Gen David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker during the extravaganza staged on September 11, 2007. Only a cynic might imagine that the timing was intended to insinuate the Bush-Cheney claims of links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, so that by committing the "supreme international crime" they were defending the world against terror-which increased sevenfold as a result of the invasion, according to an analysis last year by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank.

Petraeus and Crocker provided figures to show that the Iraqi government was greatly accelerating spending on reconstruction, reaching a quarter of the funding set aside for that purpose. Good news indeed, until it was investigated by the Government Accountability Office, which found that the actual figure was one-sixth of what Petraeus and Crocker reported, a 50 per cent decline from the preceding year.

More good news is the decline in sectarian violence, attributable in part to the success of the murderous ethnic cleansing that Iraqis blame on the invasion; there are fewer targets for sectarian killing. But it is also attributable to Washington's decision to support the tribal groups that had organised to drive out Iraqi Al Qaeda, and to an increase in US troops.

It is possible that Petraeus's strategy may approach the success of the Russians in Chechnya, where fighting is now "limited and sporadic, and Grozny is in the midst of a building boom" after having been reduced to rubble by the Russian attack, CJ Chivers reports in the New York Times last September.

Perhaps some day Baghdad and Fallujah too will enjoy "electricity restored in many neighbourhoods, new businesses opening and the city's main streets repaved", as in booming Grozny.

Possible, but dubious, considering the likely consequence of creating warlord armies that may be the seeds of even greater sectarian violence, adding to the "accumulated evil" of the aggression. Iraqis are not alone in believing that national reconciliation is possible. A Canadian-run poll found that Afghans are hopeful about the future and favour the presence of Canadian and other foreign troops-the "good news" that made the headlines.

The small print suggests some qualifications. Only 20 per cent "think the Taleban will prevail once foreign troops leave". Three-quarters support negotiations between the US-backed Karzai government and the Taleban, and over half favour a coalition government. The great majority therefore strongly disagree with the US-Canadian stance, and believe that peace is possible with a turn towards peaceful means. Though the question was not asked in the poll, it seems a reasonable surmise that the foreign presence is favoured for aid and reconstruction.

There are, of course, numerous questions about polls in countries under foreign military occupation, particularly in places like southern Afghanistan. But the results of the Iraq and Afghan studies conform to earlier ones, and should not be dismissed.

Recent polls in Pakistan also provide "good news" for Washington. Fully 5 per cent favour allowing US or other foreign troops to enter Pakistan "to pursue or capture Al Qaeda fighters". Nine per cent favour allowing US forces "to pursue and capture Taleban insurgents who have crossed over from Afghanistan".

Almost half favour allowing Pakistani troops to do so. And only a little more than 80 per cent regard the US military presence in Asia and Afghanistan as a threat to Pakistan, while an overwhelming majority believe that the United States is trying to harm the Islamic world. The good news is that these results are a considerable improvement over October 2001, when a Newsweek poll found that "eighty-three per cent of Pakistanis surveyed say they side with the Taleban, with a mere three per cent expressing support for the United States," and over 80 per cent described Osama bin Laden as a guerrilla and six per cent a terrorist.

Amid the outpouring of good news from across the region, there is now much earnest debate among political candidates, government officials and commentators concerning the options available to the US in Iraq. One voice is consistently missing: that of Iraqis. Their "shared beliefs" are well known, as in the past. But they cannot be permitted to choose their own path any more than young children can. Only the conquerors have that right.

Perhaps here too there are some lessons about the "clash of civilisations".

(Noam Chomsky's most recent book is What We Say Goes: Conversations on US Power in a Changing World. Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)