The New Nation - Internet Edition

Probe the dumping of rice

THE dumping of a large quantity of rice in Chittagong has sparked sharp controversy at different levels. The dumping has been at such a critical time when the people are passing through a severe food crisis. Why could such a sizeable quantity of rice remain undistributed and 'rot' when the supply was scarce. Were proper laboratory tests conducted before declaring the rice unfit for human consumption? Only a complete investigation would help find answers to such questions. Out of 2,200 tonnes of rice donated by Pakistan for Sidr victims 1,700 tonnes were distributed. A sizeable quantity of the remaining rice has been dumped. People from the neighbourhood collected the 'rotten rice' from a ditch and found those 'not fully rotten'. Officials of the joint forces in the port city also said that a certain quantity of consumable rice was dumped.

A number of important things needs to be covered by the investigation. The foremost objective should be to see whether the rice had been examined properly before being dumped. The investigation must also findout why consumable rice was thrown away with the 'rotten' rice. It needs to be unearthed whether the rice dumped was actually a part of the consignment donated by Pakistan or if there was any motive behind the dumping. The total quantity of rice should also be determined to find out whether any misappropriation was involved. Act of sabotage cannot altogether be ruled out. It must also be found out how such a quantity of rice could rot and whether there was any negligence in the maintenance of the rice. The persons found responsible for this, if any, should be punished for negligence of duty.

Improving worker productivity

ECONOMIC progress in today's world is not only having a huge number of willing workers although this can be an advantage in lowering wage rates. Only having an abundance of workers does not guarantee competitiveness, specially in the vital export-oriented industries. Bangladeshi entrepreneurs will also need to increase the key 'productivity' of their workers to survive and retain market shares in fierce international competition.

Greater quality output from trained workers translate into more competitiveness. The significance of this crucial factor must be adequately realised by our entrepreneurs, specially in the readymade garment (RMG) which is the country's biggest foreign currency earner. It has been found out that workers in India and China in some cases produce more in less time and produce better quality apparels compared to their counterparts in Bangladesh. Thus, the owners of such industries in those countries have become more competitive. The owners and operators of industries in these countries took pains to improve the productivity of their workers.

Bangladeshi entrepreneurs in general are lagging behind in both understanding the productivity issues and training up their workers adequately to these ends. It is not that all industries have been oblivious of this need. Some enterprises are taking care to increase workers' productivity. But it is imperative for such practices to spread to all industries.

Workers in different sectors should be taken into confidence and told how their higher productivity and efficiency in all respects are the prerequisites to meeting their demands for higher wages and benefits. They should then be brought to a participatory framework in which management would attempt to systematically improve their productivity and efficiency linking any rise in income for the workers to attaining of the productivity goals. The Government, on its part, ought to facilitate the training of workers either free or at nominal costs.

The real weapons of mass destruction

Bouthaina Shaaban

IT HAS lately emerged that when Collin Powell visited the Middle East in the aftermath of invading Iraq in 2004 he asked some Arab leaders not to receive Iraqi scientists. This reveals that the Bush administration, officially, and in a predetermined way, targeted Iraqi scientists, thinkers and doctors, especially those who refused to migrate to the US.

Later on, we read in the media, that scientists who refused to move to the US and work there were physically liquidated in Iraq. The majority of Iraqi scientists refused to leave Iraq and thus they faced their imminent death. Some highly qualified Iraqi doctors were kidnapped and taken to Israel.

Although the killing of Iraqi scientists and university professors used to be shown as part and parcel of the absurd violence in Iraq, closer follow up to what is happening shows that explosions aimed first and foremost to kill a doctor, a scientist or a university professor and scores of people who happened to be nearby were killed with him.

Thus the killing of a doctor, a physicist or a chemist seems as if it happened by chance, but there was nothing coincidental in these killings. The Americans had a checklist of Iraqi scientists who should be killed; all of them are prominent in science, medicine, technology or even languages or art, music, and especially those who are renowned for their national feelings.

This has also been done in order to achieve what James Baker, the American secretary of state, then, threatened to achieve, which is "to knock Iraq back to the Middle Ages".

The news about Iraqi scientists is similar to the news of journalists and cameramen targeted in the West Bank and Gaza in Palestine.

Israel perpetrates ugly massacres against Palestinian people, killing children and women, in order to kill a cameraman or a well-known journalist, with the aim of preventing real news about these massacres from reaching people everywhere in the world.

The latest example of which is the killing of the Palestinian cameraman working for Reuters, Fadal Shana (25 years) with 19 other Palestinians in Gaza on April 16, 2008. B'Tselem movement in Israel announced next day that the cameraman may have been killed deliberately and the report emphasised that there was no violence next to him, and his camera showed fighting faraway from him and then went blank when a missile hit him.

Israel has previously tried to kill Fadal Shana in 2006 when they hit his car with a missile, but they did not hit him, but this time they did, and killed with him 19 other Palestinians including many children.

Hence, the violence and killings taking place in Iraq and Palestine are not coincidental. Both the US in Iraq, and Israel in Palestine, have checklists of the best Arab men and women they want to kill, in order to drain this nation and its ability to gather its factors of strength and compete on the international arena.

The real objective of the US invasion of Iraq is to destroy the great scientific, technological and intellectual wealth that Iraq possessed, which could have put Iraq on the same footing as the industrially advanced countries, especially as Iraq was the one Arab country that possessed great human and material resources.

Iraq could have provided an example for other Arab countries to march on the way of scientific and technological progress which is prohibited to the Arabs. Different pretexts are used in order to target Arab countries which are on the threshold of real scientific and technological achievement.

The major problem that the Arabs have in facing these devious wars which target their identity, intellect and their human and intellectual resources, is that the Arab thinkers have not devoted the necessary time and energy to study the depth and dimensions of this attack on our nation.

And thus they have not yet formulated terms of reference to deal with all aspects of this challenge facing the Arab world. Instead they deal with parts and particles of this challenge here and there, without having a clear vision of the big picture and how it should be approached comprehensively and within a reasonable timetable.

Arab reactions to what they are suffering, as a nation, are still partial and varied and far from being effective. Yet Arab cultural activities are, by and large, cross-border in nature. Hardly any week passes without an Arab cultural activity taking place in one Arab country or another.

On re-reading the news of last week alone, we see that Arab women sociologists from 12 Arab countries have met in Sousa, Tunisia. Arab cartoonists are meeting in Saudi Arabia under the banner, "Controversial Art". Abu Dhabi Commission for Culture and Heritage is organising an Arab musical festival in which the best Arab music from most Arab countries are played.

My conclusion is that despite all military and political pressures on Arab countries, all Arabs still think culturally as one nation and one people. This is the 'state' that is targeted by our enemies.

This is precisely what assassinations, and, so-called targeted killings, aim to destroy. Hence the propaganda unleashed by the US, prior to its invasion of Iraq, and the misleading Israeli propaganda, about terrorism are unfounded.

The real target of all the violence and destruction to which Arab people are subjected to, from Iraq to Palestine and Somalia to Sudan and Yemen, is the cultural, historical and civilized identity of the Arab nation under the pretext of promoting democracy and freedom.

(Dr Bouthaina Shaaban is Syria's Minister of Expatriates. A professor of English literature, she taught at Damascus University and abroad for several years, until 2002.)

Reflection: Guaranteeing potable water!

Sudhirendar Sharma

Unlike the stock market indices, imagination can be taken to any height.

So, let's imagine a world where all fresh water will be available in a bottle. While many will fume at this proposition, several others will concur that indeed we are not far from this possibility. Though there isn't any evidence, it is likely that leading beverage giants have business plans ready.

Isn't fresh water in short supply and municipal supplies in utter disarray? Tap water is a luxury for the teeming millions. To uphold people's constitutional right to water, let there be a demand for a national potable water guarantee scheme (with reference to India). Unlike a mere 100 days of guaranteed employment under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the present proposal seeks uninterrupted access to potable water for every citizen, 24x7.

The phenomenal reach of bottled water alone can guarantee this right. Isn't bottled water available in plenty even where taps run dry for the better part of the year? That's because there is a class that can easily afford it. But its unrestricted reach, albeit to those who can afford it, absolves the government of its primary duty of providing potable water. The poor are often left to fend for themselves in a Darwinian struggle along the urban fringes and in far-flung villages.

But will the poor like to buy water? They already do, having learnt it by being at the end of the "pipe dream" of getting water. With the subsidy on piped water supply primarily directed at the poor having been usurped by the rich by being on the water grid, the poor buy water at exorbitant costs from the open market. It is an open secret that the poor spend in excess of 30% of their earnings to buy water in the cities and that the overdrawal of groundwater by the bottled water industry adds to their woes in villages.

Haven't the efforts to reform the municipal system moved at a snail's pace and calls to regulate groundwater fallen on deaf ears? Ironically, both failings have helped the bottled water segment record an impressive annual growth of 25-40%. Market analysts contend that the boom time for the bottled water industry is here to stay-and because its economics is sound, demand is consistent and public sector delivery of potable water is in total disarray.

Would it be prudent to pump in additional resources to sustain a corrupt and inefficient public water delivery system or to ride the unprecedented growth of private water is the critical question. Experience indicates that increasing the budgetary allocation for drinking water schemes hasn't been of much help.

A better idea is to cross-subsidize the bottled water industry to assure guaranteed delivery of potable water at affordable cost across the country.

It would be a good idea to subsidize bottled water so that the poor can afford to buy it. Does it sound like an unstinted support for water privatization? It may seem so, but at the core is the opportunity cost of enforcing equity in water distribution through regulated bottled water. Hasn't the so-called regulated public water distribution system encouraged inequity and wastage? Not only have street fights at water points become common occurrences in cities, the water/tanker mafia has forced the poor to pay for water through the nose.

And yet, water privatization for bottled water is considered a bad idea. But then, why is it that the Indian Railways has its own brand of bottled water and what purpose does the Delhi Jal Board serve by launching its version of packaged water? It will be a surprise if others in the public sector do not follow suit to lay their claims on "public water" in the days ahead. India's enormous water resources seem to be for the taking, be it by the state or private vendors.

However, private vendors clearly have an edge as they possess wealth and wield political clout. No surprise, therefore, that some of the leading brands can be found in some of the most remote areas of the country. Because there is money to be made all along the supply chain, each job in a big company generates 15 additional jobs in the supply and distribution channels.

Taking the bottled water route, the proposed water guarantee scheme can add value to its services by creating jobs in the process, too.

Through an image makeover, the bottled water industry is silently co-opting the social sector, too. Under the garb of corporate social responsibility, this industry is now supporting hundreds of community water projects in more than 50 water-stressed countries. Unless this industry is regulated, its unchallenged growth will bottle the last drop of available fresh water.

(Can such a scheme not play a positive-sum game with bottled water? )

What a lovely war

Simon Jenkins

WASHINGTON is numb during a presidential campaign. The oxygen of power drains to the hustings. Blossom droops, restaurants empty, pompous porticos slump as their tenants depart. Even the issue of Iraq, whose subsidies fund more of Washington than they do Baghdad, has left town and gone local.

The one thing known by all three candidates for the presidency (if not just two from today) is that whoever wins must do something painful. He or she must negotiate the terms of an eventual retreat from Iraq, not with the Iraqis but with the American people.

Even John McCain, who watched the retreat from Vietnam and swears he will "stay a hundred years in Iraq until peace, stability and democracy" are achieved, will eventually leave, if only under the lash of Congress.

Yet now is not the time to admit it. A war that is unpopular with 60-70 per cent of Americans (depending on the question) is not politically sustainable, however stupefying the cost. But the modalities of its ending are unpredictable and possibly humiliating. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may call for early withdrawal, at least of "combat troops".

But the real paradox of Iraq is that McCain knows he must find a way of leaving, and Clinton and Obama know they must find a way of staying, if only for the time being. For all of them, getting from here to there crosses uncharted territory and none wants to glimpse the map.

Though foreign policy is rarely salient in peacetime elections, Americans have been almost persuaded by their president, George Bush, that they are not at peace. To visit America at present is to be reminded of the continuing trauma of post-9/11, of a nation that craves a cohering substitute psychosis for the lifting of the Soviet menace.

It is seen in ubiquitous threat alerts, hysterical airport security, the continued acceptance of Guantanamo Bay and even jibes about public figures not wearing the American flag in their buttonhole.

A country in so many ways a kaleidoscope of the world is in many ways so different. Above all it is full of soldiers.

Americans still do not travel abroad, and rely on television news for their knowledge of foreign places, which they continue to regard with bizarre suspicion. Hence a world view is lumped in with defence and security in a collective paranoia. And a candidate's stance on foreign policy is a proxy for his or her character.

To this the candidates must pander. Hence Clinton emphasises her "role" in Kosovo and her "mis-remembered" landing in Bosnia under fire. Obama stresses his links to three world continents and a seminal visit as a young man to Karachi. McCain trumps them by having been tortured by the Vietnamese, a sanctification whose only drawback is that it recalls his age (71).

All must appear trigger-happy. McCain may distance himself from the unilateralism of George Bush and remark that Americans must show "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind" (in Bush's America the remark was worth reporting). But his team is penetrated by such neocons as Robert Kagan and John Bolton, on the basis that "if we can't beat him, we can persuade him".

The only thing to be said with confidence about McCain is that his position on everything is uncertain.

Desperate not to be outflanked on defence, Clinton said yesterday that she would "totally obliterate" Iran if Iran bombed Israel. Last week she offered an astonishing nuclear-shield guarantee for neighbours of a nuclear Teheran.

Obama duly chided her as "Annie Oakley with a gun". Yet he has tended to follow her positions with a ready me-tooism, as on Tibet. He offered to bomb Pakistan terrorist hideouts on the basis that even if that country's President Musharraf "won't act, we will". He wanted two more brigades sent to Afghanistan.

Everywhere is on display the conundrum described in James Sheehan's The Monopoly of Violence, subtitled Why Europeans Hate Going to War. A more realistic title would be Why Americans Love It.

Europeans, writes Sheehan, have tested war to destruction as a way of settling the world's ills and reject it. Electorates now demand "material wellbeing, social stability and economic growth" and have demoted military virtues and the military class to history's dustbin.

In modern Europe, "colonial violence seems wasteful, anachronistic and illegitimate t grandeur no longer an important goal". That is why few Europeans other than Britons will help America in escalating the Afghan conflict. They just do not believe it will work.

To Americans it "must work". The mistakes made by America in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen from Washington as accidents in necessary wars, as they might have been in Britain in the 19th century. Such wars present puzzles to be resolved, tests for weapons systems, trials of strength for Pentagon lobbies, budget barons and think-tanks. And they seem very, very far away.

Enthusiasts for Obama, more plentiful beyond America's shores than within them, regard him as the most plausible candidate to pilot America to a new and more internationalist haven than this. He has spoken of an endgame to America's hostile relations with the Muslim world and dismisses democratic nation-building in Iraq as "a bunch of happy talk". He says simply: "We cannot bend the world to our will."

This may be true, but it is increasingly dangerous for Obama. His handling of foreign policy has been naive and reactive. His weakness is that he seems unknown, not quite American, exotic, elitist, intelligent. He can write his own books, but can he hack his own war?

Hence Clinton's notorious "red-phone-at-3am" advertisement - implying that a black man with a foreign name could not be trusted with the nation's defence - was so lethal, especially her aside that "as far as I know" he is "not a Muslim". It is why, were Obama to emerge from this week's still uncertain events as the Democratic candidate, the smart money in Washington is still on McCain to win a dirty election.

At a distance I continue to find Obama one of the most exciting and potentially able men to run for the American presidency in a generation. His capacity to transform America's self-image and world image is colossal. But to do so he must confront America atavistic love affair with war, and that will be hard.

(Simon Jenkins is a veteran British journalist and commentator. This article first appeared in The Guardian)