The New Nation - Internet Edition

Price hike of oil

THE uptrend of price of oil and the the supply thereof have been reviewed at an oil summit held in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The participants from member-countries in the OPEC noted the price hike as "hostile" and urged oil producing countries to increase investment for extraction and supply of oil to the global market. The host country, Saudi Arabia, referred to the speculations about lack of supply of oil and the increase in the price in the global market and urged oil producing countries to increase supply and contain the upsurge of price of oil.

The Saudi authorities have asserted that they were ready to meet the additional demand for oil in the global market by increasing extraction of oil and expediting supply to consumer countries. Along with that managerial move for extraction and distribution of oil to different countries for ultimate control of price, the Saudi authorities have urged the oil producing member countries of the OPEC to contribute one billion dollars to poorer countries for meeting the ultimate need for oil. The thirty-member OPEC have thus given a commitment for rationalisation of the use of oil in coming days.

Oil price has increased more than five-fold since the year 2000. The uptrend in price has been forty percent since the beginning of the current year. The top exporter of oil, Saudi Arabia, has started augmenting the extraction of oil and increasing its supply of the same to the tune of half a million barrels per day. If the same move is followed by other oil-rich countries, the supply of oil may be taken to a national level. While the price hike and supply of oil were reviewed a major producer of oil, Nigeria, reportedly shut down the process of extraction and processing of oil. The decision of closure of the process was taken after an attack on the management centre of oil fields in Nigeria. Dhaka should keep a close watch to adjust to the changing situations.

Science students declining

ACCORDING to a recent media report, the number of students taking up science subjects in secondary and higher secondary courses has been decreasing for about two decades as per available statistics of the education ministry. The number of business management students, on the other hand, has been increasing. In the higher secondary certificate examinations of 1990, the percentage of science examinees was 28.13 but in 2008, the figure decreased to 19.14 whereas the percentage of business group examinees, in contrast, showed a significant increase from 19.41 in 1990 to 31.79 this year. The percentage of humanities group students also declined from 52.06 to 48.79 during the period.

As the number of students studying science decreases, the interim government reportedly decided in May last year not to buy scientific equipment worth Taka 9 crore a year for distribution among the educational institutions. The education ministry decided not to supply non-government schools and colleges with scientific equipment with ministry's funds. The action was criticised and the Bangladesh Non-Government College Principals' Council termed it an indifference towards education. An educationist lamented: 'It is a dangerous sign that as a nation we are walking backwards while other nations are fast developing with science-based education.' Some schools and colleges in the remote areas have no scientific equipment at all.

The existing HSC syllabus for science courses is said to be too complicated. Such syllabus prompts students to memorise lessons without understanding those to develop analytical faculties, as one teacher pointed out. Under the present system, a student needs to choose either of the three courses - science, humanities and business in Class IX. The students appear at Secondary School Certificate examinations after two years of studies in the courses. The policy planners and the educationists should seriously evaluate the trend and take action to sustain interest in science studies.

Bangladesh in the 21st century: Harvard conference notes

Dr. Syed Saad Andaleeb and Dr. K.F. Jalal

The response to the conference, Bangladesh in the 21st Century, on June 13-14, 2008 was truly overwhelming. A star-studded complement of academics and practitioners converged as a community at the iconic institution, Harvard University, to discuss and debate the problems and prospects facing Bangladesh. It was particularly heartening to see so many outstanding participants, in such a distant land, interested in the affairs of Bangladesh and its future, interested in engaging in intellectual dialogue to try and chart out priorities for Bangladesh into a coherent framework to help guide the country's leaders and policy makers to run the ship of state.

Conferences abound in Bangladesh and the US. This conference, however, was special given its different orientation and objective. Not only did the organizers want to spend two days discussing and debating the priorities facing the nation, they also made plans to archive this knowledge as video recordings; disseminate it to the appropriate audience in the government, policy pools, media, and knowledge centers; and publish the work of the authors as edited books for others to build upon. The organizers also offered a vision for participants to continue the discussions by forming learning communities that would remain engaged in their own areas, collectively, and provide the needed expertise to Bangladesh. It was felt that as a community, rather than individually, they could grow into a force that would be able to take on bigger challenges and make real impact.

That Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in several areas was amply recognized in the following areas: economic growth (by being grouped in the Next-11) and expectation to join the middle income countries, population control and human development, manpower and garment exports, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, and educational opportunities, especially for women. The contributions of the NGOs were also recognized as was the work of the country's peace keepers in areas of conflict where they have made significant impact.

On the other hand, Bangladesh's numerous challenges were also seen as a drag on its ability to move forward quicker: civil unrest, corruption, assassinations, incompetence, strong egos, an identity crisis, external pressures, debilitated institutions, widespread poverty and related challenges since its cataclysmic birth. Among the most deleterious is the continuing battle for the soul of Bangladesh reflected in the narrow interests of those in power, debilitating political divisions, and a growing crevasse between liberation and anti-liberation forces. The espousal of democratic governance by the country's leaders was also seen as hollow, given their patron-client mentality and strong autocratic leanings.

The need, it was felt, was to find a set of selfless and visionary leaders who primarily must be healers and peace makers. Their hallmark is patience, wisdom, integrity, humility, statecraft and a quiet confidence . A crucial task ahead for them is to build trust with the people, a fabric that has been shredded by deceit and corruption on a wide scale over the years.

Programmatically, the conference started on June 13 with a welcome address by Dr. Gowher Rizvi, Director of Ash Institute, Kennedy School of Governance at Harvard, followed by introductory remarks by Dr. Syed Saad Andaleeb, BDI President and Professor of Marketing, Pennsylvania State University, Erie USA. Dr. Rizvi's focus was on: How to hold the elections and restore democracy, how to adapt the democratic institutions for power-sharing and how to ensure that the elected representatives would guarantee social justice to their constituencies. Dr. Andaleeb commented on the need for everyone to participate in nation-building, not just political parties, each contributing their very best and playing by the rules of society. Both commented on the past and recent achievements of Bangladesh. They also emphasized the current challenges facing Bangladesh, especially at this critical juncture with the promised election in December of this year and uncertainties surrounding this upcoming election and its aftermath.

Dr. Kazi F. Jalal, Chairperson of DDBF and Faculty at Harvard University Extension School, introduced the keynote speaker for the conference, Dr. Jamilur Reza Choudhury, Vice Chancellor, BRAC University, Bangladesh. Dr. Choudhury painted a positive picture of Bangladesh, especially in the fields of transportation, telecommunication and information technology, drawing upon numerous examples from his own engagements including work done on the Jamuna Bridge. He maintained great hope for the country with the right brand of leadership and investments in human resources and technological development.

The plenary session on the first day was based on the theme paper "Bangladesh Foreign Policy in the Twenty First Century: Past, Present and Future" by Farooq Sobhan, President, Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The discussants were Gowher Rizvi of Ash Institute, former Ambassador and Professor Tariq Karim and honorable ambassador of Bangladesh in Washington, D.C., Mr. Humayun Kabir. The panel discussed strategies, constraints and possibilities of Bangladesh's foreign policy, given its geo-political position. The panel emphasized improving the image of Bangladesh in the world, especially in the developed countries, to secure markets for Bangladeshi products and encouraged non-resident Bangladeshis in USA to get involved in the American politics in their respective locations. They also stressed the need to upgrade the Foreign Service by staffing it with professionals who would need to be specialists instead of being generalists. Bangladesh's need for alignment with India was especially discussed emphasizing, however, the need for a pro-Bangladesh strategy, not a pro-India or pro-Pakistan strategy. This view gained strong approval of the participants.

Mr. Masihur Rahman, former Secretary, Ministry of Finance, External Relations Division, delivered the luncheon speech of the day on "Democracy in Bangladesh: Crisis and retrieval." The idea of proportional representation based on the election results was espoused. The dinner speech on "Political Reforms: Players and Prospects" was by Dr. Rounaq Jahan, senior research scholar and adjunct faculty, Southern Asian Institute of Columbia University, New York, USA who highlighted the prevalence of "lejoor-politics" in the country and the lack of commitment of the major political parties to bring about meaningful reform into the political sphere in Bangladesh.

The conference was also divided into parallel sessions. A total of twelve sessions were held on the first day of the conference. The sessions discussed different socio-economic development issues, problems and prospects of Bangladesh, including political and development strategies, democracy, infrastructure development, labor and employment, technology innovation, capital in-flows and foreign direct investment, healthcare, environment, NGO and micro-finance, gender and education, education.

The first day concluded with a cultural program, organized by Gulshan Ara Kazi and Kazi Shahjahan Belal, that maintained a thematic concurrence with the overall conference. Poetry selections, dance choreographies, and gono shongeet, enthralled the audience for about 50 minutes.

The organizers of the conference intended to stimulate debate and discussion on the various problems and prospects facing Bangladesh. Given India's 9 percent current growth rate and China's double-digit economic growth for the last three decades, they were intent on finding ways for Bangladesh to prepare to take advantage of a similar beckoning opportunity.

The second day of the conference (June 14, 2008) continued to focus on similar issues on Bangladesh's political, social, and economic development. Beginning with a short video presentation of BDI's mission and accomplishments in the 20 years of its existence (available upon request), it highlighted the need to develop targeted industries as the Asian Tigers did to generate higher value added jobs. It also emphasized the need to rationalize the tax structure that would favor productive enterprise rather than the trader class that has facilitated the establishment of imported products to the detriment of encouraging local industries to develop.

The second day's plenary also included a presentation of "BRAC at 35," highlighting the NGO's evolution, contributions and growth overall, as well as focused insights on health, education and poverty alleviation programs. It role in eradicating poverty in countries such as Sri Lanka, as well as countries in Africa was enlightening. An interesting question raised at this session was that about when the NGOs were going to replace the government, suggesting how the NGOs have moved massively into areas where the government has failed miserably.

Mr. Mamun Rashid, managing director of Citibank discussed the problems and prospects of capital markets of Bangladesh during the luncheon presentation. The need to generate internal funds for investments was a strong theme where the SEC, the Bangladesh Bank and the Ministry of Finance could each play a significant role in helping gain the confidence of investors, especially after the debacle and crash of the 90s.

Highlights of the two days included discussions on education, health care, NGOs, financing, capital markets, foreign direct investment, environment, energy, and industry including the garment sector.

During the session on environment and energy chaired by Dr. Kazi F. Jalal, at least two prospective investment ideas on renewable energy and rural sanitation came up that deserves further consideration by both the public and private sectors in Bangladesh. On the matter of water resources and floods in Bangladesh, Dr. Sufian Khandakar opined that Bangladesh could never control floods, hence what is more important is to find ways of mitigating the effects of floods.

The session on health sector generated great interest as the opportunities and threats in the pharmaceutical sector were highlighted. The need for third-party research labs that would ensure quality of the products was emphasized by Dr. Iqbal Hussain. This was followed by Prof. Rahman's presentation urging the need for changes in managerial practices in the hospital sector given their low levels of operational efficiency. Dr. Andaleeb emphasized the lack of patients' voice in evaluating service quality in hospitals and outlined how standards of practice could incorporate patients' voice to improve services. His data showed how patients rated foreign hospitals "always" significantly higher on service quality than the public and private hospitals in Bangladesh that could be reversed by introducing "social control" of health care via public evaluation and dissemination of information along the lines of Transparency International's work.

The session on economic issues also generated a lot of questions on the readymade garment export sector and related issues. The session on FDI generated a few concrete ideas on how Bangladesh can attract greater investment from abroad.

The session on democracy and security was addressed by Mr. Matiur Rahman, editor, Prothom Alo, Professor Zillur Khan, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Wisconsin State University, Oshkosh, former ambassador and presently adjunct professor at George Washington University, Tariq Karim, and Dr. Syedur Rahman of Penn State University. Each of the presenters articulated and built upon the need for a justice-based society and where ensuring "absence of fear" was held as a major goal of democratization. The need to address Bangladesh's debilitating "war with itself" was also stressed.

On the education front, the need to balance quality vs. quantity was pointedly emphasized as was the need to allocate more resources to this sector as a percent of GDP by Dr. Manzoor Ahmed of IED, BRAC, who also articulated the need for a unified, not uniform, system of primary education to bring about more conformity between the different streams prevalent today.

Part of the conference on the last day was dedicated to several breakout sessions where participants engaged in brainstorming on various issues: Environment, NGO - health - population, Education, Industry and employment, Nation building and governance, and Macroeconomic issues and financial inflows.

The closing ceremony was addressed by His Excellency, Mr. Humayun Kabir, the Ambassador of Bangladesh to the United States and Mr Matiur Rahman, editor of Prothom Alo. Both emphasized the need for the establishment of democratic governance in Bangladesh where the people's voice must reign supreme. By so doing, the nation would be best poised to harness the forces of progress and adapt to a rapidly changing and fiercely competitive world of rapid technological progress and globalization.

Three sets of information are being prepared by BDI and DDBF as an outcome of the conference. The first set is the Harvard Recommendations that emerged from the breakout sessions. Summaries of these recommendations are planned to be made available for public consumption shortly. A more elaborate set of the same recommendations would be available as a larger document for presentation to the media, the present government, universities, think-tanks and other key organizations. There were also twenty concurrent sessions, each covering three papers in chosen areas such as education, politics, healthcare, etc. Session briefs are also being prepared as the Harvard Sessions by the session chairs for dissemination. Finally, a set of books stressing selected themes, entitled Bangladesh in the 21st Century: The Harvard Papers is planned for publication in the following months.

(Dr. Syed Saad Andaleeb is Professor of Marketing at the Sam and Irene Black School of Business, Pennsylvania State University at Erie, President of BDI, and Editor of the Journal of Bangladesh Studies. Dr. K.F. Jalal is President DDBF and faculty, Harvard University Extension School)

On humiliation, and Gaza's dying children

Ramzy Baroud

A six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza was killed by Israeli fire on 12 June. "Medics say the girl was decapitated by a [tank] shell," Associated Press (AP) reported the next day. The Israeli military said the soldiers opened fire in retaliation against "militants launching rockets into Israel". AP dispassionately elaborated that, "Gaza militants fire rockets and mortars into Israel almost daily." The story of a few lines ended with another corroboration of the claims made by the Israeli military: "The shelling occurred near the border where militants fired 30 rockets into Israel on Tuesday."

This is not another tirade about dehumanising media reporting in which the death of innocent Palestinians is so often blamed, one way or another, on the "militants". Neither is the evoking of this freshest tragedy-the child victim is later named Hadeel Al-Smeiri-intended to underscore the daily crimes committed by the Israeli military against Palestinians in the occupied territories, crimes that largely go unnoticed, buried in the not-so-important news items, nor to accentuate cold-hearted assertion that the Palestinians are to blame for forcing Israel to carry out such tragic "acts of retaliation".

The story struck me as significant beyond its value in attempting to analyse mainstream reporting or the way it highlights the callousness required to defend the decapitation of a six year-old as necessary retaliation. For equally disturbing is the fact that Palestinian factions fail to see in Hadeel's death a compelling argument for unity: rather, they carry on with their political sparring as if they have the luxury of endless time while helpless Palestinians are victimised daily, an ordeal that is followed by no serious repercussions save the firing of useless rockets that fuel yet more Israeli retaliation, thus justifying the slow genocide and the starvation of the imprisoned Palestinians of Gaza. Some Palestinians, especially those in Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's camp, are still struggling with their sense of priorities. The BBC's Jeremy Bowen wrote on 11 June: "The humiliation of June 2007 [when Hamas took over Gaza] will not easily be forgotten by Fatah's people. For the last 12 months the suggestion that they should try to end their argument with Hamas has been guaranteed to get a testy response from senior figures close to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbast One of his senior ministers exploded with such fury whenever I asked him about it that his voice sent the dials on the BBC's recording equipment hurtling into the red." Reading the above I wondered if the minister would respond with such intensity if Bowen sought his views on the murder of Hadeel or on the fact that the minister's own people are caged, not only in Gaza, but large parts of the West Bank, behind Israeli military barricades, electric fences and security walls?

If the minister fails to appreciate the misery of Hadeel's generation, maybe he should take a few minutes away from his busy schedule to browse some of the grim data on the daily victimisation of Palestinian children. Sigrid Kaag, UNICEF's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, visited the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on 9 June. The poorest of Gaza's slums, it is where the uprising of 1987, unsurprisingly, broke out. "To witness the impact of the current blockade on the children of Gaza firsthand was a daunting experience," Kaag said. "This situation must end."

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "as of 26 May, 64 children had been killed in the conflict since the beginning of the year-more than the total child death toll for all of 2007. Fifty-nine of the deaths were in Gaza and another four victims were Israeli children."

Bowen wrote: "The fighter who emptied his Kalashnikov into the desk of Mohamed Dahlan, until that day the Fatah strongman in Gaza, yelled 'this is the fate of traitors like the scumbag Dahlan' as he pulled the trigger, and it was recorded and put on television for all to see." The minister finds it difficult to forgive such an action by Hamas, conveniently forgetting reports in the US media-Vanity Fair to be more precise-that Dahlan headed a US-Israeli plot to carry out a military onslaught against the democratically elected government in Gaza. The plan was botched because of Hamas's pre- emptive take-over of the Strip.

Consider this: UNICEF reports that, "across the West Bank some 600 obstacles to movement-and the barrier separating the West Bank from Israel-make it difficult for children to attend schools, patients to go to health centres and families to see each othert the closure regime is tightening even for UN humanitarian operations".

Yet the minister, and many like him, find Hamas's violence in June 2007 the pinnacle of humiliation. Puzzling, indeed.

What is more humiliating, I wonder: the sight of Dahlan's office chair filled with bullet holes, or Palestinian mothers, elders and children lining up before an abusive group of trigger-happy Israeli soldiers, jeering in broken Arabic every racist word they can conjure.

Meanwhile, recent news reports spoke of assurances made by Abbas to the anxious Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his offer of dialogue with Hamas would be conditional. Why condition talks among brethren while allowing Israel endless benefit of the doubt in stretching out a meaningless "peace process" while allowing its army to kill children like Hadeel at will? Perhaps Abbas, and the angry minister in the BBC report, are confused about the Palestinian state Israel tirelessly promises. "The future Palestinian state must be established according to Israel's security needs, including supervision of border crossings and the disarming of militants," reported Haaretz, referring to comments made by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. So much for sovereignty.

The Israeli paper went on to report: "Israel says it intends to keep major settlement blocs in the West Bank under any future peace deal with the Palestinians and that its network of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank helps to prevent attacks on Israelis."

Even if the Israeli promise of statehood ever actualises it has apartheid written all over it.

Palestinians need not pay much attention to Livni's futile visions. They should focus their energies on unifying their ranks for nothing compels more fury than their disunity, and nothing is as humiliating as their reliance on Israeli and US arms and money to keep their own brethren in Gaza starved and browbeaten.

(Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London). )