The New Nation - Internet Edition

Global food crisis fund

THE World Bank is expected to offer budget support to food importing nations for addressing the pressing issue under a $1.2 billion package of 'Global Food Crisis Response Programme' by next month and Bangladesh can very rightly claim to have access to the fund that is also meant for tackling climate change effects. The bank is said to be ready to extend support for 'a planned multi-donor trust fund' for mitigation and adaptation of climate change that made Bangladesh as one of the most vulnerable countries.

Bangladesh has sought WB support for ensuring food security - an assistance package, which would cover fiscal issues, social protection and agriculture. The WB is committed to helping Bangladesh overcome this challenge by providing support for investment in social protection programmes and efforts to boost agriculture. Last month, the bank reportedly approved $ 320 million in budget support for Bangladesh to bankroll the deficit created by the global food and oil price hike as the $1.2 billion fund is designed to address immediate needs and support safety net programmes for the most vulnerable.

The WB has proposed that Bangladesh should be the first country after the Bali Climate Change Conference to undertake a 10-year country specific business plan for climate change adaptation. The plan will determine the amount of support that the country would get from the international community. Earlier, the bank said that it was ready to support 'the country strategy' for tackling climate change issues. The government is now preparing the position paper. A recent report titled 'Climate Change as a Security Risk' prepared by German Advisory Council on Global Change predicts 'security threat and economic instability' in Bangladesh by 2020 due to climate change. Efforts should be made from now onwards to avert such threats.

EC must be unambiguous

ACCORDING to credible media reports, many candidates who have been cleared by the Election Commission (EC) for contesting the upcoming municipal polls are accused in criminal cases. The added, amended or newly drawn up rules of the EC related to the eligibility of candidates for elections at any level, have not created any bars for disqualifying such candidates. This may have been due to the practice in the past that only accusation in criminal cases do not make a person a criminal and unfit for holding an elected public position. Only upon conviction in a case, a person may become ineligible.

But it is high time that EC addresses this issue and suggests suitable change in the laws to make the same unambiguous. Would it be good to debar people accused or convicted in criminal cases from election? As it is, chances of most of them becoming convicted in varying degrees are likely. Therefore, it should be prudent to create an uniform standard and keep out persons of dubious background from standing in election for the public good. Setting such a standard will be all the more necessary to keep those accused for corruption or other crimes from contesting the parliamentary elections.

Such people can be expected to try everything to drag the legal process so that their convictions in different cases remain unsettled at the time of submitting nominations for contesting the parliamentary election and to utilise the existing rule that none can be barred from contesting before their conviction. There may be questions as to whether this would be fair on the voters who have been promised that the coming national elections would give a choice of clean candidates who have not been tainted by backgrounds or allegations of crime or corruption? But the standards should be uniform.

SAARC worked out five principles to address climate agenda

Md. Masum Billah

Of recent the Saarc ministerial meeting has taken place in the city of Dhaka. The meeting took place at such critical moment when we are really confronted with new and undeniable change of climate which threatens our very existence. The horror of the Sidr that occurred on November in Bangladesh and the very recent Nargis in Myanmar which was declared to blow over Bangladesh bear the burning examples of natural wrath infuriated by unreasonable human behaviour towards nature. The south regions of Bangladesh are really vulnerable. Many a time people of these parts became the victims of natural wraths in its dangerous pictures and forms. Our big neighbour India is not less vulnerable to natural disasters. The concerted efforts of Saarc members must foster the notion of climate change. The member states first start from within to develop environment-friendly behaviour. This meeting should strive to uphold our basic rights to climate -resilient development in the Saarc region. The Chief Advisor said, " Saarc can occupy a high moral ground on this issue and put pressure on the developed countries and must remind them individually and collectively that procrastination is not an option.". really Saarc stands as an effective forum to keep the developed countries under pressure to minimize the environmental hazarders which they play the key role in inviting them at the cost of poor countries' unbearable loss.

The points talked about in the ministerial meetings include deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emission by developed countries with effective timeframe, commitment period, provision of adequate additional resources by developed countries to tackle climate change adaptation needs in addition to regular overseas Development Assistance Arrangements and development of insurance mechanism as a tool of risk reduction compensation for climate victims , facilitating effective access to and funding assistance for the transfer of environment friendly technologies for the developing countries as well as for adaptation and mitigation of sharing the environmental burden equally. Each point calls for serious consideration and attention of the industrially developed countries and our healthy existence on earth is closely related to it.

"The adverse effect of global warming would derail all our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. It will unleash the tragedy in human history far graver than the' Black Death' or the atrocities or World War II.", warned by the environmentalists.Many developing countries are already pursuing effective adaptation strategies to cope with climate change. Bangladesh is one bright example. But adaptation is a costly proposition. Saarc countries should speak in one voice to ensure that developed countries commit new and additional resources to support our adaptation efforts.Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon ( BAPA) said with warning " Climate change would jeopardize the right to food. Regional food production is likely to fall as a result of increasing temperature, which causes grain sterility , desertification and also rise in the sea level." This well founded warning must make us all concerned. Already the food crisis has gravely threatened the world people. It is getting intense with further natural calamites some parts of the globe face at almost a regular interval.

IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel of Climate Change) predicted that .50 metre to 2 metre sea many rise by 2050. this may be taken as serous warning for the developing countries in particular and developed countries in general. The only difference lies in the fact the developed countries can face natural disasters as they have adequate measures and resources. But the developing ones become seriously affected by any sort of climatic phenomenon. But the whole globe must undergo its adverse effect. So, it is the imperative of all to give a serous thought to this issue. Developed countries hardly take the climatic issues seriously as they don't have to suffer so intensely as the developing countries do from time to time. So, the developing countries both individually and collectively approach the industrially developed countries to reduce the emission. our chief Advisor has rightly said, " To demonstrate the world that together they can tackle the threats of climate change through a cooperative and collaborative arrangements in South Asia and let Saarc be a model of cooperation for combating climate change." G-77 grouping of 134 developing countries have long been demanding for additional one percent of GNP of developed countries industrial countries for tackling the adverse effects of climate change but the industrially developed ones seem to turn a deaf ear to it. For making this planet habitable for all, the industrially developed countries must give a serous thought to this issue as it concerns the whole humanity, animal world and plant life.

How far is too far?

Zeenat Khan

All eight Ivy league Universities in the United States are known world wide for their academic excellence. The respective universities demand their students to be at their very best by pushing them constantly challenging them in various fields of learning. They also provide them with opportunities to push themselves to be their very best in their particular chosen field and explore their intellectual as well as their creative abilities. There is hardly any limit to what a student can or cannot do. But one student at Yale university in New Haven, Connecticut has taken that privilege to an extreme, which is creating quite a buzz throughout the campus and outside by now!

With two members of my immediate family having attended two of the Ivy league colleges, I retain a special interest in them and follow up on the news through their Alumni magazines that come to my mailbox every month, and their daily publications. Recently, something caught my eye. On April 17, 2008, the headline of the Yale Daily News read, " For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse". The same story was corroborated in the Washington Post, and soon after, many media outlets online. After reading the article, I could not believe how far a student is willing to go in the name of self-expression. Some of you may have already read or heard about this recent story about art major Aliza Shvarts '08. From the look of her senior year art project display, one could perhaps conclude that through her outrageous "experiment", she was simply trying to make a straightforward statement; however, the way she went about it is mind boggling to me.

To those of you who are unaware of such things happening on a relatively quiet Northeast American college campus in the name of art, the actions of Aliza Shvarts may or may not have an impact. According to theYale Daily News, Shvarts, who is a graduating senior, used her own body as her senior year art project. Apparently, over the course of nine months, she impregnated herself several times by artificial insemination. The article also notes she claims to have taken drugs meant to induce her subsequent, and alleged, miscarriages. She also kept a video diary of her self-induced miscarriages in her bathtub, in order to display them as part of her project. Finally, she preserved her blood for future exhibition. The final tangible result of her experiment was supposed to be a display, conceived as a large cube hanging from the ceiling that is "wrapped in hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting containing blood from self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting."

Shvarts carried out this bold experiment on her own, without consulting any medical professionals. When interviewed for The Yale Daily News, Shvarts said the idea behind her controversial project was not to shock people but to generate a debate "on the relationship between art and body". She was quoted as saying, " I hope it inspires some sort of discourse." She was certainly right about the potential for debate. Throughout Yale's campus, both art and non-art majors, and faculty alike exploded over this bizarre art experiment. As expected, the student pro-life faction was bound to react, but even the campus pro-choice group expressed surprise, if not disbelief, about Shvarts' method of experiment. Over the next week, adding confusion to the controversy, it became unclear whether Shvarts, in fact, literally carried out the project, as Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky released a statement suggesting Shvarts' project was, in fact, "creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding the form and function of a woman's body."

Then Shvarts responded with her own statement, explaining the project was not fiction, while suggesting she created " an intentional ambiguity [between] both the act and the objects", so viewers would be unclear as to whether she was actually pregnant or not for each cycle of her experiment. She concluded, "Art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity." She thought she was "creating a project that lives up to a standard of what art is supposed to be."

I think Shvarts took a calculated risk that simply backfired. In order to get a reaction from her fellow students in the art department and the world, she crossed various moral and social boundaries that are not often breached. As a result, she alienated many people who support creativity in any form, as they pondered what drives a young mind to take part in such a drastic experiment. We have a sort of multiple choice test question here. Is hers an

A) Artistic neurosis?

B) A new form of radical feminismtHer defiance in telling society that moral and social values have no importance to her?

C) Pure manipulation in the name of freedom of expression through art?

D) A woman doing with her own body, as she notes, whatever she deems fit?

My answer is both B and D. I strongly suspect that the idea behind this is likely a feminist theory gone askew: A female body does not have a utilitarian 'use' as defined by society. In the earliest forms of radical feminist thought, we find the basic idea that womens' bodies have been unjustly controlled by patriarchy, society and governments, religion, and economic systems, and defined to have a function, or a purpose rooted in production, whether of children or family-making. Womens' "roles" have been defined for centuries, and, as we all know, are still assumed to be locked in place in many societies.

The response of some strains of radical feminism is to encourage women to redefine their roles, and 'take power' or control the use and function of their own bodies, and moreover, to destroy the very notion that a woman, because she has reproductive organs, is expected to use them, to fulfill her 'duties' or take part in the endless march of creation.

Now, Shvarts explicitly drew on this seductive but difficult concept, but needed the masquerade of being an "artist" to introduce it to what she knew would be an unwilling audience. She tried to show that ultimately a woman decides what she wants to do with her body, and no one has a right to say whether one is right or wrong when making such a choice. I will call her, first, an extremist who disregarded her own physical health and took immense risk in order to prove her political agenda, which she claims is an artistic agenda.

Shvarts' project was declined entry in the senior art exhibition. Yale's college dean was outraged, and demanded a statement from Shvarts that her project was fiction, which she declined. Even though her project was given the green light by two art faculty members, it moreover failed to meet the hazy standards of what is considered appropriate in a university setting. As the moral debate over the project continues, the university came down with a decision that they thought no one could debate: the potential health risk of the project.

Yale's vice president noted the university would not "countenance any kind of public art that involves physical blood- as a health issue."

Though many famed performance artists are well-known for using their bodily fluids as the subject of their art, Shvarts, at end, was in an academic setting, where she potentially put other students at risk. Ultimately, I think Yale was looking for an objective out, to avoid either supporting or condemning the content of Shvarts' actual project, objectionable because of the process of making the final display ("ambiguous" or not), not the actual result.

As for the content of the project, as a mother of a child near Shvarts' age, it is foremost unfathomable to me that a young woman would willingly subject herself to such grave measures without any medical supervision. (I frankly suspect the sound mental state of such an individual.) Moreover, having bore a child, when I was just a bit older than Shvarts, that someone would have the audacity to trivialize a personal and sacred process, infuriates me.

I can intellectually understand her "point", her political agenda, but I also loathe the way she went about it. Perhaps it is impossible, not only as a woman and a mother, but as a human being, to be objective and impassive about Shvarts' action.

Perhaps Shvarts may have done incalculable damage to her own body (which is her own choice), and may possibly never be able to bear children. As for the fetuses that she may or may not have begun to bear, I will refrain from offering my thoughts on that entirely separate debate here. Most upsetting to me is that she had no regard for her own well-being, as she could have died through her reckless acts.

Shvarts wanted to create this spectacle, and we have watched and read about it in disbelief. One ideally should not have to take such extreme measures, and put one's health at risk to make waves. I think, at end, most were not impacted or impressed by her work, but instead quickly dismissed it as yet another shocking stunt in the name of art.

Opinion: Locations of varsities

Dr. M. S. Haq

The recent letters of Prof. SAM and Mr. Mostafiz pertaining to above matters in the national dailies of Bangladesh reflected on, among other things, the city-location of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University (SAU), Dhaka - Bangladesh. The letters are self-explanatory. The writers provided a number of reasons in support of their suggestions regarding relocation of SAU to a non-city location. It is fine.

But I have comments to make on matters connected with, and ancillary to, the relocation proposed by above writers. Here are a few of them.

1. I believe the country's competing national priorities - particularly in areas of food, energy, security (physical, virtual), trade, investment, democracy, and people's sufferings on account of say, price hikes, poverty and hunger - deserve, at this point in time, more attention and action of Bangladeshis, the army-supported government, friends of Bangladesh (including inter alia the US, the UK) and others than the need for relocation of SAU to another location.

2. In the resource-starved Bangladesh - particularly, in terms of usable resources due inter alia to natural causes, and person-made causes such as and as appropriate corruption, inadequate or underperforming policies plus programs, institutional weaknesses and poor political governance over a long period of time (used in an average sense) - the need for minimization of wastage in a drastic manner at local, national and other levels will be, among other things, critical to shaping the future of Bangladesh at least between now and the foreseeable future. One of the ways of doing that will involve: consolidating further, strengthening further and sustaining on a continuous basis efforts towards building the country's future on existing capacities, resources and potentials - as far as practicable and feasible. It implies inter alia a consideration of the proposal (I mean, relocation of SAU) under the prevailing situation by relevant authorities may not be time-sensitive, value-additive and compatible with the overall interest of the country.

3. For maintaining a continuous and meaningful flow of development in the present day domain of knowledge, understanding and application - whether or not relating to say, agriculture or engineering or medicine - the need for transactions between and among actors and institutions at physical and other levels of local, national, global and other origins cannot be ruled out. It implies inter alia: the role of location related advantages in top-down transactions, bottom-up transactions and side way-transactions within the domain mentioned could not only be instrumental in facilitating its (I mean, the domain's) enrichment in qualitative, quantitative and other terms but affording teachers, students, scientists, policy-makers and others additional opportunities for demonstrating and sustaining excellence in for example, research, development and engineering (RDE) initiatives, as well as activities in pertinent areas. It is in that and other relevant contexts (transparency related inadequacies, etc.), the physical presence of SAU near the seat of say, national planning and decision-making (I mean, Dhaka city) can be considered, in many senses, strategic and desirable, among other things.

The strategic location of SAU has, in a sense, put the university in unique position because it afforded the university additional opportunities for transacting with other agri-varsities in matters pertaining to relevant plans, policies, programs and developments (to mention, a few) at national and other levels - an example of top-down transaction. On the other hand, the physical locations of other agri-varsities (suburb, semi-urban, rural) are also strategic in nature when it comes to opportunities for transacting with SAU and other universities (bottom-up, for example) in pertinent areas - bringing up inter alia divisional and local agri-perspectives to national and other levels. What a superb opportunity for cross fertilization of knowledge, understanding and application in relevant areas!

Although the present day diversity in terms of physical locations of for example, agri-varsities in Bangladesh has already opened up the door for say, cooperation and coordination in academic, non-academic and other areas but concerned universities are yet to harness, in one form or another and in an average sense, the resultant opportunities in the best and overall interest of Bangladesh in particular and the world at large.

The introduction or strengthening of approaches such as organizational learning and community of practice (I do not know the present status of Bangladesh in those areas) could assist the effort of both public and private universities and others towards building, sustaining and promoting inter alia a true knowledge-based Bangladesh through the foreseeable future. It is hoped that will be the case in not too distant a future.

4. As regards the maintenance of peace and tranquility in surrounding areas, I believe a committee comprising representatives of students, teachers, local law enforcers, parents, local government and local civil society could be helpful in dealing with the matter in a proper and timely fashion provided that the committee enjoys inter alia support and commitment of all concerned. If the committee of above nature does exist at this point in time, I might then elect to suggest strengthening of the committee operations in a more meaningful and result-oriented manner and on an urgent basis - among other things.

The last word: let us work together for a continually progressive and prosperous Bangladesh.