The New Nation - Internet Edition

Resisting election violence

TO guard against likely violent activities around the general election due on 29 December, the Chief Adviser of the Caretaker Government instructed field level government officials to take highest cautionary measures. He asked them to remain alert round the clock to resist evil forces. The home secretary informed that preventive measures were being taken following reports of plots to assassinate a top-ranking politician of the country. On the other hand, the Election Commission sees the probable post-election violence as a challenge. Such a tense atmosphere is likely to prevail till the forthcoming Upazila elections.

For more than a decade, the country has witnessed a number of terrorist activities including serial bomb blasts and use of lethal weapons that led to many casualties. In the recent past, both India and Pakistan have experienced terrorist attacks. Against this backdrop, the possibility of violent activities during the elections cannot be ruled out. A section of the media has already reported involvement of terrorists in election campaigns in the city. Considering the recovery of huge arms and ammunition recently, it is probable that a large number of weapons still remains traceless.

The law enforcing agencies should, therefore, tighten vigilance. They should always keep watchful eyes on terrorist groups. In their surveillance, the agencies, however, should rely on their sources of information and take care that false allegations by the rival groups do not mislead them. Special care should be taken to avoid harassment of innocent people. What is expected of the security forces at this hour is the highest degree of professionalism to nip violence in the bud for the success of the election and sustenance of the democratic process.

Overweight in pregnancy

ACCORDING to a recent report quoting US researchers, women who gain more than 40 pounds during pregnancy have nearly twice the risk of delivering a heavy baby as those who gain less. The study of more than 40,000 US women and their babies found as many as one in five women gains too much weight during pregnancy, doubling the chances her baby will weigh 9 pounds or more. And they found women who gain more than 40 pounds during pregnancy are more likely to have a heavy baby even if they do not have gestational diabetes.

Because there are so many women who are gaining more than 40 pounds during pregnancy, it's an important health message for most women to avoid excessive weight during pregnancy, one of the researchers stated sounding a note of warning. Heavy babies are programmed to become overweight or obese later in life. Obesity is a health problem in America. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, babies who weigh more than 9 pounds at birth are considered heavy. A large baby also can pose risk to both the mother and the baby for a difficult delivery.

The group of women at greatest risk was those who gained more than 40 pounds and had gestational diabetes. Nearly 30 per cent of these women had heavy babies, compared with 13.5 per cent of women with gestational diabetes who had normal weight gains during pregnancy. The researchers said the findings suggest all women should avoid excessive weight gain during pregnancy and women who are being treated for gestational diabetes should also strive to keep weight gain below 40 pounds.

Introducing organic cultivation

Maswood Alam Khan

Tree plantation has become a social movement in our country. Scene of a shopper in rural Bangladesh carrying a bag full of groceries in one hand and dangling a tree sapling in the other while returning home is nowadays very common. Buying tree plants from local village markets was never as great a vogue a decade or two back as it is now. Not a single homestead can be found with a forlorn and treeless backyard.

Homes are now densely surrounded by tall and leafy trees. There are greeneries galore in Bangladesh---a heartening sign for those who are worried about greenhouse effect on the global environment. Such plantations, call it aforestation or reforestation, is what that naturally had happened during the original greening of this planet Earth, a process that had a major impact on the planet's climate, carbon cycling and, ultimately, what kinds of birds, insects, and animals evolved in our ecosystems.

But a specter of widespread famine is evolving in our act of greening homes. Birds, not humans, are going to suffer the heavy casualties out of this manmade famine causing acute food shortage for the avian species. Because most of the saplings we are now planting are to be trees where birds will not find their food. These are trees from which we would be able to pluck only money.

What one nowadays can notice everywhere are rows of the kinds of trees of mahogany, shishu, acacia, chambal, nim or teak that are used to make costly furniture. For instance, it takes a sapling of mahogany worth Taka 20 only 20 years to be matured and sold at more than Taka 20 thousand, an investment growth that far outpaces any other lucrative investment scheme in any bank or in any investment company. Therefore, as a tragic corollary of our money earning efforts we are gradually forgetting to nurse plants and trees that spread aroma, store nectars or bear fruits for birds or bees.

One such neglected and endangered species is what in Latin language known by its binominal name 'Mimusops elengi' or 'Bakul' tree in Bangla. Serene shades under bakul trees and gentle fragrance of bakul flowers have always stirred up elegiac feelings and brought tranquil images to souls of our poets and laureates in Bangladesh. Enamored with bakul's bucolic appeal Rabindranath Tagore in "The Crescent Moon", a collection of his prose-poems, crooned: "I must search in the drowsy shade of the bakul grove, where pigeons coo in their corner, and fairies' anklets tinkle in the stillness of starry nights".

Not many years back the jungles on all sides of our villages were thick with the smell of bakul flower and still today a garland of bakul flower is a prize for both rural and urban people to adore and treasure for days.

This is an evergreen tree pretty tall with shiny, smooth and oval leaves. Yellowish bakul flowers bloom in April and May and its fruits are green, astringent and with milk when unripe. These milky fruits are the most luscious for a variety of birds and insects.

Perhaps for smelling sweet fragrance of bakul flower and for watching swarms of birds perching on the branches of a bakul tree it was a plant of choice to decorate open yards of mansions and palaces in undivided Bengal. Perhaps that is why 'bakultalas' in historical places still ring in our ears with a musical tenor.

But now Bakul tree is a liability for homeowners who like to see every inch of his vacant land occupied with trees and plants that should yield wood or fruits always ready for cash sale. Fragrance of flowers or trees laden with chirping birds doesn't beguile them at all. Wild birds, hungry or fed, are not their headache.

Our birds have been facing their worst famine with introduction of wholesale inorganic cultivation in the fields and disappearance of wild trees, ferns and bushes that used to bear special fruits and pods of seeds for birds. Naturally grown trees and bushes in the vicinity of human habitats where birds could somehow skimp on in search of morsels of their food are also cleared to make rooms for cash plants like mahogany or teak.

Insects, the staple food for birds, are all vanished due to pesticide used in cultivation.

Snails and slugs that used to quench hunger for both indigenous and migratory birds have thinned out almost to the level of extinction due to wholesale netting of those mollusks for making fodder for shrimps being farmed for exports. Small fishes that used to thrive naturally in ponds and lakes have already been killed by insecticide or devoured by big fishes that are intensively cultured in industrial scales.

Mutualism, or more technically speaking 'symbiosis', is a type of interdependent relationship between species based on which all the living beings on this earth have been able to survive since the days of primordial era. We humans would have been extinct long ago if there were no bird, no fish, and no animal to live as our next door neighbors on symbiotic relationship with us.

What is good to us is good to birds, insects or animals and what is good to birds, insects and animals is also good to humans.

One may obviously raise a question: "Why then cultivation of mahogany trees that fetch us more money and cultivation of inorganic crops that yield for us more crops in less time should not be equally good to birds, insects, and animals?" It should. True ostensibly! But, false intrinsically!

Biologists, zoologists, ornithologists, and entomologists know it better that biodiversity is the linchpin for the very sustenance of life.

Mahogany trees therefore must be there along with a diverse array of trees and plantations for the symbiotic growth of the plant world. Similarly, inorganic cultivation, as has been proven of late, is lethal not only for insects and microbes in the fields but organic foods so cultivated are also carcinogenic for humans.

So are now hues and cries for organic or green cultivation and long queues in shops and malls for organic fruits or grains.

The whole world has realized that the humanity committed a blunder by siding with the lure of inorganic cultivation that has already poisoned the fields with deadly chemicals to get rid of pests and insects, thereby depriving the birds of their staples. Scientists and agriculturists are now sweating with their formulae day and night to amend their errors.

Now like the rest of the world Bangladesh should also reverse its course and style of living by embracing the green revolution of organic cultivation.

Every living being---a bird, a butterfly, a vulture, or a cat---has his/her share on our land in Bangladesh and we must not have any authority to deprive them of their due claims. We are encroaching upon their abodes in forests they had occupied for thousands of years and now we are starving them of their basic food for survival by replacing their special fruit bearing trees with only timber for our furniture and fruit tress for only human consumption.

This discriminatory attitude of ours to the Bangladeshi birds, insects, and other animals must be shunned for the sake of ecological diversity, a phenomenon that is essential also for our own survival.

Not only bakul trees are essential for birds and insects. There in Bangladesh are hundreds of wild trees like banyan trees, debdaru tree (Polyalthia longifolia), rain tree, shimul tree (Bombax ceiba) etc. that provide shelters to birds and bear pods full of bird food. We should allow trees to grow tall and strong and stay put for decades to be turned into sturdy sanctuaries for wild birds. Birds need shelters from storms and protection from predators. They need natural food sources easily reachable.

If you are a traveler you must have noticed that birds, wild or tamed, in any developed country look so full-bodied, robust, and elegant. The government even in a developing country like Malaysia takes extra care for their wildlife. Living beings in their wild sanctuaries are their sacred treasures. These countries spend millions of dollars for the safety of their wild birds, insects, and animals. Endangered species in the forests are carefully tracked by infusing radio chips into their bodies or around their collars.

But in Bangladesh images of our local birds like machhhranga (kingfisher), kaththokra (woodpecker), Brahminy kite, red-whiskered bulbul, or red munia are gradually sinking into our oblivion.

Even Doel (Magpie Robin), our national bird, is seldom found. By looking at a desperate shaluk (the common mayna) panting for her breath in search of morsels of food amidst crowds of humans we may realize how our forests have alarmingly become bereft of natural food. We don't care for our birds' welfare. Our ears have become deaf to their warbles of begging food or to their twits of protesting voice.

Before it is too late we should make Bangladesh attractive not only for migratory birds for their sojourn in winter. We also must make our soil, lakes, trees, shrubs and vegetations in the forests and also in our backyards hospitable for our own indigenous birds who feel shy to migrate to an alien land. Our birds prefer dying from starvation on the land of their ancestors to embarking upon a long-haul and uncertain flight for overseas. They are after all our compatriots, our shareholders!

Gender agenda ignored in polls manifestoes

Arifa As Alam

Almost all political parties are ignored real issues of the womenfolk including their development and empowerment in society, and all the attempts over the women rights as very much traditional and inadequate to address problems faced by the Bangladeshi women.

Women rights leaders have criticised the major political parties for ignoring the issues of the womenfolk. They said the women as political leaders were poorly represented in the nomination process and due preferences to the women issues for bringing them to the forefront of the society, economy and politics had not been given in any of the elections manifestoes presented by major parties in the past two weeks.

A total of 55 women candidates will contest the national elections, slated for December 29, from 60 constituencies.

Earlier, 38 women candidates contested the 2001 national elections from 46 constituencies while 36 women candidates contested the 1996 general polls from 48 constituencies, but thanks to disqualifications of their husbands in many cases. Women leaders said the women candidates in all parties were disproportionate to the number of female voters.

The number of female candidates increased from 38 in 2001 to 55 this year, thanks to disqualifications of their husbands in many cases. Women leaders said the female candidates of all the parties were disproportionate to the number of female voters.

'We have no reason to be satisfied with the election manifestoes of different political parties about empowerment of women. They appeared to be lip services only for stopping criticism instead of women's emancipation,' said Farida Akhter, leader of Sammilita Nari Samaj.

She appreciated the Awami League for making pledge to reservation of 100 seats in the parliament for women through direct voting. 'But the issues relating to gender discrimination should have been included in the election manifesto more specifically,' she said.

Ayesha Khanam, general secretary of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, told New Age, 'AL in its election manifesto was very much specific about women empowerment but other partiest.!'.

Most political parties in their polls manifestoes didn't detail on women development policy and direct election issue that means they still stand on their traditional role, said Ayesha Khanam, who has been working with women rights for more than 30 years.

As per the election manifesto of Jatiya Party, participation of women in the government and party's different committees would be increased by 30 per cent within next 10 years.

'We are astonished to see that one of leading political parties, BNP, didn't make any statement on women development policy,' Ayesha added.

Dipu Moni, women affairs secretary of the AL central committee, told New Age on Monday that they had taken into account all the recommendations, put forward by different women rights organisations as well as activists, while making the election manifesto.

AL in its manifesto states, 'To ensure women empowerment and equality, women development policy, formulated by Awami League in 1997, will be revived. The number of reserved seats for women in the parliament will be increased to 100. Necessary measures will be taken for appointment of women in senior posts. Strictest legal measures will be taken to stop oppression on women. Discriminatory laws against interests of women will be amended.'

BNP's joint secretary general Selima Rahman told New Age on Monday, 'We have prepared the manifesto taking into account its timely implementation. We didn't make any commitment that couldn't be implemented.'

BNP manifesto includes issues such as providing credit to women entrepreneurs, training on mother and child health, family planning, environment and agriculture, strengthen the rules and laws regarding to anti-dowry, acid throwing, women and children trafficking, separate public toilet for women in Dhaka and other major cities and create environment for participation of more women in the parliament and politics.

However, the female voters for the first time in the country's history outnumber their male counterparts according to the new voters' roll with photographs prepared for the ninth parliamentary elections.

The number of voters this time stands at 8,10,58,698. Of them 4,12,36,149 are women and 3,98,22,549 men - the former outnumbering the latter by 14,13,600.

In the last general elections held on October 1, 2001, male voters outnumbered female voters by 23,69,288. The total number of voters at that time was 7,50,00,656. Of them 3,86,84,972 were men and 3,63,15,684 women.

This time a total of 60,58,042 voters have been added to the roll of 7,50,00,656 as it stood during the last ballot on October 1, 2001. The number of voters dropped from the list prepared by the MA Aziz-led commission in 2006 is 1.18 crore. The 2006 voters' roll was nullified by the court amidst widespread allegation of fake registrations.

The number of voters was 7,50,00,656 in 2001, up by 24.38 per cent from 5,67,16,935 in 1996. The first voters' roll prepared in 1973 after independence had 3.52 crore voters, the number in the second roll prepared in 1979 topped 3.83 crore, the third in 1983 had over 4.73 crore and the fourth in 1990 had more than 6.19 crore voters, according to the Election Commission statistics.

In previous seven general elections, except the 1973 polls, numbers of female voters were less than their male counterparts, according to the EC records. The voters' roll prepared in 1973 after the independence did not specify the male and female voters.

In the second general elections held on February 28, 1979, the total number of voters was 3,83,63,858. Of them 2,00,34,717 were men and 1,83,29,141 women.

Male voters outnumbered their female counterparts in the third general elections held on May 7, 1986. The total number of voters at that time was 4,78,76,979.

In the fourth parliamentary elections held on March 3, 1988, the number of voters reached 4,98,63,829. Of them 2,63,79,944 were men and 2,34,83,885 women.

In the fifth general elections held On February 27, 1991, male voters outnumbered female voters by 38,99,771. The total number of voters at that time was 6,21,81,743.

In the controversial sixth general elections held on February 15, 1996, out of a total of 5,61,49,182 voters, 2,37,65,752 were male and 2,32,38,204 female.

The total number of voters were 5,67,16,935 during the sixth parliamentary elections held on June 12, 1996 with male voters outnumbering their female counterparts by 8,03,053.

Eighty-two women candidates submitted nomination papers to contest the December 29 national elections from 88 constituencies but the nomination of only 55 was validated by the Election Commission.