The New Nation - Internet Edition

The long awaited election

THE nation elects today the Ninth Parliament for a return to elected government. An air of festivity is observed all over as the contesting parties and their candidates worked in campaigns to attract votes in their favour. In the process candidates with pledges to perform better have approached almost all voters or their families. The major political parties have come up with election manifestoes in a bid to prove each other's superiority in political, economic, social and cultural thoughts and programmes.

This democratic exercise is the ultimate accountability of political leaders to the electorate. The election is being held after a gap of nearly two years as the January 22, 2007 election was postponed following its boycott by a major political alliance on the ground of lack of arrangement to hold a credible election and the threat of social unrest and disturbance that it posed. Since then the new government and the new Election Commission have introduced some reforms to the electoral process. The political parties have been registered afresh with some changes to their constitutions.

The number of political parties contesting the election has come down to 38 from 54 in 2001. With it the number of candidates has also come down to 1555 from 1935 in 2001. In the last election the Awami League contested alone while the BNP did it in association with three other parties. This time the constituencies have been re-demarcated keeping an eye on even distribution of voters. The Election Commission has deployed law enforcing agencies to ensure peaceful conduct of elections. Army has been deployed as a strike force to support them, if need be. The people looks forward to success of the polling.

Job creation under the safety net

GOVERNMENT has adopted a specially big social safety net programme in the current year's budget to protect the ones who are vulnerable to adverse economic conditions. The money provisioned for spending on the safety net programme will be some Taka 169.32 billion which is some 48 per cent higher than the sum allocated for a similar purpose in the last fiscal year's budget.

But allocation is not enough. Efficient utilisation of the same is what matters under the present circumstances. The money has been provisioned for spending with specific plans in some areas but not spelling out objectives definitely for other areas. Thus, some of it will be used to pay various allowances to the poor and for running a guaranteed employment scheme. Flexibility will remain with the planners to spend the rest of this fund as and when the needs arise. Therefore, it is important to ensure effective spending from the fund not only to mitigate hardships of the poor but also to create employment and earning opportunities for them.

Disbursement of higher allowances and direct distribution of dole such as foodgrain to the poor is helpful. But it is purely consumptive and produces little tangible returns for the economy. The best way to help the poor as well as create returns for the economy is through job creation. The poor are best aided and the economy hedged from inflation and sheer lack of productivity when assistance given to the poor is in the area of creating employment and the means of income for them. The government should target the best possible outcome of its safety net programme for the poor at the earliest on a sustainable basis.

Indian reaction is an election gimmick

Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque

On the fateful night of 26th November, 2008 the terrorists stormed the commercial capital of India with fearsome attacks leaving the city dwellers in a deadly apprehension and rippling tension. I feel a bit of nostalgia using the name Bombay as I had been over there as a resident research student concentrating on research works leading to PH.D. And, more because people like to call Bombay even now, not Mumbai (officially renamed) and we are familiar with the word Bombay toast; the film land is still identified as Bollywood not Mollywood. I and my family enjoyed eclectic culture of the city with western look having a great chunk of opportunities not as tourists staying for a couple of days but as temporary dwellers to understand what this peaceful and glamorous city is all about

Bombay is immersed in a rich history of urban civilization once enjoying the administrative status - presidency town. The area of the presidency was large enough that included Sind until 1935. Previously in independent India Bombay was a union territory for sometime. Now it is the capital of the state of Maharastro. The city shines with the splendor of westernized metropolis with high rise apartments in residential enclaves, skyline administrative and commercial districts, a plenty of five star hotels and sea beaches, parks, garden, lakes and hill||hillocks. The well known Marine drive near Nariman point looks like a queen neck less in the evening with numerous high rise buildings clustered together around the coast line.

Extremely crowded Bombay is a peninsular urban centre with numerous suburb stations connected by surface metropolitan train carrying regular passengers bearing season cards. The city can boast of having one of the best traffic management system at least in South Asia with modern road infrastructures-flyover, overpass, underpass, and express high way running to Pune .

There is a proverb that says Bombay and the rest of India. The city has a legendary past running down a couple of centuries. The old parts of Bombay are dotted with traditional urban landmarks. Taj hotel, beleaguered by November 26 (2008) terrorist attacks, is a beautiful heritage building.

Regrettably the city of peace and prosperity suddenly turned awfully panic stricken frequented by terrorist activities.

I am really appalled and terribly shocked at the state of affairs now prevailing in Bombay expressing deep sympathy to all of my friends and philosophers living there who helped me out in need during my study period. The recent terrorism episode is a case in point .The people on the streets were brawling over the eruption of the November26 (2008) violence that was different from the previous ones in terms of atrocity and ferocity. The attacks on different strategic centers and stations testify to the fragile state of national security.

According to an expert opinion this was a new brand of terrorism similar to attacks in London (1995) and Madrid (2004). The ugliest face of terrorism ruptured Bombay -a tragedy that hit news headlines as a breaking news.

In the places like Victoria terminus, Vire Parle, Gateway of India, Goregoan and Nariman Point it was gapping hell with destruction, bomb explosions, skirmishes, genocidical killings with firearms and spilled bloods. Hemonto Karare, a daring police officer, fought with bullet proof jackets and helmet. He and two police officers succumbed to serious injury. The repercussion was Himalayan compelling home minister of the central and state governments and chief minister of Maharastro to resign.

As far as I remember the first strike occurred a couple of years after I left Bombay in1992.The strategic establishment in the city -the nucleus of commercial activities- were hit by bomb explosion. In 2003 bomb attack in a passenger train killed 11 people injuring many. The 2006 (March) strike on the metro railway communication was one in a chain. Bomb explosions took place in seven suburb stations leaving 187 dead and 800 injured .As usual the Indian government threw the arrow of doubt to the external forces showing pointed finger at 'the elements of Pakistan' behind the scene.

Despite the claim of Decan Mujahid -an outlawed Indian militant group that they conducted the operation, Indian officials and US counter terrorism searching for clues identified Pak militant groups like Laskari-Ei Taiab and Jaish-E-Mohammed as the prime suspects.

The Indian prime Minister and home minister seemed to look daggers at Pakistan for the tragic incidence with overall mass reaction reaching a boiling point to derail Indo Pak relation .Pakistan government blamed India for attempting to make Pakistan a scapegoat stating that tangible evidences are hardly available to involve Pakistan.

The state of Pakistan is now misunderstood as a suitable abode of terrorists. But it is a country worst victim of the terrorism of bubbling militancy. Things slip beyond Pak government that is torn between 'conflicting agendas 'bureaucracy, army and ISI. Nevertheless Indian agony is mounting and Indo Pak tension is simmering to take fire. All such allegations notwithstanding, much blame may be put on blissful slumber of Indian security.

There were hints about Mumbai mayhem through coastline and the US intelligence alerted India. More the Indian security system operates with the equipments much backward compared to the sophisticated weapons the terrorists used. The tragic episode enhanced security concern of the country. However, most observers think that Indian government's reaction and its war preparation against Pakistan is nothing but election gimmick as national parliamentary election is forth coming.

How Anglo-German clash nearly stalled EU rescue

M.N. Hebbar

What was all that about? When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had French President Nicholas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso over at 10 Downing Street to agree over a "concerted fiscal stimulus", a week ago,

the absence of German chancellor Angela Merkel at the table seemed a discourtesy on the part of Mr Brown, given the importance of Europe's biggest economy. At worst, it was a piece of clumsy diplomacy by Sarkozy, whose relations with Ms Merkel have been rather difficult of late. To most Germans, it smacked of a conspiracy.

So it was hardly surprising when, only days later, Britain was at the receiving end of an unusually harsh attack on Brown's policies by none other than German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck.

The minister, no doubt, with the full knowledge of the chancellor, lambasted Brown's response to the economic crisis as "a breathtaking switch from decades of supply-side economics to a crass Keynesianism". The stage was thus set for a bruising argument with the German chancellor at the EU summit over the weekend. The principal objection by the Germans was that governments were not thinking through on the effects of large-scale spending programmes and that it would take Britain a generation to pay for the huge financial stimulus introduced by the government to kick-start the economy. In particular, Brown's gamble of cutting VAT (value added tax) to stimulate spending was ridiculed.

The German criticism was galling enough for the British ambassador in Berlin to telephone the German finance ministry to "express his disagreement" with Steinbruck's attack on British policies. The formal protest evoked the memories of 1992 when Britain criticised comments from the then Bundesbank president for precipitating sterling's ejection from the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Brown, however, brushed it off as the fallout of German politics by declaring that the 27 EU nations were united in agreeing that a suitable fiscal stimulus was needed to tackle the recession.

Wiser counsel prevailed at Brussels, however. The summit saw President Sarkozy chairing his last summit in the EU's rotating chair and struggling to get a reluctant Germany to spend more on re-launching the EU economy. Several European nations were sliding into a recession, including the 15 nations in the euro-zone. Ms Merkel finally signed in on the deal, supporting a EU-wide 200 billion euro stimulus package, consisting largely of national contributions but with some help from the common EU budget as well. The devil, as always, would be in the details.

That said, Brussels saw Sarkozy basking in praise for his 'skilful' handling' of France's storm-racked six months in the EU presidency and the buzz that he plans to reign as Europe's "saviour", after the Czech Republic takes over on January 1. Elysee sources are already talking up their boss as President of Europe well beyond 2009!

Sarkozy seems convinced that he has galvanised Europe and led the EU into a new image of a "power centre" that can act with efficiency as in the case of the management of the credit crisis and emergencies such as the Georgia crisis when Sarkozy negotiated a ceasefire with Moscow. He now sees his close partnership with Gordon Brown as part of the new power equation. So much for the Franco-German axis.

With Germany focused on elections next year and Britain going through a more painful recession than countries of the euro-zone, France perceives an advantage in bettering its economic stakes, even if Sarkozy's wishful thinking that Britain will soon abandon its sterling and embrace the euro to save itself from the collapse of the pound remains extremely fanciful.

The flurry of speculation that Gordon Brown would be tempted to swap sterling for the single currency owes more to the babble of Eurosceptics than to the mandarins of Whitehall. The facts do not add up. The present economic crisis has proved that Britain, despite its record of prudent financial management, is not going to be out of the woods any time soon. The pound's headlong slide, losing 20 per cent since last year, has only served to revive memories of sterling crises past.

Secondly, both economics and politics dictate that swapping a currency in the midst of a recession would be sheer folly. Brown has always talked of economic convergence as a factor in the decision to embrace the euro. This is hardly the case now.

The political scenario in Britain, with the Conservatives breathing down Brown's neck, says it would be suicidal for Labour to even contemplate a switch. With paranoia about the euro widespread across Britain, the British government remains firmly against the euro and has argued that things would have been much worse had Britain tucked itself in the euro-zone.

Merkel is in agreement with Gordon Brown over the implications of VAT as the right step to support the UK economy. But the adroit chancellor was quick to reject such a course for Germany, where consumption has held up relatively well in recent months.

She has made it clear though that Germany is less enthusiastic than France and the UK about large-scale deficit spending plans, suggesting that such steps may harm EU's fiscal stability in the medium term without doing much to revitalise the economy.

Encouraged by the consensus, European Commission President Barroso has proposed a joint US-European response to the crisis. But the fact that Barroso has an eye on EU politics makes it a non-starter. He stands for re-election as Commission president next year. There is no silver bullet for the downturn.

Motivate women against arsenic contamination

Ajitha Menon

Sahidun Bewa, 30, toils hard, making one arsenic filter after another with fine-tuned-precision at Bara Andulia village in Nadia district, West Bengal. She earns Rs 100 (US$1 =Rs 50) per filter. Sahidun is not driven by the money but by the acute awareness that each filter can save up to five lives, on an average. Arsenic acts as slow poison. Over six-and-a-half million people are drinking arsenic-contaminated water every day in this eastern state of India.

"This district has been declared arsenic-prone. The only way to avoid contamination is to use these alumina-activated arsenic filters. We keep motivating women in our villages to use the filters for safe drinking and cooking water to prevent onset of diseases caused by arsenic poisoning," says Sahidun.

Nadia is one of the nine severely arsenic-contaminated districts in West Bengal. The ground water in all the 17 blocks of the district shows concentrations of arsenic above 0.01 mg/l, the World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline permissible value. A survey (a 12-year study conducted in 767 of the 1,250 villages of Nadia, compiled upto September 2006) by the School of Environment Studies, Jadavpur University, found that about 51.2 per cent of the tubewells here had arsenic concentrations of over 0.01 mg/l, while 17.2 per cent had levels above 0.05 mg/l (Indian Standard Value). About 1.8 per cent had contamination above 0.3 mg/I. At least 117 villages (out of 1,250 villages) had arsenic contamination above 0.3 mg/l. A total of 649 villages had contamination above 0.01mg/1 while 441 villages had contamination above 0.05mg/1.

Dr Dipankar Chakraborty, Director, School of Environmental Studies, Jadavpur University, says, "My studies have found that 95 per cent of children below 11 years of age, living in arsenic-affected villages, show hair and nail arsenic above normal level. Infants and children might be at greater risk from arsenic toxicity because of more water consumption on body weight basis."

"Earlier, villagers were told to boil water before drinking to prevent diseases. Arsenic actually increases if the water is boiled as with evaporation the water volume goes down while the arsenic concentration remains the same. We are trying to change old habits. Measures against arsenic contamination started only around 2003," explains Bharati Biswas, Secretary, Bara Andulia Mahila Samity, which runs the arsenic filter making unit in collaboration with UNICEF.

Years of drinking arsenic contaminated water causes various diseases starting from skin lesions, which leads to skin cancer; Bowen's disease; and cancer of the lungs, liver, colon and bladder. These symptoms take years to surface. Unfortunately, there are few takers for the arsenic filters being manufactured across 13 units in the district. "We are extremely poor. We cannot ensure even one square meal a day for ourselves. How can we afford Rs 500 for an arsenic filter?" Rekha Patra, 45, of Jeetpur Para village flatly asks. Both Rekha and her husband Subhash, 50, like many others in their village, have symptoms of arsenic poisoning, such as hardened skin and Blackfoot disease.

In West Bengal, in addition to Nadia, the districts of Malda, Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Bardhaman, Howrah, Hooghly and Kolkata are severely affected, with a contamination level of over 0.3 mg/1.

Five other districts - Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Daijeeling, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur - are mildly affected, with contamination above 0.05 mg/1. Only five of the State's 19 districts are arsenic-safe.

"NGOs and government programme coordinators are dependent on women motivators to create awareness against arsenic poisoning," says Jasmine Begum, 35, an office-bearer with the Samity. The government has also made provisions for tap water in certain areas but the reach is insignificant.

When the enormity of the contamination became evident, NGOs and organisations like the UNICEF set up arsenic-testing labs in the affected districts. Now the labs have been taken over by the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department of the state government. Nadia has five such labs. "We visit villages and collect samples from local tubewells. For every sample, the lab pays us Rs 25. If the test comes out arsenic positive, we return to the same villages and motivate the villagers to buy the Activated Alumina Arsenic Filters. We earn a commission of Rs 20 for every filter we manage to sell," explains motivator Farida Biwi, 35, of Chapra village.

Sagari Bewa, 36, motivator of Bara Andulia village, says, "Though testing has not been done to the fullest extent, we know that if vegetables and fruits are cultivated using arsenic-contaminated water, they too have arsenic concentration. We have even found arsenic in cow's milk after the cow has fed on grass in arsenic contaminated areas. Preventive measures and awareness campaigns are therefore required on a war footing."

One of the major problems, as seen in Chapra Block of Nadia district, was the constant breakdown of the deep tube wells identified as arsenic-free. "We had to wait for a mechanic for weeks, who would then charge exorbitantly. I decided to join the training camp for women mechanics in Shantipur, conducted by the Zilla Parishad in collaboration with the PHE department," recalls Zulekha Bibi, 36, from Bara Andulia village. Some 300 trained women mechanics now repair their own as well as government tube wells in villages across Nadia district to ensure that the safe tubewells keep functioning.

Despite the awareness campaigns many still fail to adopt better practices, due to poverty. "Experts from the School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata, came and told us that in some places here, there are arsenic concentrations of even up to 3.2 mg/1. We are aware that we are drinking poison, but what is the alternative? We are too poor to buy the filters, too poor to replace the regenerated activated alumina candles for Rs 15 each regularly. We were told to improve our diet, eat fish, meat and vegetables - but how? Where is the money? In fact, we are too poor for anyone to actually care," says Jayanti Biswas, 29, of Tabu para village, whose three-and-half-year-old son was born with a club foot and who reveals that her father-in-law "died of cancer caused by arsenic poisoning".