You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2007.
I’m just swamped right now with school-work. In particular, I have a rough draft on a long research paper due on Monday, and there is a lot to be done between now and then. The topic? Looking at microfinance institutions as coordinators of private orderings, and what this means for commercialization.
There’s a lot I have had a lot of thoughts about but just no time to write. Rumi bhai’s two posts scrutinizing the recent ambassadorial appointments were ones where I want to say a lot on. The posts are both timely and thought provoking, even though I don’t agree with where he comes out on them. I think Rumi bhai is right to question the reasoning behind the individual appointments. But I don’t think I agree with his reasoning behind the questioning. A small window into my thinking on this matter: There are key tensions in administrative law (a class which I am struggling with right now) between accountability, transparency and expertise. It’s not clear to me a priori that there is no place for political appointments in the bureaucratic positions. I have a lot more to say on this, but I don’t have the time to really draw out my thoughts. I hope some one willl remind me of this in late December.
BTW, check out this blog on the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. There is a lot of activity going on in this area right now. The Siemens case is of some note. I am pretty sure some of the investigations for that litigation extend all the way to Bangladesh.
Turns out the New York Times is predicting a political fallout, gloom and doom, in a far more trenchant voice than any writer on this blog.
Somini Sengupta, South Asia correspondent of the NYT, describes the events of the past 11 months highlighting the erosion of popular support for the Caretaker Government and the current problems under the Fakhruddin regime (continuing SOE, muzzling of political parties, persecution of political leaders, dubious outcomes of prosecution against politicians, uncertainty regarding election road map, spiraling prices of essentials, three debilitating natural disasters…the list is long and blame is laid largely at the CG’s door). None of these points are new. But Sengupta constructs the article in a way that is totally unflattering to the CG. The basic message is that Bangladesh may be heading towards a serious crisis and the CG has not lived up to its promise. The uncritical treatment accorded to a Abdul Awal Mintoo towards the end of the article is worth noting and refuting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/world/asia/26bangladesh.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Most of the article is provided below:
The political storm that preceded nature’s latest assault on this country still swirls overhead. Nearly a year into an army-backed state of emergency, basic freedoms remain suspended, a sweeping anticorruption drive has stuffed the jails with some of Bangladesh’s most influential business leaders and politicians, and a fragile economy is tottering under the pressure of floods at home and rising oil prices abroad.
The soaring cost of food is potentially the most explosive challenge facing the military-backed government that has run this country since Jan. 11, when, after debilitating political protests, scheduled elections were scrapped and emergency law was imposed. Climbing inflation was compounded by an unusually harsh monsoon, which destroyed food crops along the flood plains in July. Then, the Nov. 15 cyclone destroyed acres of rice paddy, ruined the shrimp farms that dot the southern coast, and, according to the World Food Program, left roughly 2.3 million people in need of urgent food aid.
Storm relief is now the government’s most pressing test, including averting famine and disease outbreaks, and ensuring that aid distribution is perceived to be fair and without corruption. The government estimates that six million people were affected by the storm. “This is going to be the real defining challenge for them,” Rehman Sobhan, the chairman of the Center for Policy Dialogue, an independent research group based in Dhaka, said of the administration. “A huge effort is going to be required.”
Bangladesh is among the world’s poorest nations, with a Muslim-majority population of more than 140 million and nearly half of its youngest children suffering from malnutrition. Polls indicate that even before the cyclone, confidence in the caretaker government was declining.
The way the ordinary Bangladeshi is being pinched every day was on stark display the other day in a working-class quarter of Dhaka called Begunbari, a crowded warren of tenements amid the roar of factories that supply cheap clothes for sale abroad, including in the United States.
Some interviews with locals lamenting prices and then…
…Election Commission workers were going door to door this afternoon taking names and addresses so they could compile a fresh list of those eligible to vote. Fakhruddin Ahmed, the civilian leader of the country’s military-backed caretaker administration, has promised national elections by the end of 2008.
But exactly how soon elections will take place and under what circumstances, remain mysteries, considering that several major politicians are in jail or in exile. The leaders of the two top political parties, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and Sheik Hasina Wazed of the Awami League, are in custody on various graft and extortion charges. Whether they will be allowed to take part in the election is anyone’s guess.
Under emergency rule, the press is prohibited from publishing anything deemed “provocative” and political activity is banned, including demonstrations. Holding a political meeting outdoors is punishable by up to five years in prison. The restrictions were loosened slightly in September when indoor political meetings were allowed to resume, but only with permission from the police and with no more than 50 people in attendance.
According to a monthly public perception survey by a consortium of civil society organizations called the Election Working Group, the share of Bangladeshis who expressed high confidence in the caretaker government fell between March and September, while the share of those who had low confidence sharply increased. This was true of respondents from “ordinary” and “elite” socioeconomic groups.
In the latest survey, conducted in face-to-face interviews in late September, the rising price of essential commodities was identified as the biggest concern, and even as the government got good marks for cracking down on corruption, respondents were divided about whether the government had any bearing on their daily lives: 42 percent of them said they were “better off” but about the same percentage said they were “worse off or that there has been no change in their personal situation.” The government’s anticorruption crusade continues to be seen as a turning point for Bangladesh, which has consistently ranked at the bottom of the annual Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.
Bank accounts have been frozen. Luxury cars have been impounded by the state, or hidden indoors by their owners for fear they will be taken. Nearly 100 prominent politicians and business people have been taken in for questioning, and an unknown number of people have been detained without charge, which is legal under the new emergency laws. A little more than a dozen have been convicted by anticorruption courts, and how quickly, or fairly, the other cases will be tried is unclear.
If entrenched corruption was seen as damaging the economy, the crackdown has also sent shocks through the private sector. The government appears to be retreating from its initial wide sweep and has in recent months, released some detainees. “Informally, the government wants some sort of reassurance for the business community that they will be allowed to function,” said Akbar Ali Khan, a retired senior government official. He declined to grade the government’s overall performance (criticizing the government is now a punishable offense) except to say that it was vital for the government to prepare for elections and restore business leaders’ confidence in the country.“The economic problems are very serious and acute,” he said. “These will have to be addressed with more vigor.”
Abdul Awal Mintoo, the chairman and chief executive of Multimode Group, was among the most prominent millionaires taken into custody in May on a vague charge of destabilizing the government, then released six months later. Mr. Mintoo said that while he was in custody he was interrogated less about his own assets than about what evidence he could furnish against Ms. Hasina, the Awami League leader and a former prime minister with whom Mr. Mintoo was friendly. A naturalized United States citizen, Mr. Mintoo returned to his native Bangladesh 27 years ago and established a number of businesses, from dealing in agricultural seeds to real estate. He estimates his assets in Bangladesh to be $30 million.
Mr. Mintoo, 58, insists that he did not bribe anyone in government in exchange for contracts. But he concedes that he did what he says everyone else has long had to do in this country: grease the wheels of politics and government to get basic things done, including installing a telephone line and getting imported machine parts out of customs. If that were the grounds for his arrest, he said, then “50 million people, every adult male” should be arrested.
“It’s aimless what they’re doing,” he said of the government in an interview, and added that he planned to divest himself of his investments in the country slowly. “I’m not sure how this will end up. I don’t want to take a risk and live in uncertainty.”“If you take blood out of the arteries,” he added, “it just paralyzes.” The only charge remaining pending against Mr. Mintoo accuses him of extorting about $700 from a private citizen. Mr. Mintoo laughed at the charge, saying it was too paltry a sum for him to demand of anyone.
Another one for the reading pile: Orlando Figes‘ The Whisperer’s: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. NYTimes has a review today, and it looks fascinating. (Here’s a link to his writings on NY Review of Books.)
I read Figes’ magisterial A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 over the course of three days in 2002. Quite simply one of the most readable pieces of historical scholarship that I’ve come across. It was a page-turner. I could hardly put it down.
For those of you keeping score on my reading pile list – I actually got through 2 out of 3 that I listed the last time around: Children of Hurin and El-Gamal’s Islamic Finance. Not a bad record, I say.
Shadakalo dig up some news that’s related to this post.
A note on my “political fallout” post – which I see continues to be misinterpreted, even by AsifY and Fugstar bhais (see comments here) At no point in the post do I criticize how the government has been approaching the Sidr disaster, and I think that if readers reread my previous post without assuming that I am criticizing, they will be hardpressed to find anything that suggests some kind of judgment of the SOE’s response on my part.
As I note in my comments, I simply have no way of knowing whether they are doing a good job or not. From a distance (cause that’s where I am situated) their approach and attitude seem sincere. Surely, as Fugstar notes, there are logistical, communication and transportation issues that hampered both the pre-Sidr evacuation and post-Sidr relief work. But these are not short-term problems, and one would hardly be fair in criticizing the SOE for them – unless some clear evidence of mismanagement or negligence appears. I have yet to see such evidence, and I do not expect there to have been wilful mismanagement or negligence, given what seems to me to be a sincere approach to the crisis.
(In the mean time, kudos to the planners, both past and present – for it would only be fair to share the credit – for helping us avoid what could have been a larger number of deaths.)
The point of the post however was to put out my neck with an early prediction: There WILL be some political fallout from Cyclone Sidr. No matter how sincere the SOE has been in its response, the resource constraints that a country like ours continues to face have shown themselves in the difficulty that the administration has found in coping with the scale of the disaster. It is, I think, unfair to blame the SOE for these constraints. But what I think about deservedness blame is irrelevant here. The fact of the matter is that it is likely that the SOE government will be viewed as possibly to blame by the people who need relief on the ground for their failure (whatever the cause) for reaching that relief. They will ask why they had to wait, hungry and shelterless, and many will be (understadably) impatient of explanations. Some will think – whether accurately or not – that their MP’s would have been more responsive to their needs, and that they would have been better off under that system. Additionally, as food prices increase, the effects of the disaster will be felt beyond the strike zone of the cyclone, and beyond the temporary wait for electricity. Questions will be asked – and one might think that they will be unfair questions to ask – but it is foreseeable that they will be asked. Perhaps the hungry crowds will be able to understand the sincerity that the Chief Advisor was trying to convey in his statement, and will be inclined to forgive perceived faults. Or perhaps the crowds will be unable to look beyond the fact that they have been waiting for days for some relief that is yet to come. I can imagine it going either way. The Daily Star article seemed to say that it is the latter, as things stand right now. It would be interesting to see evidence of perceptions and reactions on the ground that suggest the contrary.
That’s all I was trying to say. It’s probably my fault for being less than clear – but acknowledging that still doesn’t stop being misinterpreted from smarting.
May be I should have a tag that tells readers when I am being descriptive rather than prescriptive.
This, I felt, was a deeply textured article – and much of it is beautifully written, poetic even.
It poignantly illustrates what those waiting for relief are going through:
The line could be seen even from the sea. Hundreds of men standing in a long line.
…
Among the crowd sits Ali Mia, an ageless old man who still works as a fisherman. An eye gone from an accident when his trawler sank a few years ago, he still wants to eke out a living with his stringy arms and legs. He never looked for any dole-outs.But today, Ali is here because he did not get anything to eat for the last two days. Today is the third day running, and he cannot stand it any more.
“I just need something to eat. Something to fill my tummy. Anything. There is nothing edible left on this island,” Ali says and falls silent.
Moslem had his lunch food in the morning before. He collected the rice rotten by the seawater and fried them.
But there’s more – some indications that this administration is not doing so well in coping with the disaster:
But relief is scanty to arrive, and whatever comes is carried by the navy. Had there been no navy, Dublarchar people would have perished. And the administration is slow to wake up to the reality. In fact, the administration has very scanty idea about the people and life in the islands.
Navy ships waited the whole day today at Mongla with an empty cargo hold. But the administration did not give them any goods.
Perhaps it’s unfair to hold the SOE government accountable, as even the Deputy Commissioner did not seem to know that the islands were inhabited. But it is the nature of things that those in charge will be held accountable. Are we seeing some of that already? Consider the legitimacy implications of Sumon’s uncle’s statement:
Sumon’s pale eyes look sleepy but anxious. “Will we get food today, uncle?” he asks.
“May be, son,” the dark man standing beside him replies. “Don’t get so restless. Let the MP Shab (former lawmaker) come, we will get food.”
Perhaps it’s too early to say what the political fallout will be. (Perhaps it’s inappropriate to bring politics into the picture at all given the devastation and destruction that we’ve witnessed?) Perhaps statements of the kind the Chief Advisor made to the hungry crowds – with a showing of care and competence – will be enough.
They are the brave people of the sea and sunshine, as Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed mentioned in his short speech of encouragement to the islanders.
“You are a brave people, you have faced the calamities with valor that also gives us courage,” he said.
But as Jyoti bhai mentioned, it is inevitable that prices and inflation will be impacted by the cyclone. The political fallout from the cyclone in the coming months is worth keeping an eye on.
Mohammed Haneef’s article on Musharraf’s latest shenanigans deserves sharing. Its absolutely brilliant.
In my 15 years in journalism, I have covered three coups. And as I walked towards my office last Saturday, I had the cynicism of someone who has seen it all before. As I entered the BBC offices on a chilly Saturday afternoon in London, a senior Pakistan hand, who like me had interrupted his cosy weekend to cover the story, wondered aloud why the general was taking so long before appearing on national television and explaining his actions.
…Last Saturday as I arrived at my desk, Musharraf had already started his address. And it was immediately clear to me that he had fallen into that aging dictator’s familiar trap: He had written his own speech.
I exaggerate because he only occasionally glanced at his notes and for 40 minutes talked, well, gibberish; the kind of stuff that only journalists and think-tank-wallahs would take seriously.
…
I have been accused of punctuation abuse often enough to take these things in my stride, but for the 40 minutes that General Musharraf spoke in Urdu, he didn’t use one proper sentence.He replaced his verbs with hand gestures, nouns slipped off his shrugged shoulders, adjectives quivered under his desk.
And when he said, “Extremists have gone very extreme,” it suddenly occurred to me why his speech pattern seemed so familiar. He was that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle. And uncle thinks he is about to say something very profound — if you would only pour him one last one.
It’s hilarious – but sadly so, for as Haneef notes towards the end:
When for the last few minutes of his speech he addressed his audience in the West in English, I suddenly felt a deep sense of humiliation. This part of his speech was scripted. Sentences began and ended. I felt humiliated that my President not only thinks that we are not evolved enough for things like democracy and human rights, but because we can’t even handle concepts like proper syntax and grammar.
But lest you place your hopes in the ready alternative of Benazir Bhutto, her niece, Fatima Bhutto has some interesting – perhaps apt – thoughts in an LA Times piece bluntly entitled as “Aunt Benazir’s False Promise”. Choice passage:
The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)
Ms. Bhutto’s political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf’s regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.
I do not envy Pakistan it’s choices. Why is it that I continue to feel that they are in bigger soup than we are, even with our SOE and MUA, FUA, KZ and SH?
Thank God the blog and my computer are back to life. Although Sidr did not hit Dhaka very hard, we did have a 24 hour power cut across the country. During the outage the day after Sidr we had no way of knowing about the carnage in detail. The papers had no real news. There was an eerie silence over the city as we collectively suspected the worst.
That Saturday night, generators kept the lights on in some buildings, shops, and apartments. Entire swathes of the town, however, were lit by lamps and candles. By chance I was driving by the Parliament building quite late. The building, in fact the entire compound, lay in total darkness. It was an apocalyptic vision. One of the major landmarks of the country, the stately symbol of our democratic government, had melted into the night. I could only imagine what Khaleda and Hasina were doing in their sub-jails at the parliament compound: writing memoirs by candlelight, knitting sweater vests, regretting their misdeeds…what a sorry state for Bangladesh. There were rumors everywhere: the dead could number into the hundreds of thousands! The government has cut power on purpose! All cell phone signals are down! No one knew any real news, how many had died, how many were affected, when the electricity would return. Over those 24 hours water stopped running as the pumps no longer worked, generators failed, cell phones ran out of charge, there were fuel shortages everywhere and food prices inevitably lurched up. Relief came the next day for Dhakaites as power was restored in spurts, a few hours here and there.
Words cannot describe the agony and grief that is all over the TV channels now. To have lost everything after surviving two rounds of devastating flooding, to have lost little ones to the tides, corpses of man and beast rotting in the same watery grave…the living are in mourning. At this hour we need not only monetary aid but also spiritual succor.
I recently came across this 1988 Op-Ed in the NYT that is still sadly relevant:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE7DA1F3FF934A25752C1A96E948260
Recent Comments