According to the report published in the FE, the government is going to introduce a free agriculture call centre soon under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative. The help line for farmers will be the first of its kind, benefiting nearly 20 million farmers across Bangladesh. The farmers will get information and suggestions on agriculture free of cost by dialling a short code on any mobile phone. The importance of such a centre can hardly be overemphasised. In neighbouring India such information centres have been in operation for long.
Let us hope that the call centre will start operation as scheduled. We are always apprehensive about the timely start of a project and what is haunting me is the comment of Hamlet to his friend Horatio that there is many-a-slip between the cup and the lip. The proposed project is going to have some unique features. First of all, it is going to be a PPP project. Finance Minister AMA Muhith spoke very loudly about the PPP project in his first budget speech in 2009-2010 of the previous grand alliance government. Subsequently, he admitted in the parliament that performance in the area had been far from satisfactory. Bureaucratic inhibition was one of the main reasons for this failure. In this dismal condition the proposed agriculture call centre is going to see the light of the day.
The PPP venture is definitely a laudable achievement. Subsidy is provided to the farmers, no doubt, and they give the due return by harvesting bumper crop yield under strenuous circumstances overcoming all odds including natural calamities. The level of concern of politicians about the farmers is not at all satisfactory. Political parties coddle those organisations that can either put up resistance against their programmes or serve their political purposes. In the share market the so-called investors (better called the traders) go for making profit. There is a famous comment about these people of Mr. J K Galbraith, a famous economist and diplomat of the U. S.A. In the book The Great Crash 1929, he wrote: "No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of the free choice and decisions of the thousands of individuals. The latter were not led to the slaughter. There were impelled to it by the seminal lunacy which has always seized people who are seized in turn with the notion that they can become very rich. There were many wall streeters who helped to foster their insanity".
In Bangladesh, the government becomes highly sensitive to any kind of reaction in the share market without going deep into it to judge whether the hiccup is reasonable or not. Similarly, the opposition political parties try to gain political mileage out of this situation. But neither the ruling party nor the opposition bothers with the sufferings of the hapless farmers as they are not organised to serve their mischievous political purposes. During the last protracted political turbulence the vegetable growers suffered heavily and they incurred heavy losses, as they could not sell their produce. But the politicians in their harangues have hardly mentioned these sufferings.
Back to the proposed agriculture call centre. This may act as the beacon of hope. Mobile phone operates such Teletalk, Banglalink, Grameenphone, Robi, Citycell and Airtel are taking part in providing these telephone services. These activities will be within the purview of the corporate social responsibilities (CSR). This scribe would like to say that this is the most noble and finest CSR activity. It will benefit millions of people, so it can easily be termed a national service.
The call centre can offer a tremendous service. Their area of operation is vast. There is an immense opportunity to render services to various sections of people so long unattended. Let this scribe cite a specific case. A few weeks back he met a young entrepreneur, Mir Shahid of Jamalpur. The area from where he hails is a tomato-growing area. During the peak production season prices fall far below the production cost and buyers are not available even at throwaway prices. The growers bewail and throw the tomatoes into drains of their local markets. This man with a view to helping the tomato growers has set up a classified cold storage. Farmers have seized the storage facility. But first of all, it cannot be kept there for more than six weeks. Another serious problem is the tomatoes gather spots on them, thereby affecting the quality. Mir Shahid approached the local agriculture extension department. But maintaining their bureaucratic tradition they did not address the problem. Maybe, they do not have the knowledge as to how to solve the problem or to give any suggestion. They could have referred the matter to Bangladesh Agriculture University in Mymensingh on an urgent basis. The agriculture university might have solved the problem. But the bureaucratic vanity prevented them from taking any such action.
It was just one problem this scribe came across by chance. There are many other such problems. We hope the call centre will have a sufficient number of experts covering every area of the agriculture sector. We further hope and believe that their services will not be limited to the telephonic response only. Definitely there will be an arrangement for prompt and on-the-spot verification by the experts who may move either from the centre or from any assigned research institution.
rezaulparvaz@live.com
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