Improving higher education******

We need a determined and progressive national leadership to work for changing the present culture that patronises general education and even redundant forms of education, in order to improve the quality of higher education. This is all too important to establish more efficient management processes and seek alliances with the international scientific community. Private and public sector partnerships should also be created for achieving the desired results. Looking at the present educational scenario in Bangladesh, one finds little more than tokenism in response to the need of building up an educational system suitable for meeting the needs of a dynamic economy. Worldwide, the experience has been that national strength and economic power depends too vitally on making human resources out of people. To make the human resources, the most important requirement is education. But for that matter, education must be of a kind that enables humans to become the makers and doers of things. Despite the recent success of Bangladesh in terms of growth of its gross domestic product (GDP), exports earnings, etc , the question that needs a critical scrutiny is whether the country could have done much better in these and other indicators of economic progress. Most experts would certainly agree that Bangladesh's economic development could be more stable and sustainable, if it were built on a solid foundation of a highly-educated workforce. We badly need a quality educational system (especially in sciences, technologies and vocational training), and supportive policies to provide the necessary foundation for a modern science and technology-based economy. Rahim Talukder Asad Gate, Dhaka Why lease coalfields abroad? The government, according to some recent reports in the media, is considering a move by the relevant state-owned entities to take lease of coal reserves or mines abroad under some long-term agreement to ensure the country's longer term energy security. The aim here is apparently purported to bringing coal from the overseas at static costs to be used largely in domestic coal-fired power plants to mitigate the present power crisis. But the question which cannot be avoided in this connection is: Why is this move to bring coal from other countries when the country has one of the best reserves of good quality coal of the region in ample quantities within its own territories? Bangladesh is reported to have relatively and easily extractable deposits of some 2.5 billion tonnes of high grade coal buried under its soil. The same can meet the needs of its energy security for long many years. There are possibilities of discovering more coal reserves by that time. The logical course that is dictated by the situation is to ensure the fastest completion of all processes to start the production and use of this indigenous coal. But the need for such exploitation is yet largely left unaddressed. That is precisely the reason why the vested quarters are out for importing coal while keeping the domestic coal unused, showing all kinds of discord over the manner of its exploitation --whether to extract it by open pit method or underground mining-- that is sought to be linked to environmental safety. Meanwhile, the proven reserves of gas in the country will be all utilised by another twelve to fifteen years' time from now, if new gas reserves are not found and exploited by that time. Such an assessment by some experts does serve as a wake-up call for the planners to be really pro-active and losing no time in very rapidly starting the process of extraction and utilization of the country's coal resources for power production. But that decision is still being kept in a limbo and the power crunch is being allowed to deepen with great crippling effects on the economy. But coal continues to be a major source of power in neighbouring India. China is also using coal for generating electricity to a great extent. Australia is dependent on coal for the most of its power supply and also a large number of other countries. Even the UK still keeps on getting a major share of its energy from coal-based power stations. In this backdrop, it is of utmost importance for the government to be decisive and start work right away in using the vast locally available coal reserves to meet the country's present energy needs and to build energy security. Abdul Mannan Siddeshwari, Dhaka OMS Corruption To help poor people, the government has taken up a programme to sell rice and wheat at a subsidised rate through Open Market Sale (OMS). The selling price of rice is Tk 10 to Tk 12 per kilogram under this programme. However, a lot of irregularities are being detected in implementing the programme, like cheating in measurement, adulteration, nepotism in queue etc. Media reports have also identified a number of incidents of black marketing and hoarding of OMS rice and wheat. Recently, RAB personnel recovered 3,000 sacks of rice and wheat from some warehouses in Kawran Bazaar. A driver of the food department and a manager of a warehouse were arrested in this connection. But the owner of the warehouse is yet to be arrested. This is not a new phenomenon. People are eagerly waiting to see what action will be taken against those culprits who are involved in the OMS rice and wheat corruption. Mohammed Jashim Uddin Dhaka E-mail: juctg2008@gmail.com For expediting actions to ensure better aid disbursement Notwithstanding the views that are expressed by government leaders from time to time that they can do with less aid or no aid, the reality is that such aid remains one of the major sources of budgetary support to the government. Specially, in the current context when revenue collections fall short of total public expenditure, foreign aid has been playing a critical role in helping the government to fulfill its spending targets and to reduce its domestic public borrowing as well as to help avert an unwelcome large deficit in the budget. There is no denying that the government's revenue collections have shown a marked improvement in recent years and its fiscal deficit has also been within a safe limit. But the fact also remains incontestable that the development expenditure of the government has been falling far behind the targeted or projected level. If the government's overall implementation performance with regard to its budgeted allocation for the Annual Development Programme (ADP) could improve, then the growth in revenue collections that has been witnessed in recent times would not be enough to meet the overall the funding requirement. And also then, the fiscal deficit would have been rising. The government has, meanwhile, been resorting to the characteristic borrowing from the internal sources to make up for revenue shortfall. But, the incremental level of governmental borrowing from the banking system and from the public is hardly sustainable in the longer term without destabilising the country's macro-economy. More and more government's domestic borrowing does have an adverse impact on economic activities in the private sector because of funding constraints that such activities would face in a situation when the government itself becomes a major borrower of funds in the domestic market. Inadequacies in internal resources mobilization to take care of overall governmental spending, both recurring and developmental, and to make available sufficient resources for funding investment and other activities in the private sector, are otherwise sought to be met largely from the injections of foreign aid or capital. But foreign aid is seen to be declining worryingly and this factor was highlighted in media reports recently. In this context, it is imperative for the government to engage in fast-track actions to help accelerate the process of co-ordinated actions with the donors relating to external aid disbursement from the existing pipeline. The government will be duly expected to show reasonableness and the willingness to do its part of the job to get access to aid funds that are also becoming otherwise scarce in to-day's global economic situation. Alamgir Hossain DOHS, Dhaka Dealing with outflow of professionals Every year about a good number of qualified information technologists, doctors, engineers, teachers, researchers, accountants, etc., are leaving Bangladesh . The state and the taxpayers had done much for their education and career but they would be lost forever from discharging services to the country. Bangladesh would get ultimately no services or resources from them and increasing hazards will be faced to fill up their empty ranks in their respective fields and the countrymen will suffer from yet further reduced services delivery to them from the thinning number of the professionals to deliver such services. Every year some 5,000 Bangladeshi students go abroad. But 80 per cent of them, on a guess estimate, would never return to their country and serve at abroad. Thus, on average, Bangladesh is suffering an annual brain of several thousand well-qualified people when it needs such people in the greatest number to stay in the country and work dedicatedly to accelerate its economic growth and development. Time is more than ripe to make a list of the professionals in the country and discourage their foreign employment and settlement. At least, every professional on passing out from a government-subsidized study centre, should be required to stay and work in the country for a minimum period of 10-15 years. Hard attempts must be made to bring back teachers and others who left their publicly-run institutions with scholarships to foreign organizations but are overstaying. Murtaza Kamal Khilgaon, Dhaka