Part Three

A history of missed opportunities
Fazal M. Kamal
First, naturally, the good news.
It would not pass a veracity test to state--rhetorically as it’s often done--that since the time Bangladesh attained its independence the nation has not seen much progress and its economy hasn’t developed. On both those counts the country can claim positive achievements.
Over the decades circumstances surrounding women’s lives and rights have seen marked improvements, child immunization has been greatly successful, the economy itself has been able to display definite signs of progress in certain sectors, media and telecommunication penetration has been conspicuously enhanced, the increase in food grain production has been a miraculous phenomenon. These are some, and certainly not all, of the positive attainments.
In addition, in recent times Bangladesh has escaped some of the worst impacts of the world economic turmoil that has wreaked havoc in many more-developed countries. In the United States, for instance, even now, as one observer put it, “credit remains scarce, unemployment hovers above 10%, commercial real estate is crashing, home foreclosures are rising, and many state and local governments are teetering on the brink of insolvency.”
So much for the good news about Bangladesh. Now, of course, the bad news has to follow.
In the thirty-eight years since independence one of the most tragic components in the nation’s life has been the fact that it has had to witness the national leadership ignore and miss a great number of opportunities that could have turned the people’s fortunes in dramatic ways. Unfortunately, those in authority and power were, alas, more focused on the legendary quick buck at the expense of the people’s interests as well as on the benefit of self-absorbed myopic coteries.
They eminently failed to generate a shared vision for the nation and lacked the foresight to lead the country to better days. In addition, there was an astounding absence of planning for the future and the consequent absence of tangible actions that would have been appropriate for the growth of the country in its entirety.
Take of the example of development of the different cities around the country. Instead of creating centers of growth in various parts of Bangladesh--an idea to which scant attention was given over the past three decades--all decision making mechanisms were concentrated in one place only, i.e. the capital. Naturally, this city has served as a bright beacon of hope for people living in other parts; and naturally therefore they’ve thronged to Dhaka City. But this city too did not receive the thought it deserved if it were to serve as the focal point of the country.
A recent report has some alarming stuff to state about Dhaka City. It says that the present population of the city is 13 million and almost 800,000 persons arrive to live in the city every year. Of the total number of universities in Bangladesh (82) sixty are located in the capital. Thirty-two of the 38 medical colleges in the country are in Dhaka City. Of the total number of school, college and madrassa students 28% are based in the capital.
Certainly, to this tally can be added the number of garment factories and other industrial units that are located in this one city alone which in turn means not only that more people are lured into the city for employment everyday but it also means that incredible pressures are put on the wholly unprepared utility services and infrastructure in the capital. Clearly, no one in power had the time or the inclination to think about these facts and their impact in the years that have elapsed so far.
It therefore ought not to surprise anyone that though enormous quantities of water and power are required to meet the requirements of the citizens, the utility services are unable to do that even though 40% of the nation’s power generation is supplied to Dhaka City alone. And of course everyone knows all too well the scarcity of roads in the capital which are utterly incapable of serving the rising number of vehicles that are used in this city by the ever-increasing population.
If avarice and shortsightedness, especially among the players in the banking and finance sectors, had key roles in bringing about catastrophe to the economies in countries like the United States, Britain, the United Arab Emirates and others, the same traits have had a major impact on the history of missed opportunities that was witnessed by our nation in the three decades plus since independence.
Since persons in power and authority at various levels in different spheres were more interested in options that provided them with the chance of collecting riches by the tons the thought processes necessary to plan and put into action that plan for the overall and unified growth of the country were not of immediate interest to them, as the historical record will testify.
In point of fact, as ludicrous as it might seem, some sections of the leadership appeared to attach much more significance to matters like naming and renaming almost everything in sight and quibbling over who received more attention in the country’s history and whether one family was given more importance--and power--over another than to evidently more fundamental issues that, had they gotten the correct concentration, would have made huge improvements in the people’s lives.
Today consequently we are confronted with a serious lack of the necessary infrastructure networks that are imperative for the appropriate development of the country as a whole. The mostly skewed development has therefore put an enormous burden on one city alone, and has also left a humongous number of Bangladeshis in deep poverty, while the rest of the country lags far behind in tangible development. In this matter, it has to be added in all fairness, the country’s so-called development partners must accept their share of the blame. They were in full control of the purse strings and viewed what was going on but were largely engaged in advancing their own formulas and agendas--just as they’ve done elsewhere.
Amidst all this came the tenure of the last “caretaker government” which, at the end it seemed, didn’t have much clue about what it wanted to do or why it was in office. But while it was there, among other disservice, it created an absolutely uncalled-for turbulence in the economy as well as societal discordance. And in the process made the nation more vulnerable to the capricious stranglehold of the retrogressive segments of the bureaucracy besides.
That the bureaucratic system left behind by the Britons has persisted over the years to be a hindrance to the faster progress of the nation--and has in addition choked the creative energies of the people--has been noted by many commentators for decades. The political leaders of the country have also recognized this ugly fact--but have done precious little to rectify it. Instead, they have mostly gone along with the interpretations of rules, laws and regulations as preached by the bureaucracy (with the necessary exceptions, most definitely) and at their chosen speed (or actually at the lack of it.).
Aside from neglecting to build the required infrastructures our leadership couldn’t also sufficiently grasp the hugely significant role that education plays in the development of a nation. Even in a country as developed as the US it has been identified as one of the major elements to remain competitive in the world. According to one observer, in the US “any long-term fixes will mean focusing on primary- and secondary education, to ensure a globally competitive workforce, and an affordable health care for all…(T)hey are crucial if Americans want to maintain their standard of living.”
Various studies have demonstrated that there is an extremely close interlinking of poverty with education and health care. To diminish the extent of poverty in countries like Bangladesh the importance of education can just not be overemphasized. One report stated that “Poverty is one of the most influential factors for ill health, and ill health--in a vicious cycle--can lead to poverty. Education has proven to be a critical strategy to break this cycle.” (Dr. Cesar Chelala and Dr. Manuel Pena)
In the heat of the chase for more and more lucre it’s merely natural that much else would be forgotten or overlooked and the pernicious effects this could have on the rest of the nation would be ignored. The continuous rise in the number of crimes in the country can also be attributed to this promiscuous attitude. But that’s how it is and one can only hope and pray that this state of things will come to an end sooner rather than later, and good sense will come to prevail. Amen.
However at the end it has to be confessed--and remembered-- that it’s not advisable to be too direct and open about certain things in real life. In this context it’ll be entirely relevant to conclude with a quote from champion gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson: “If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people--including me--would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”




Campaign for climate justice
The Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, returned home from the COP 15 conference recently, much energized by the 'climate diplomacy' of her team, and ready to 'think globally and act locally' ----- as they used to say in the 1990s . One hopes the enthusiasm comes from deep down, born out of true conviction. The first good thing the PM did was to instruct the relevant authorities to prepare a draft for a new law against the plundering of trees, with stringent enough provisions to deter everyone involved in such anti-environment acts. It should have non-bailable provisions, she is reported to have said, for both the direct and indirect offenders, the fellers, sellers and buyers of this environmentally-priceless resource ---- even if the offenders belong to the ruling party.
That is the least the government is obliged to do --- at least to be seen doing --- after Copenhagen, where Bangladesh was in the 'spotlight'. Ecological education and sensitization of today's decision-makers is very much needed and expected. Every eco-literate citizen would hope that all our governments would be consistent, competent and capable enough to protect and conserve our resources even while making the most of them ---- in other words, evolving or adopting a development model that makes both economic and environmental sense.
Strangely, rampant felling of forest trees, as well as specifically nurtured 'green cyclone shields', have been reported from different parts of the country, even as the Bangladesh climate delegation to Copenhagen was presenting its case as one of the world's most vulnerable countries. According to a contemporary, in Pirganj upazila of Rangpur, a group of 'influential and powerful people chopped down about 20,000 trees' under the cover of darkness on 12 and 13 December. In November about the same number of trees were cut down by the son of a ruling party lawmaker and his friends in Sitakunda of Chittagong, ostensibly to set up extremely dirty shipbreaking yards. In September at least 30,000 Jhau (tamarisk) trees were axed under the very nose of the forest department. The pattern is curiously the same ----- the authorities acting only after the deed is done ---- despite there being existing laws, we are told, that prohibit such plunder.
The colossal problem of global warming and climate change is indeed 'one of the greatest challenges of our time'. And Bangladesh has, along with other vulnerable nations, asked for long-term cooperative action under the climate change framework ----- in terms of technology transfer and finance for adaptation and mitigation; compensation for countries that are conserving their forest resources and other vital carbon sinks. So, doing away with our own forest cover would mean losing out on Bangladesh's legitimate share of climate funds. It is tantamount to what we Bengalis would say, 'Nijer pa-ye kural mara' !
Where would the billions of dollars' worth of 'debt', that the over-consuming developed countries would have to pay the worst sufferers of climate change, come from ? Understandably, a good part of it is going to come from the global market in carbon emission credits ----- under a cap-and-trade system which sets a ceiling on the carbon emissions of a given country or industry and allows trading of pollution permits within the cap. This 'polluter-pays principle' is expected to lead to the growth of carbon credits to around two trillion dollars a year by 2020 ! It is a complex trading system and is not without its critics. For example, the Durban Group for Climate Justice, an international network of independent organizations, individuals and grassroot movements, is fiercely opposed to it and has been mobilizing people around the world, since its inception in October 2004, to oppose carbon trading, tooth and nail.
The Durban Group believes, carbon trading cannot halt global warming because it does not focus on the core problem, and that is, the continued extraction and consumption of fossil fuels --- coal, oil and gas. Instead, the most powerful governments and corporations are bent on 'buying' the space ( to pollute ) from low, or no-emission countries that are deemed to have lots of space to absorb the rich world's carbon load ! This means turning 'the earth's carbon-cycling capacity into property to be bought or sold in the global market. Through this process of creating a new commodity --- carbon --- the Earth's ability and capacity to support a climate conducive to life and human societies is now passing into the same corporate hands that are destroying the climate ………. ……… .…. It is a false solution which entrenches and magnifies social inequalities ……...' says the Durban group.
Concerned observers and activists believe this actually gives the biggest polluters licence to go on emitting more than the earth can take. As things stand today, the industrialized countries' emission-reduction plans are centred around trading these tricky carbon credits with the South, rather than actually cutting their own emissions ---- as is required urgently for the good of all life on earth. The urgency needed to curb runaway GHG has been effectively diluted by the politics of climate change, and the outcome of the recent COP15 summit has only driven that home. Meanwhile China has overtaken the US as the world's largest emitter and India is already in the fourth position, with its emissions rising at twice the global average rate, according to recent information. At the present rate of growth, the Southern countries together will be contributing half of all global emissions by 2020, and in another decade, as much as two-thirds.
With the same kind of exploitative development continuing, concerned observers warn that 'humanity is at the risk of creating a climate unlike any it has seen before ----- perhaps more dramatic than any changes in the climate since Earth was last struck by a large asteroid nearly a million years ago. Unless GHG emissions begins to decline within the next decade we risk triggering a runaway disruption of the world's climate that could last centuries and that our descendents would be powerless to stop.'
There must be a radical change in governance the world over, with equity within and among nations as core principles. But how do we go about it ? Alternative development philosophers and activists have proposed many innovative ways of realizing such equity and climate justice, provided these are made to work by a truly democratic, transparent global authority that is ecologically educated and committed. One proposal worked out prior to the Copenhagen conference was for a Greenhouse Development Rights Framework under which a threshold on income/emission was determined ---- a $20 a day in purchasing power parity. People below this ---- meaning the vast majority, including much of the low-income, lower middle classes in countries like ours ---- would have no emissions-reduction obligation. Those above the threshold would be obliged to undertake cuts according to their responsibility( for climate change) and capability (for mitigation and adaptation). They would also have to help the poor cope with the impacts of climate change.
Another alternative focuses on high-emitting individualsn---- 700 of them worldwide ---- who must be compelled to cut emissions by 30 billion tonnes by 2030 across nations. Giant corporations with their high carbon goods must also be taxed proportionately. These innovative ideas, to establish equity and justice in climate change negotiations, unfortunately were lost in sound and fury of COP15. The Bangladesh team, however, was quite satisfied with the outcome, though Cuba's Fidel Castro condemned it as a largely surreptitious exercise, an 'undemocratic and practically clandestine initiative that disregarded the thousands of representatives of social movements, scientific and religious institutions and other participants in the summit.'
But, after all is said and done, one has to be 'realistic' --- in the words of our Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina. That's rare wisdom. Let's hope it also means that we have our wits around us to fight for climate justice both at home and abroad. It's not going to be easy and we need all the knowledge, the power of conviction and the negotiating skills to establish and wrest our legitimate dues.




Sailing, sailing, sailing down the river…
Khademul Islam
Nijhum Dip is a little island at the tip of Hatiya, perched in the Bay of Bengal.
Innumerable rivers crisscross our land. From airplane windows, we look down to see a silvery lacework of glinting, glimmering water. Boats and sails and water and steamer terminals all are there below. As the rivers divide and join and divide again to wend their serpentine ways and finally fall into the Bay, they cut deep grooves and channels at the border where the land meets the sea, fragmenting it into the uniquely broken, jagged line of islands and islets and shifting chars that we call our coastline.

In February this year, four of us went on a trip to Nijhum Dip. The journey from Dhaka is by passenger launch through a series of interlinking rivers to the Meghna; then down the Meghna to Hatiya. At Hatiya, one has to switch to a bot-boti - a country boat named after the sound of its diesel engine - for the four-hour stretch to Nijhum Dip. We boarded the launch from Sadarghat terminal on the Buriganga. During the Raj, cannons would boom whenever the Nawab of Dhaka sailed by the terminal to his pink riverside palace of Ahsan Manzil. Today, as every Dhaka-ite knows Sadarghat is a steamy cauldron of pressing humanity. It's abuzz with an incessant paan-stained human roar, with touts running coolie-and-ticket rackets.
Our launch, the MV Panama, was packed to the grills with passengers; on the cheap-ticket deck families had camped out on bedsheets spread on the floor. At first sight it looked like a mass of children, babies, cigarette vendors, women in purdah, radios, tiffins, chickens and voluble men. Yet, walking among them I was able to discern careful territorial demarcations - bedsheets inches apart but rarely stepped on as people scrupulously kept to the narrow divides in between that functioned as aisles. Not that our two 'cabins' were anything special - we had done our bookings too late to get the good ones - being basically holes in the wall where two people would have to lie side-by-side and watch the waters between their toes. But we were hardly ever in them, preferring the foredeck or the chairs by the side railings. As the launch gave its piercing whistle and peeled away from the dock we stood excitedly with the others on deck. There is nothing quite like setting sail on water!
The Buriganga's waters are dark, oily and smelly. For decades now, raw untreated sewage from a teeming city of 12 million has been dumped into the Buriganga, mixed with toxic chemicals from the old tanneries in Hazaribagh and newer garments, textiles, dyeing and chemical plants spawned by a haphazard industrialisation drive seen over the last two decades. Effluent treatment plants are written into law, and indeed have been constructed by the more modern factories. But nobody switches them on! The owners say they are too expensive; they make their products uncompetitive on the international market, especially in the wake of the global recession. So it is the rivers that continue to bear the brunt of the toxic assault. We soon left the Buriganga and slipped into the Dhaleswari river, then onto the Sitalakhaya, whose waters are almost unbearable to look at. No surprise, this is Bangladesh's most polluted river!
It was evening when we steamed onto the lovely, clear waters of the Meghna. A river breeze blew as the light of the setting sun slanted over the water, turning it gold and silver-blue. A sort of collective pang entered our souls. Oh, this our land of rivers! Some time later, as darkness fell, the wind got stronger and we entered the fabled mohona where the waters of the Padma, Jamuna and Upper Meghna twine to become the single river Meghna. The sweep of the river was breathtaking! Nothing but the water below and the sky above. Other launches slipped by and in the distance we could see the flickering lights of kerosene lamps on tiny country fishing boats. We ordered dinner - bhat, dal, murgi - and ate it as a full moon rose. Then we sat by the railing on chairs and gazed at the river, discreetly sipping vodka martinis. Someone was playing the flute on deck.
Around 2:00 in the morning, with the waters bathed in brilliant moonlight, we saw sand shoals appear in spots. The water was extremely shallow now. We went up to the wheelhouse where the 'sarang master' informed us that while water levels during winter were naturally low in places, he, wanting to take a shortcut, had risked entering a narrow 'side channel' during bhata. We were at the mouth of the estuary, which is subject to shifting tides and launches go forward or stall according to the dictates of bhata or jowar. The way ahead now was tricky. The launch had slowed to a crawl and a man posted on the lower deck near the bow leaned out with a pole to 'sound' the water. He dipped his pole into the water periodically and chanted out the depth in a rhythmic sing-song voice: Ek bao dui haat, or Ek bao ek haat (ek is, of course, one, and bao we learnt was six feet; haat was the old arm's length). The four of us looked at each other in amazement, the same thought flashing through all our heads: Rabindranath! This was the same chant that a dying, feverish boy heard in the famous short story, Chhuti, as he dreamt of returning by boat from an alien Calcutta back to his village home. We felt as if we too were dream-sailing in our very own delirium, our boat zigzagging through a moonscape with bao chants guiding it through the navigable depths in the deathly still night…
In the morning the river was broad and deep again, a placid blue-grey sheet of water under a winter sun. We returned to the wheelhouse with steaming cups of tea to find the master sarang's 'helper' now at the wheel. His steamer vocabulary puzzled us, until we figured out the Bengali corruption of the original English words: 'Tauber' comes from 'Stop her', the command to stop the boat. 'Goan' is 'Go on', 'Begar' has evolved from 'Back her'. One term, 'Maja day', which meant giving work orders, came from the Urdu of old Dhaka in the nawab era when hundreds of the city's inhabitants used to fly kites. 'Maja' is the old Dhaka variant of the Urdu word 'manja' meaning sharpened kite string used for duels in the sky!
We docked at Hatiya Ghat around noon. Voices filled the air; schoolchildren in NGO-donated uniforms looked on as the passengers disembarked and new ones embarked via a narrow gangplank anchored in the mud. Sun-blackened men strained to bring on board chicken coops and huge baskets of vegetables to be taken back to Dhaka. If the load was heavy the men urged each other on by shouting in rhythmic unison: 'Haiya haiya ray haiya' in perfect Bhatiali river rhythm. To our east was Sandwip, and beyond it lay Chittagong. To our west were chars and islands like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle, the biggest being Bhola. Beyond Bhola are Pirojpur, Patuakhali and Barguna, fronted by the forests of the Sunderbans. Those areas were badly battered by the Cyclone Sidr in November 2007, and later on by the Aila. One million people were still outside the official food security network, prey to constant hunger. Had it not been for the Sunderbans serving as a giant wind and water breaker, the human toll would have been much higher. But in saving lives the forests and local biodiversity took a severe beating: 31 per cent of the trees here were destroyed. But the worst may yet be coming. All this - the islands, the chars, the boats and homes and villages and communities, the entire coast - could disappear under the impact of climate change. Bangladesh is a flat deltaic plain that is barely above the sea level, which, as everybody knowledgeable on the subject knows, would be one of the worst affected by climate change. All the beauty I was witnessing as we chugged along in the bot-boti towards Nijhum Dip - the egrets along the water's edge, Hatiya on our left, the shades and smell of blue ocean waters, the boatman with his lean, sunburnt face, the distinct coastal dialects and peoples shaped over centuries of living at the sea's edge, an immense variety of fish and wildlife - everything could vanish by 2030 in a tragedy of huge proportions if the earth warmed up, the Himalayas melted, the holes in the ozone layer got thinner and wider, and the seas rose.
Gulls wheeled in the sky above, the sun burned down on us as we forged ahead on our four-hour trip. At last we arrived at Nijhum Dip, entering a narrow channel at whose end small fishing boats were tied. The island has a small, privately-run guesthouse taken over from the government. It was clean and comfortable with green checkered bedsheets and doors whose wood had the same dark grain as the prow of the bot-boti. In the five days that followed, we walked along village paths, sipped tea at stalls that looked out onto the sea, and woke up to watch the sunlight play on a gigantic shimul tree ablaze with scarlet flowers; in its vast shade lay a carpet of fallen flowers as lush as any from ancient Ferghana. We boated through creeks as a huge stag stared at us from the underbrush, watched kingfishers dive cleanly into muddy, shaded waters, spotted vast herds of deer that come an hour before sunset (Nijhum Dip has 11,000 inhabitants and 15,000 deer!). We ate curried duck and coarse rice and steamed crab, spurred on by appetites made keen by walking in the fresh air. The smell of the city and the urban grime left our bodies and minds. The squawking and yelling, the bad karma, the din and smoke and bad air, and the frayed tempers…
I would wake up at dawn to watch men build sea-going boats whose style and design had been handed down for generations. Beneath the swaying palm trees they would bend and shape wood, assess the grain and heft of the huge single block of teak wood for the prow, brought from Myanmar, triple-layer the hull, fit a snug galley kitchen beneath the deck, paint bright blue strips on the housing… The first time we went to the western side of the island, the water was white instead of blue, until we realised that there were so many ducks on the water that the blue water had disappeared!
It seemed so surreal that all this could vanish within 20 years, permanently, because we humans are wreaking havoc on this small planet of ours.
(Khademul Islam is a Bangladeshi writer. He is currently working on a non-fiction book.)




Brush with words in distant land
Hasan Shaheed A Rahim
My initiation into Turkish like all other languages -Urdu, Hindi, English or Bangla (in hand-written form)-was beset with blunders.
Let me recall part of my conversation in Turkish with a spinster, who worked at a bank, at Corum near Ankara where I moved to with my wife and daughter some 23 years ago on a Turkish government service contract.
"Sir, are you a bekar?" [a bachelor] The cute young lady asked me very politely in Turkish.
By then, I had learned that Turkish words, like 'ayna', 'tahta', 'dukkan' and 'ac(h)', pronounced similarly in Bangla, were mirror, plank, shop and tree. The word bekar sounded disdainfully familiar.
"Absolutely not, I'm active, I mean to say, I am working hard 24x7." I blurted out annoyed at being called 'jobless' by someone who knew fully well that I was employed as an English teacher.
When she explained that 'bekar' meant a bachelor, I immediately retracted my reply and asked the already blushing young lady with a hint of a smile, "What if I am not?"
An earlier brush with the language was, to say the least, hair-raising. When I first moved into an apartment in the lovely hill-top city, I was in dire need of a few pieces of furniture. I had in fact visited the places where these were manufactured, but failed to buy any for my inability to speak the tongue.
It so happened that during one of our routine meetings with the head of the institution, where I was a foreign recruit, the Principal asked me if he could do anything to make my stay more comfortable. I immediately seized upon the opportunity to seek his assistance in buying the furniture I needed. When asked if I had tried to procure those on my own, I replied that I had even ventured to a factory but failed to strike a deal.
"What is a factory?" the Principal asked, looking inquiringly at the Turkish English teacher who was interpreting for me.
The interpreter, one of my young colleagues, having failed to grasp the word requested me to repeat it, which I did and even volunteered to give him a clue with the Bangla word 'karkhana', which I believed might fit in.
I therefore, said that I had been to the 'karkhana' where these things were painted, polished and exhibited to lure customers.
"Things…to lure customers," he murmured. "Is'nt it too early for you to pay a visit there?" said the Principal with a naughty grin on his face.
Without understanding the drift of the question, I replied, "Oh! I made a terrible mistake, I should have taken you along with me. You could have had a good time watching all the pretty, elegant and fashionable collections there absolutely European in look and style." Oblivious of the aghast-look on the face of the Principal and the puckered brows of the lady teachers present, I continued, "I simply fell in love with some of them. In fact, I wanted to buy one of them, but alas!....."
"Where have you been to buy furniture, Mr Shaheed?" The bewildered interpreter cut me short.
"To the factory where furniture is manufactured," I said in my innocence. Trying to be more explicit I explained, a factory is an industry."
"But a 'Kerhane' is a brothel," he explained.




Overseas migration 'Yes', internal migration 'No'?
Dr. Zahir Ahmed
In Bangladesh, migration-both internal and international--has emerged and is increasingly hitting newspaper headlines. It is no longer deemed a taboo topic in the world of diplomacy, either. While internal migration invariably involves 'flows of people' (often poor), overseas migration is all about migration as 'movement' or mobility.
Unfortunately, the internal migration is being viewed by many as 'crisis'. Whose crisis is it? Is this part of moral panic? This is always portrayed or presented as a problem - e.g. stories about population growth and cities being besieged by 'outsiders'. In most cases, the stories are negative: the cities, particularly Dhaka, are about to be 'occupied' by hundreds of thousands of rural populations; the capital city can no longer cope with the 'flows' of people, all of the new entrants are 'unemployed' in search of shelters and jobs who will put additional burden on the already-strained resources; the city is unable to accommodate these flows.
Indeed, if one is to pay attention to the daily newspapers, cities like Dhaka have spawned an 'overcrowded' environment--even deadlier than before. Internal migration is thus deeply troubling; a threat to the existing establishment of Dhaka city, to the traffic, and to many peoples' sense of why do they come and how to solve this problem.
Take a daily newspaper report as an example. A leading Bengali daily carried a lead news on 'crowd and crowd in Dhaka on December 12 last' with a picture of thousands of heads. The picture seems to have taken from a political gathering and was used to depict the burgeoning population in the city. The vernacular daily, claimed to be the top-selling, has estimated that each day, nearly 2,136 new comers are entering Dhaka, which hosts 130 million residents, while about two hundred registered vehicles add to the existing fleet a day. The United Nations has labelled Dhaka as the fastest-growing mega-city in the world. The city's perennial traffic snarl puts a brake on everything-a common sweet word to describe Dhaka's traffic, evoking as it does English tea and buttered scones. In contrast, the chaos that runs through the city's clogged streets tastes of acrid smoke, spilt oil, exhaust fumes and the rotten farts of battered buses. When a rickshawala gets caught in a metre of space of pricey and latest model vehicles, he's rewarded with a slap.
On the contrary, overseas migration is tied to wider processes of development. In the parlance of the popular media, probashi kormi or expatriate workers are given due respect in order to uphold their rights in their receiving countries. The migrant workers have inevitably come somewhere near the top of the state discourse, to different expatriate organisations and to the media.
Marking the international migrants' day 2009, President Zillur Rahman urged the expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry for immediate special action to stop harassment of the Bangladeshis going abroad for employment. According to the President, "Bangladeshis working overseas have been playing an important role in the country's socio-economic development and the remittances sent by the expatriates have created a new record in the country's foreign exchange reserve."
On the same occasion the finance minister informed that 'so far this year, the expatriate Bangladeshis sent home remittances of some 10 billion US dollars'. Different organisations have also shown their commitment to protect migrants' rights and promote good practices in migration management.
This is salutary appeal in order to secure expatriates' rights. But what is important is that similar voices are yet to be heard in the case of internal migrants. To me, this is the "politics of statemaking." Expatriate is a repository of foreign exchange reserve, a regular remittance provider, an economic resource for their dependants and relatives, a victim of human rights but a potential immigrant-- these are some of the important representations, symbolic constructions, through which the politics of expatriates is taking place (given the recent trend of massive return migration).
Internal migration is both a sign and cause of extreme poverty and vulnerability. In-migration into cities indicates that life is better somewhere within a particular national boundary but not everywhere; it is more than that. And internal migrants are not looked at with reverence or received cordially but they continue to be mobile or move to cities come.
Why so many in-migrants? It is evident that the majority of the in-migrants-mostly rural migrants--come into Dhaka in order to survive. Better life, job potentials, high wages, -all goad people into moving to cities, where its emerging middle class frequent coffee houses and shop at glitzy malls. Dhaka has geography of power-a hierarchy of places with which people want to associate. Dhaka's primacy has also generated much interest among researchers and academics. The Dhaka city is on top of the hierarchy, followed by Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi and other cities in Bangladesh. The more one has access to the top of hierarchy, the greater one's security.
Access to place is mediated by opportunities. Some might only migrate to Dhaka as livelihood options; others might migrate through 'networks' of relationships, which provide initial shelter with jobs. The closer one is - socially and geographically - to those with access to Dhaka, encouraging others to follow (e.g. from Mymensingh). Thus Dhaka acts as a place for social protection.
What does social protection in Dhaka involve? Dhaka is assumed to be the place of many rich people and other potential resources. This is exemplified by practice of shahajjo (help) to the poor. To this extent, impoverished people benefit from largess of the urban affluent. It is evident that the closer the geographical link with Dhaka, the more likely an in-migrant is able to forge a social relationship, and thus to avail a degree of social protection. Those who do not have social links stay temporarily. They are thus unable to seize the opportunity of social protection, relying exclusively on generalised charity (begging on the street or collecting zakat, fitra or portion of meats during Eid).
If migrant workers face "vulnerability" at the international level, so do the internal migrants. Women are particularly important in this respect. In rural Bangladesh, many women are to shoulder the responsibility of being the principal breadwinners for their families. But the experiences are bitter as they often become the victims of traffickers who enslave them and throw them into the hands of mafias controlling the clandestine global sex industry. It is such women and other "vulnerable migrants" who are highlighted by numerous researches conducted in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, the government is myopic in listening to the reasons such as political and economic, which spur people to leave their home villages.
Isn't mass migration the answer to economic inequalities or regional disparities? There is no doubt that we are experiencing over population. Classical economics teaches us about societal progress through certain stages towards development; belief in rational choice, technology-led change, etc. A key idea, for example, is that of balance i.e. people from areas with low employment make rational choices as they move to the areas of high employment.
The notions of push and pull are often used, implying rational reactions to economic or environmental factors; or that migration flows are part of a system which can be measured and predicted. This approach focuses on the reasons why migrants have been pushed or pulled towards the city - their movement is the result of processes of development which push or pull them in certain directions. Overseas and internal migration are, in this scenario, act as a balancing mechanism.
The more fundamental question can be asked: What can an alternative view tell us about internal migration? Beyond the structural imbalance of our economy, we need to understand the movement of people between places for generations and have a great deal to say about it.
The world is on the move, thanks to globalisation-the pace of which is unprecedented in human history. Both time and space are shrinking. Bangladesh is no exception. We are getting increasingly interconnected-rural to urban; desh to bidesh. Diversity is everywhere-no matter whether it is social and cultural or political and economic. Both at home and abroad, people are thinking about interlinking and shifting processes, rather than staying in one particular location. But the state takes a contradictory approach to the forces of globalisation, encouraging international migration while discouraging internal migration.
It is hard to find a specific migration policy in Bangladesh. Neither the government nor the NGOs has offered a micro- based migration policy. So, a potential region-based national migration policy should focus on: a) Internal migration, which can play a pivotal role in the government's anti-poverty strategy; b) All categories of migrants such as women, children and the extreme poor must receive due attention; and c) Migration policies must be linked with employment, social services, and safety net to enhance the development potential of migration.
It would not be an overstatement if we say overseas migration and internal migration are intertwined, not two distinct worlds. Most crucial understanding is that human movement and mobility cut across space, between places and over time. In- migrants from different regions in Bangladesh pose the complexity and heterogeneity of migration. It is partly because of the insecurity that Bangladesh's rural people are remarkably mobile. So is the case of China where rural migrants are driving its red-hot growth. But in Bangladesh, the critical role played by millions of rural migrants in spurring the country's economic growth is not properly acknowledged. Instead, the public policy community continues to overlook the major implications of internal population mobility-which calls for crafting a specific and well-honed policy.
(The author is Professor, Department of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka. He can be reached at: zahmed69@hotmail.com)




Rethinking corporate social responsibility
Emdadul Haque
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a much-talked-about issue across the world. Specially in developing world and least developed countries, the multinational companies and big business houses extend financial assistance to solve problems of a community or individuals.
As part of CSR activities multinationals donate for schools, clinics, roads, water supplies, or power connections in local communities. US oil and gas exploration company Chevron has been pursuing this strategy for years at Shasthipur in Habiganj district in Bangladesh. Since 2005, essential health care services rendered by three clinics covered approximately 70,000 people, especially women and children, per year. The company also runs a charity school in the same area. Such activities benefit local people.
Dutch-Bangla Bank Ltd arranges eye camps in different districts of the country where poor patients are operated upon free of cost. The bank also arranges such camps for economically insolvent people with by-born cleft lips. These are definitely commendable CSR programmes, which benefit the poor in real sense.
Unilever carried out the most praiseworthy CSR programme in Bangladesh in the recent past. They awarded such persons who seldom came to spotlight of media. One Paran Babu of Rajshahi region, supplies books to villagers who had no habit of reading and are little literate. He paddles a bicycle and reaches the books bought with his hard earned money to villagers with professions of farming, petty business, likewise and housewives. His intention is clear-just to lit light of knowledge in the minds of those rural men and women.
Unilever should continue the effort as long as possible.
In Bangladesh, British American Tobacco Company (BAT) distributes saplings among rural people every year. This is obviously a good effort to improve environment. But, the company should help set up a cancer hospital as a large number of people die of cancer every year consuming its products. This could be a real CSR for BAT.
Different banks give scholarships to meritorious students of college and universities. Is it benefiting the society? No. Because, most of the recipients are wards of rich families. So, the authorities concerned should change their strategy. They should select such meritorious students of poor families for scholarships who are compelled to quit schools due to poverty. If the bank authorities do this only then they can do good to real needy who expects assistance from society.
Otherwise the money will go down the drain if scholarships are given to sons and daughters of moneyed men as they will either buy new clothes or go to Chinese restaurants. They should be given some good books of great writers. This will benefit them in real sense if they go through those books.
While speaking at a workshop on Corporate Social Responsibility in 2009, Noble laureate and founder of Grameen Bank Muhammad Yunus also emphasised the best use of charity to make the contribution bona-fide and sustainable instead of just throwing away money.
He said, "Companies create fund for corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities for the causes which their main activities do not or cannot cover. But in most cases, the fund is used for image enhancement and public relations."
The government gives scholarships to girl students in rural areas. The amount is not sufficient. That is why a good number of students discontinue studies. The government should find out such meritorious poor students with the help of elected peoples' representative from both urban and rural areas.
The Social Welfare Ministry can launch and coordinate a programme which would ensure unhindered studies of poor brilliant students. The government should create a fund for this. The banks which give scholarships to students can be encouraged to make contribution to this 'real CSR fund.'
If such a programme was implemented then it would free some families from abject poverty forever as those meritorious students would be able to manage jobs after completion of their studies and contribute for the well-being of his/her family members.
The government should patronise all CSR programmes as much as possible as those would ensure access of commoners to basic rights as citizens of the country who cannot afford cost of treatment and education.
(The writer can be reached at ehaque63@gmail.com)




Frozen food sector: Looking ahead with renewed vigour
Sonia H Moni
The country's frozen food sector, particularly the shrimp production, is passing a volatile year as potential growth of the second largest export earner was strongly resisted by natural disasters, government restriction and the global economic downturn.
The country's frozen food exports during the July-October period of the current fiscal year 2009-10 (July 2009-June 2010) plunged 28.57 per cent to 145.43 million US dollars over the same period a year ago, the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data showed.
The global recession, which started at the end of 2007, and natural disasters including the cyclone Sidr in November 2007 and the Aila in May 2009 in the country's south-western region has badly affected the frozen food sector.
Apart from this, suspension of shrimp export for six months until November 2009 to European market by the government after finding the food item contaminated with unsafe chemical nitrofuran has further added to the woes and contributed to the drastic export fall.
The cyclone Aila washed away around 100,000 hectares of land, where shrimp and prawn, which account for 90 per cent of the country's total frozen food exports, were usually used for cultivation, according to the statistics of Bangladesh Frozen Food Exporters Association (BFFEA).
The cyclone Aila was the biggest natural calamity in Bangladesh after the powerful cyclone Sidr, which with a speed of 240 kph battered the country's southwestern coastal belt, which had nearly 86,000 shrimp farms, and claimed lives of over 4,000 people.
The Aila destroyed around 80 percent of Khulna region's total shrimp farms immediately after the frozen food industry ran into trouble as in mid-May, when the BFFEA decided not to export fresh water prawn (Golda) to the European Union (EU) from June-November 2009 due to the nitrofuran presence in frozen food.
The trade group says the frozen food sector totally relies on local sources, while ready made garments have to import 80 per cent of raw materials from abroad.
The total amount of production of shrimp or prawn was 35,000-40,000 tonnes in 2007-08 while the production has plunged to 10,000-15,000 tonnes at present.
According to BFFEA, the local exporters have been storing up shrimp and prawn worth Tk 6 billion for the last eight months. On the other hand, the exporters are bearing bank interest, salary, electricity bills and others regularly.
The Fisheries Ministry has sent letters to the EU about beginning the shrimp and prawn export soon, after end of the period of restriction in the first week of November 2009 but they did not respond yet.
The EU is the main importer of Bangladeshi shrimp, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of last year's shipments worth $454 million.
Russian inspectors have inspected seven Bangladeshi shrimp processing farms recently and given the clearance to Bagerhat Sea Food Ltd, Fresh Foods Ltd, Apex Food Ltd and ARK Sea Food Ltd.
The approval means the four companies can now export Bangladeshi shrimp and other fish products to the country subject to signing of a formal deal between Dhaka and Moscow.
In the past, Russian importers used to buy a small amount of Bangladeshi frozen food via non-formal channels, mostly from a third party importer in a European nation.
These four companies of Chittagong and Khulna have sent papers of MoU to the Russian Veterinary Authority for signing in December last week 2009.
The shrimp production capacity has been halved due to impacts of natural disasters, the government's export restriction and the global crisis.
Around half of the total fish processing plants have been closed in between 2007-2009 and if the current situation continues then others will not be able to operate.
The government announced a stimulus package of around Tk 45.0 billion in two phases for the sectors which have been hit hard by the onslaught of the global economic crisis. But the frozen food sector is yet to get any fund from the government, although they are qualified for the benefit.
The government had also increased cash subsidy to 2.5 per cent in the proposed budget for the fiscal 2009-10, only to be withdrawn in November.
Instead, the frozen food exporters are only enjoying 30 per cent block account facilities, which will continue for the next three years.
Industry people urge the government to standardise lab facilities, as it is not up to the expectation of western buyers.
A twelve-member team of BFFEA visited Vietnam recently and observed their technology and method, their registration and coding system and these advanced methods may help our sector develop.
Fisheries and livestock departments have formulated a draft Fish and Animal Feed Law, which is expected to be tabled and passed in the winter session of the parliament.
This law will regulate fish and animal feed manufacturing and stop use of cancer-causing antibiotics in the food chain which will open the door of export to foreign countries also.
A three-member delegation of the European Union Food and Veterinary Office (EU FVO) will visit Bangladeshi fish farms and processing facilities on 18-29 January next year to check quality levels of residues control in aquaculture products - a move that is believed to change the fate of the shrimp industry.
It must be a very good news for Bangladeshi shrimp exporters, as the visit comes at a time when the country's frozen food industry is passing through one of the worst crises.




Global rice production prospect not bright
Bangladesh needs precautionary steps to face possible adversity
S M Jahangir
The global rice market has become volatile again, raising concern among experts over its possible fallout in the domestic market. According to them, the world may face a 2007-like food crisis following the output shortfall in some major rice-producing countries.
They say the rice price has already marked a 40 per cent rise in the international market over in last one month and also feared that the upward trend may persist in the days ahead
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in its June forecast has downgraded the global paddy production by 21.3 to million tonnes to 668 million tonnes for 2009, which is 3.0 per cent down from 2008.
Information suggest a that an unfavourable climatic conditions coupled with delayed progress of monsoon rains and erratic precipitation patterns are behind a worsening of the 2009 production outlook in Asia.
Besides India, where the drop is likely to be particularly pronounced, the Chinese Province of Taiwan, Iraq, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand may also face declines. On the other hand, prospects are positive in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China mainland, Indonesia, the Islamic Rep. of Iran, Malaysia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, the Philippines and Viet Nam.
Despite less favourable growing conditions this season, paddy production in Africa is set to remain close to the outstanding 25.4 million tonnes gathered in 2008, reflecting an expansion drive from governments and renewed interest in the sector from both institutional and private investors. Particularly good crops are forecast in Madagascar and Mozambique, as well as Mali and Nigeria.
By contrast, drought impaired crops in the eastern part of the continent, while restrictions on water use depressed plantings and production in Egypt.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, prospects are excellent, with paddy output forecast to rise by 4 percent to 27.5 million tonnes. In Central America and the Caribbean, larger crops are expected in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In South America, where the 2009 is coming to a close, large gains in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela are expected to largely offset declines in Argentina, Guyana, and Uruguay. In the other regions, paddy production is projected to expand in the EU-27 and the United States. Although above the dismal 2008 result, 2009 production in Australia remains well below early 2000s' levels.
Global rice trade in 2009, on the other hand, is forecast to rebound by 2.0 per cent to 30.7 million tonnes. The recovery would be mostly on account of greater imports by the Philippines, the EU-27 and countries in the Near East (the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates). By contrast, deliveries to Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Turkey, but also to countries in Western Africa, are set to fall, often sharply. As for world exports in 2009, these are expected to be boosted by greater shipments from Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Myanmar and, above all, Viet Nam, where they may hit a record. These gains should more than compensate for lower sales from China, India, Pakistan, the United States and Thailand.
Based on current expectations, the FAO's first forecast of rice trade in 2010 stands at 30.3 million tonnes, 1.0 per cent less than foreseen in 2009. The near-400,000 tonnes fall would arise from weaker import demand from major rice importers, mainly Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines, amid favourable production prospects.
On the export side, an anticipated tightening of supplies and less attractive world prices may result in reduced shipments from India and Pakistan, but also from Viet Nam, Egypt and the United States. However, China, mainland, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar could increase their exports.
Given the excellent production results over the 2008 season that just concluded, FAO's forecast of global rice inventories carried over in 2009 has been raised to 121.4 million tonnes, nearly 12 million tonnes, or 11 percent, above the previous year's and the highest since 2002. Stocks are expected to be built up in several major importing countries, especially Bangladesh, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia, but also in rice exporting countries such as China mainland, India, Pakistan, Thailand and the United States. At the forecast level, world rice reserves would cover roughly 3.2 months of global rice utilisation, with the stocks-to-use ratio now estimated at 27 percent. On the other hand, a preliminary forecast of closing stocks in 2010, points to a 3 percent decline to 117.4 million tonnes, as reserves will need to be drawn down to cover the anticipated 2009 production shortfall.
International rice prices remained generally steady in July and August but fell markedly across all market segments in September 2009, when the FAO All Rice Price Index ended at 232 points, 20 points below June. Since the beginning of 2009, the Index has averaged 257 points, 45 points below its January-September 2008 value. Although expectations of below average crops in major exporting countries and the weakening of the US dollar is giving some support to international rice prices, the arrival of new supplies in coming months may cause them to slide further. However, actions by governments will remain of foremost importance. For instance, market players are likely to keep a close watch on how the large public stocks are administered in Thailand, but also on the effects of the new price insurance scheme soon to be launched in the country, which may lower Thai export quotations. Last but not least, the continued fall in international wheat prices, which in September had lost 30 percent year-on-year, may exert further downward pressure on world rice prices.
Taking the global rice production outlook into account, the country's experts and analysts have already suggested that Bangladesh should pay special attention toward boosting of its Boro output in order to ensure its food security.
The experts have also laid emphasis on integrated efforts to ensure uninterrupted supply of agri-inputs like seeds, fertilisers, farm credit, and diesel and electricity for smoothly running irrigation pumps, aiming to help achieve the 19-million tonnes of rice production target for the current irrigation season.
Apart from efforts to boost rice output, they have also suggested pre-cautionary measures including creation of a sufficient food stock by the government to cope with any possible crisis.
To do so, the government should immediately declare its Boro procurement plan with major enhancements of the official food- grain purchase prices. Some analysts have also suggested that price of Boro paddy and rice be at least Tk 15 per kg and Tk 25 per kg this year compared to their last year's prices of Tk 14 and Tk 22 per kg.
In addition to that, they also prescribed for purchasing food-grain directly from the growers and initiating public private partnership (PPP) for ensuing their maximum price support.
Besides, the government should also start disbursing the Tk 3.50-billion cash subsidy on use of diesel for running irrigation pumps among the farmers at the earliest possible time.







Digitised revenue board for transparency in tax administration
Doulot Akter Mala
The government has taken a revolutionary move to digitise the National Board of Revenue (NBR) on fast-track basis. The move aims to boost internal revenue collection within the next one year. The NBR will introduce online tax payment and submission of income tax returns in every tax offices, online issuance of taxpayers' certificates and a national data centre under the project.
The digitisation project will address the existing problems of taxpayers and plug holes of revenue leakage. Revenue officials said tax collection will increase manifold after successful completion of the move.
The NBR has started the digitisation process with the help of International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of World Bank (WB). IFC has been providing technical assistance to the revenue board to implement the project.
Country's tax GDP ratio is poor, only 8.5 per cent, among the SAARC countries due to lack of tax compliance by the taxpayers and transparency in the tax administration. The digitisation project has been designed to address those loopholes.
It is awful that only one-third of the registered tax-payers submit returns every year. The government cannot trace the large majority of the taxpayers having taxpayers' identification number (TIN) due to poor database system.
There are more than 2.2 million TIN holders who are supposed to file tax returns every year, but only 0.75 million taxpayers submit returns while rest of them remain unidentified despite having TINs.
The revenue board has been maintaining manual database to keep records of taxpayers. Obtaining TIN for specific purpose like land registration, company registration, purchase of car or apartment is mandatory as the government considers those people as potential taxpayers. It was found that a majority of the TIN holders use fake address for obtaining TIN taking advantage of government's poor monitoring system.
The process will ensure integrated governance (i-governance) for sharing information between the government and private entities. It would reduce scope for tax evasion and ensure hassle-free environment for tax payment.
The move follows a pledge by Finance Minister AMA Muhith in his June 11 budget speech that the government would launch the online tax return system in an effort to removing hassles the taxpayers endure while submitting their returns.
The country's top chambers and business bodies have over the years made complaints to the authorities that they face "unnecessary and unimaginable" hassles such as 'forced bribes' during submission of their tax returns.
Experts have pointed that these "painful hassles" are one of the key reasons why the country's companies and top earning individuals very often feel shy to pay their taxes.
The NBR is going to set up a National Data Centre (NDC) under the digitisation project which will keep all data of taxpayers to follow them up. NDC will store all information of taxpayers so that the taxmen can monitor their income generating activities, export-import and trade. Concealment of wealth information and actual income will be impossible after setting up the NDC.
NDC will be inter-connected with the major stakeholders including exporters and importers, City Corporations, land offices, banks, car registration offices. All the activities in those offices will be monitored through the NDC. Through the centre taxmen can see how many people are land owners or who has bought a new car.
The taxmen can easily identify the people who have TIN but not filed tax returns. Revenue officials can also detect tax evaders who have concealed actual wealth information in tax files.
A high-powered team of the revenue board has been working on the NBR project. The revenue officials expressed their hope that country will start receiving benefit out of this project from next fiscal.
The NBR has taken a first-ever move to introduce e-payment. Under the system, taxpayers will be able to pay income tax through online. It will bring transparency in tax administration and reduce corrupt practices of taxmen. It is widely alleged that taxpayers have to bribe the taxmen at the time of tax return submission to avoid unusual harassment which is common in the tax offices.
Taxpayers will not have to go to the tax offices after introducing the system. They can submit tax returns and pay taxes online from anywhere. Voluntary tax payment will be increased significantly with the simplification of existing system.
The revenue board will also introduce a single window concept to reduce cost of doing business. New companies will get online registration numbers from income tax, Valued Added Tax and Customs department when they seek company registration numbers in Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms (RJSC).
Officials said time of doing business will be reduced by at least one month with the issuance of online taxpayers' registration numbers.
To ensure tax compliances in businesses, the NBR will introduce a VAT return submission data from the next fiscal to net businesses, who are registered with the department but do not submit returns.
According to available data, only 30 per cent of the businesses submit VAT returns while rest of them remains out of purview of taxmen due to absence of effective mechanism of monitoring.
There are nearly 0.55 million registered businessmen under VAT department but NBR receives tax from one-third of them. All non-filer businesses will come under NBR's scrutiny after introducing the new software for VAT file return. VAT is a consumers' tax, which the businessmen deposit to the national exchequer. But, a number of businesses do not deposit the sales tax through concealment of actual data. To check the irregularities, revenue board has made installation of Electronic Cash Register (ECR) mandatory for big and medium businesses. Implementation of ECR is also moving at a snail pace reflecting a poor revenue collection from the service sector.
On digitise customs valuation, the taxmen will find international prices of product in software that would check under invoicing and over invoicing.
It is learnt that revenue board eyes Tk 1000 billion revenues in a year after implementing the digital NBR project.
The government has set Tk 610 billion revenue target for the current fiscal. Of the target, it expects Tk232 billion or 38 per cent from Customs, Tk 207 billion or 33 per cent from VAT and Tk 165 billion or 27 per cent from income tax.




A year apparel producers want to forget
Jubair Hasan
The country's RMG makers might be happy just to pass 2009 - in the year the highest foreign currency-earning sector came across dozens of violent worker unrests amid dwindling export orders due to the global economic crisis.
Owners of hundreds of apparel units were forced to suspend industrial production due to more than half-a-dozen protests at the country's industrial hubs like Savar, Ashulia, Tongi, Gazipur and Narayanganj causing a loss of millions of dollars for the garment manufacturers.
The industry witnessed the first major unrest in June last year when hundreds of workers of S Suhi Industrial Park at Jamgora demonstrated at the factory compound for outstanding wages and overtime bills. Then workers of dozens of other factories in the area joined the demonstration.
Two workers were killed and hundreds of others injured as police opened fire on them to disperse the agitators. More than 200 apparel factories were also vandalised and several others were set on fire during the three-day unrest.
Agitating workers set fire to a 10-storey factory of Hamim Group, one of the biggest garment plants, at Narasinghapur inflicting a loss of more than one billion take in the unrest, the factory management claimed.
After four months of Ashulia unrest, apparel workers again become unruly in the Tongi industrial area as the authorities of Nippon Garment declared layoff without any prior notice. Three workers were killed in the violence.
The readymade garment sector experienced the tough time when the garment manufacturer were chalking out a plan to successfully tackle the global recession.
The unrest cost garment owners hundreds of millions of dollars in delayed shipments and sent some negative signals to the top global buyers, which is one of the main reasons of their export fall.
The negative signal came at a time when the sector has been seriously affected by the global financial meltdown creating concerns for the owners as the global competitors of Bangladesh would benefit from such troubles the nation has been experiencing, notably in the past 12 months.
According to Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the apex trade body, properties of Tk 5.0 billion were damaged during incidents of violence in the year.
The EPB (Export Promotion Bureau) data showed that woven exports plunged by 7.32 per cent and knitwear export by 4.28 per cent in the July-October period compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.
Manufacturers said those protests were one of the main reasons behind the export fall and identified the violence as a plot by a vested quarter to destabilise the sector, because, most of these incidents occurred in factories with good labour practices.
They want to forget the painful experiences of the last year and move forward.
The country has more than 4500 factories, mostly concentrated on the outskirts of Dhaka and Chittagong. The industry accounts for 80 per cent of the country's total exports and employ three million workers or about 40 per cent of the industrial workforce.

The demand for formation of industrial police immediately to guard the industry has been raised and the government is sincerely listening to the stakeholders.
Both owners and workers of the sector hope the New Year would bring a new beginning, which would definitely dominate the global market by earning more foreign currencies. It would be possible if better relationship between owners and workers is ensured.




RMG sector: In between hope and despair
Monira Munni
The country's ready-made garments (RMG) sector witnessed ups and downs in the year 2009 in terms of export orders, which, the industry people say, would have performed better if it could avoid severe gas crisis.
Export earnings from knitwear goods at the end of the first four months of FY10 witnessed a fall of 4.28 per cent from the corresponding period in the last fiscal, earning $2094.40 million, Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data showed.
Similar fall was also recorded in the earnings from the country's woven goods, slipping down by a net 7.32 per cent to $1684.39 million.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exports Association (BGMEA), the trade group, leaders termed the negative growth performance in apparel sector as the continuity of what the sector witnessed for the last couple of months which has been sliding down since the end of first quarter 2009 calendar year.
As the impact of financial recession kept on tightening, orders gradually kept shrinking and pressures kept mounting for price reduction.
Energy has also become an issue, with stand-alone generators providing an estimated 20 per cent of the country's energy.
According to the leader of BGMEA, there are still opportunities which could be resolved by regular supply of electricity and gas along with policy support of the government.
To tackle the effects of recession, governments of other countries have supported export oriented industries with various financial and policy packages.
But manufacturers claimed they have received almost nothing from the government as compared to the competitors.
Major international buyers of Bangladeshi clothing include H and M, Tesco, Zara, Marks and Spencer, Carrefour, Gap, Wal-Mart and JC Penny.
The number of Bangladeshi garment factories has surged from 4,107 in 2004-2005 to around 4,700 at present, while employment in garment factories has increased in the same period from 2.0 million to 3.0 million, most of them are women.
Such growth has also posed problems, with the ready-made garment sector running at a 25 per cent shortage of skilled workers and middle management.
The domestic market is also witnessing growth as living standards improve with local brands such as Artisti, Seal, Westex and Cat's Eye springing up.
The industry also experienced over half-a-dozen workers unrest and strikes over poor pay and working conditions.
Owners of hundreds of apparel units were forced to suspend industrial production due to more than half-a-dozen protests at the country's industrial hubs like Savar, Ashulia, Tongi, Gazipur and Narayanganj causing a significant loss for the garment manufactures.
Additionally, its infrastructure needs to be overhauled, industry people say, as the ready-to-wear clothing sector is banking on such developments to meet a 2013 export value projection of $25 billion a year.
Existing improvements in terminal handling and customs have had a positive impact, with goods is being cleared within three days, which usually took 12-13 days even a few weeks ago. In November, a computerised customs automation system was introduced in Bangladesh.
An expressway between Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong, the country's two economic hubs, has been planned. The government has also promised to go aggressively for a deep sea port.
The BGMEA say Bangladesh will also try to move into new export markets, such as Australia, Japan, South Africa, Russia and former USSR countries.
The country has a strong advantage over other global players on the cost front, with its prices having reduced whilst India and China have readjusted their prices in line with rising costs of raw materials.
The country's low-to-medium end production is likely to ensure continued orders as the ongoing financial crisis in the West means a decline in demand for higher end garments.
The current global downturn has not overly affected the sector but if manufacturers did not meet deadlines, buyers are typically asking for discounts and charge backs, which did not happen before.
Additionally, garment orders have altered in line with climatic conditions due to global warming with less demand in Europe for heavy knitted sweaters in favour of medium and light.
In terms of machinery and factory upgrades, many Bangladeshi manufacturers are adopting a wait-and-see approach in regard to the international financial crisis.
According to leaders of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) along with gas crisis, increased yarn prices would hit profit margins of knitwear manufacturers, particularly the signs look ominous for small factories, which will be severely pummelled by soaring rates.
Some 150-200 factories will be the hardest hit. Many companies will lose a big chunk of their orders as they cannot compete in prices demanded by western buyers.
They blamed local spinners for the price hike, alleging that the country's 300 plus spinning mills have hiked rates more than the international level.
The industry sought the government's intervention to curb price hike and demanded daily monitoring of local and international yarn rates in an effort to protect the exporters from rogue millers.
However BKMEA leaders believe the country can fetch $500 million within next two years by exporting knitwear to new African markets only, if the government takes proper initiatives to explore potential markets in the continent and avail duty-free facilities there.
Regular contacts with the African importers, participation in trade fairs, diversification of products, and reforms in rules of origin to avail duty-free facilities are essentially needed to achieve the goal.
A BKMEA delegation recently returned home from South Africa and Botswana to allure new buyers, as the local companies are now exploring potential markets abroad for their products.
The market in South Africa, a mineral-rich country, is very prospective for Bangladesh, because their RMG manufacturers have been switching over to various heavy industries due to rising labour cost, following an economic boom.
However, the Bangladeshi products need diversification, improvement of quality, design, soft skills and technology.




Poetry as pre-history
The strange tale of 'Rupashi Bangla'
Faisal Shahriar
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god.
— T. S. Eliot.

Most major poets defy compartmentalisation; Jibanananda Das is no exception. Since Rabindranath, it has been a long list of distinguished (and sometimes not-so-distinguished) critics who have attempted to draw an imaginary boundary around Jibanananda Das; for Rabindranath, the line was drawn at the colourful imagery of his early poetry, for Buddhadev Basu, at his alleged loneliness, while for a minor critic like Hayat Mahmud, it was his occasional morbidity that mattered most.
Not that the critics should shoulder all the blame, however. Since at least in "Dhushar Pandulipi"(1936) Jibanananda Das kept developing the art and craft of his poetry to such a degree that few admirers of his early years could keep him company upto " Jibanananda Daser Shreshtho Kabita" (1954). Buddhadev Basu was an early casualty. Although Basu did more than most to establish Das as a major poet of his generation (many of the most famous poems of the middle period of Das were first published in Basu's "Kabita" magazine), his appreciation of the poetry of Das began and ended with "Dhushar Pandulipi", so to speak. The two parted ways in the 1940s, with Buddhadev Basu, as critically honest as ever, openly voicing his critical confusion about the bitter questioning of Jibanananda's middle period. Apparently, Basu had taken Das to be a slightly Westernised version of Kalidas Roy, glorifying the natural landscape of Bengal with his colourfully idiosyncratic imagery. But Das was not prepared to stop at "Mrityur Aage" (1935). He was to move on to "Godhuli Shandhir Nritya." (1938), "Ratri" (1940) and even farther beyond.
It is this never-ending quest for poetic-philosophical certainty that differentiates Jibanananda Das ("a poet apart", in Clinton Seely's famous characterisation) from his contemporaries. While in a way, Buddhadev Basu never developed from his almost morbid fascination for the female body of his early years and the great Sudhindra Nath Dutta stuck to his own variety of nihilism, Jibanananda Das evolved from the naive patriotism of "Jhara Palak" (1927) through the rich imagery of Dhushar Pandulipi (1936) to the bitter soul-searching of "Shatti Tarar Timir" (1948) and even farther beyond. Inevitably, questions remain till today, not only about the formal development of his poetry but also concerning its philosophical evolution.
While few of his most ardent admirers have been able to keep him company upto (and beyond ) "Shatti Tarar Timir" (1948), areas of darkness still remain concentrated around the middle period of Jibanananda's poetry. Possibly the deepest ambiguity surrounds the posthumously published "Rupashi Bangla" (1957). Even the most devoted readers of Jibanananda Das begin to suffer bouts of uneasiness whenever the name of the book is mentioned. It's the product of a particular state of mind dating back to the mid-1930s, critics say, one which cannot be related to either the earlier or the later phases of his poetry. Essentially, it is usually condemned as an isolated specimen of a purely temporary poetic phase. Some critics have even gone so far as to suggest, obliquely, of course, that "Rupashi Bangla" has more to do with applied botany than literary creativity. Others have raised questions about whether the chosen poetic form, the sonnet, was quite appropriate and whether Jibanananda Das had adequate mastery over the form itself.
Much of the controversy can be traced back to the fact that since almost its first publication, "Rupashi Bangla's" fame had to do as much with non-literary as with literary reasons; more so, some critics would say. Dating back to the publication of the landmark "Collected Poems of Jibanananda Das" edited by late Ranesh Das Gupta in the late 1960s, the popularity of "Rupashi Bangla" had become closely identified with the resurgence of Bangali nationalism which eventually led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation. Along with Rabindranath's nationalistic songs of the anti-Bangabhanga period, Jibanananda's "Rupashi Bangla" became the twin cultural manifestation of the simplistic Bangali nationalism of the late 1960's and early 1970's. He is such a legend that during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, when a young freedom fighter in a training camp was asked what he would like to have if he was told to ask for only one thing in the world, he replied that he wanted to have a copy of Jibanananda's "Rupashi Bangla". Never before, and never since, has literary merit been matched by popular affection in the history of 20th century Bangla poetry as in the case of Jibanananda's "Rupashi Bangla".
Unfortunately, however, popular affection has not been an unmixed blessing. There are still some followers of the critical legacy of Buddhadev Basu, who are the first among the critics to raise doubts about the possible literary value of such a popular volume. Jibanananda Das, being blessed with a much wider critical perspective than Buddhadev Basu, was acutely aware of the fact that no poetic creation in the world is independent of history; it is shaped as much by the historical situation of the poet as by his literary creativity. What determines the ultimate value of a poetic creation in the end is the degree to which a poet allows his creativity to operate freely within a given socio-historical framework. Evidence of Jibanananda's acute awareness of the function of historical time in the making of meaningful poetry is abundantly available in his volume of essays "Kabitar Katha" (1956), published posthumously.
Uniformity of tone is another accusation made frequently against "Rupashi Bangla". What critics tend to forget, much to their convenience, is that this particular accusation would tend to offset the one concerning Jibanananda's poetic failure to properly utilise his chosen form. More than any other poetic form, the utilisation of the sonnet by poets in different historical periods since its emergence in medieval Italy has depended on its historical evolution. Since great Petrarch, many practitioners of the form have composed a number of sonnets around a common theme. Obviously, in "Rupashi Bangla", Jibanananda Das was acting towards the same purpose. Along the way, a certain uniformity of poetic tone was inevitable, so to speak. It would be only rational to ask why a poetic characteristic very much acceptable in the case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning should be tantamount to original sin for Jibanananda Das.
Questions have also been raised about the rhythmic pattern chosen by Das for "Rupashi Bangla". While it was fashionable in the 1930's (made so by the likes of Sajanikanta) to mock at the then unfamiliar, apparently loose-limbed "akhkharbritto" chosen by Jibanananda Das as the vehicle of most of his poetry, it has come to be recognised since then that not only was it the most appropriate medium for his poetry, it also represents in essence a major advance in the formal technique of Bangla poetry. In this connection, the novel use of Bangla punctuation (particularly the dash and the semi-colon) made by Jibanananda Das should also be noted.
But this irritating cloud of minor objections hides the principal issue: what was the poetic project driving "Rupashi Bangla"? What exactly was Das trying to achieve through the book? Was it merely an exercise in applied botany, as some critics maintain? Or was something more ambitious involved here ?
On careful reading, it would appear that in "Rupashi Bangla", Jibanananda Das was actually attempting something vastly more ambitious: he was trying to rewrite the recent history of his beloved Bengal in ahistorical, or, rather, pre-historical, terms. Pre-colonial Bengal is notorious for the virtual absence of any reliable, written records for vast periods of time. In "Rupashi Bangla", Jibanananda Das was trying to turn this particular historical weakness of Bengal into its strength: by mixing oral tradition with pure myth, Das was attempting to recreate the history of Bengal during a particular period. And for his grand poetic-historical experiment, Das chose a particularly significant period in the history of Bengal: medieval Bengal, a period when this deltaic land was not subjected to colonial domination, a period when Muslim political supremacy was also a superficial phenomenon. Beneath it survived the caste-based social fabric of ancient India, most of it unchanged and unchanging. This was the socio-economic structure characterised by Karl Marx as the Asiatic mode of production, with the self-sufficient village community at its centre, needing only salt and iron from external sources for survival. One important fact to be noted is that nowhere in the whole text of "Rupashi Bangla" is any historical figure from the colonial period of Bengal's history mentioned even once, with the possible exception of Deshbandhu C. R. Das, who is cited more as a symbol of Bangali resurgence rather than as a historical character of the colonial period.
Jibanananda Das built his whole historical scheme around 17th century Bengal, a period when Muslim politico-military supremacy was not yet complete. And even in regions where it was apparently complete, it was constantly being challenged by local warlords, both Hindu and Muslim. It was a historical period notorious for its weak central political control ; even provincial governors formally appointed by Delhi would try to break away at the slightest indication of any weakness in the central state, to say nothing of tinpot local rebellions. But it was also a period of history when the strength of the traditional Indian socio-economic system, the Asiatic mode of production, was most prominently displayed: regardless of the periodic (mostly futile) attempts by provincial governors to break away from Delhi and the ongoing small-scale wars among local landlords (of both Hindu and Afghan origins), the vast populace of subsistence cultivators would go on with their normal socio-economic activities centring around the self-sufficient village community, untroubled by wars, both local and foreign. It was a situation similar to that prevailing in medieval Europe, when the infamous War of the Roses left the day-to-day life of the English peasant mostly unaffected. Richard the Third, though lionised by Shakespeare, had little practical significance for the English peasant, who was ready to serve any feudal master, of the House of York or of the House of Lancaster, as long as he did not take away his daily bread or his woman.
But it was also a period notorious for the virtual absence of any dependable, written historical records. This is where Jibanananda Das chose to show his poetic-historical mastery: with myriad allusions to minor historical figures like Raja Kedar Roy of Vikrampur and mythical figures like Behula and Lakhkhindar, Das brings a whole significant period of Bengal's history to life. Unlike the tasteless historical chronicles of Ramesh Majumdar and Jadunath Sarkar, which sometimes seem to be crowded with an endless series of minor slave kings, his account vibrates with life. Jibanananda Das even brings in fairy tale characters like Shankhamala to make his subaltern history more meaningful.
It can be said with some degree of justice that Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhay began a similar enterprise in prose, though not characterised by such a high degree of ambition. There are, inevitably, more details about the daily lives of the characters crowding Bibhutibhushan's fiction But there is an important deviation in the fact that whereas in "Rupashi Bangla", Jibanananda Das stays scrupulously away from the colonial period, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhay quite often brings his accounts of rural Bangali life down at least to the Indigo Rebellion of late 19th century Bengal. But it only helps to accentuate the resilience of the traditional Indian self-sufficient village community, which survived almost intact upto World War II and the Bengal Famine of 1943. In "Rupashi Bangla", Jibanananda Das had a much more difficult task to perform: to recreate the Bengal of a specific historical period with typically ahistorical material.
Can the enterprise be condemned as the expression of a nostalgia-ridden, backward-looking, reactionary philosophy of history? The fact that there is not even a single reference to a historical figure of the colonial period in "Rupashi Bangla" (with the possible exception of Deshbandhu C.R. Das) cannot be more emphasised. Obviously, the Bengal of Jibanananda's dreams was a land unravaged by European colonialism. Was he blissfully unaware of the fact that however unpleasant it may appear to be, it is impossible to turn back the wheels of history ? No, but like the quintessential Western-educated middle-class Bangali of the 20th century, he was honestly confused about the course of history ; unsure about whether it was possible to build an ideal socio-economic structure which would retain the best aspects of British colonialism, in "Rupashi Bangla", Jibanananda Das turned to 17th century Bengal as a model. He made frequent references to the riverside village shrine.
"Rupashi Bangla" helps reveal the twin greatnesses of Jibanananda Das as a Bangali poet. More than any of his poetic contemporaries, Das was acutely aware of and completely honest about the historical confusion that characterised him as a being of the 20th century. He wanted to retain the beneficial legacy of Western capitalism but was not sure whether he could have it without the inevitable, accompanying evil. In this, he was as historically honest as Rabindranath, who, in the speech he delivered on the occasion of his last birthday (later published as "The Crisis of Civilisation") bitterly confessed his terminal disillusionment about Western civilisation. Jibanananda's bitter soul-searching was to continue upto "Satti Tarar Timir" (1948) and beyond. Like the archetypal modern man, Jibanananda Das was honestly confused.
But what is more than Jibanananda's historical honesty as a modern man is his technical mastery in "Rupashi Bangla" that deserves critical appreciation. Knowing fully well that his chosen historical period was noted for the virtual absence of any reliable, written historical records, Jibanananda Das masterfully turned this weakness into a strength by drawing liberally upon the abundantly rich mythical heritage of Bengal: peopled by legendary characters like Raja Kedar Roy of Vikrampur and Raja Sitaram. Jibanananda's "Rupashi Bangla" presents as faithful a portrayal of pre-colonial Bengal as anyone can ask for. That was his ideal: a self-sufficient society rich in tradition and free from the evils of Western civilisation. That he did not know the way to build such a society in future does not at all take anything away from his achievement as a poet.
Thus "Rupashi Bangla" remains remarkable for two reasons: Jibanananda's rare historical honesty and his mastery of poetic-historical form. Such an enterprise was never even begun by any of his noted contemporaries; it has not been attempted since. Admittedly, there are some minor failures in the volume. But are there any major literary works without a hint of blemish? Even Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is flawed in some places, critics say. It's the creative courage which inspired Jibanananda Das to create "Rupashi Bangla" that deserves the critical acclaim of posterity.




Better ADP implementation continues to remain elusive
Munima Sultana
A government taskforce has recently revealed unsatisfactory performance of 10 ministries in implementing projects under the annual development programme (ADP). Based on the report prepared by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), it is found that 10 ministries are maintaining their previous record of poor performance in implementing majority development works in the first five months of the current (2009-10) fiscal. Among these ministries, communication, power, water resources and housing and public works ministries/divisions have performed very poorly till November this year as they could not even meet the level they had reached during the same period of the last three years.
This should be considered a serious issue for the present Awami League government as it has promised to improve ADP implementation. Though the government formed the taskforce, headed by the IMED secretary, soon after coming to power to achieve the target, findings of the taskforce should certainly make the government frustrated.
The taskforce, which is supposed to meet with the ADP implementing ministries/divisions every quarter, with all the 48 ministries, divisions and agencies almost at the end of the second quarter of the financial year and received a dismal picture relating to the progress in ADP implementation.
Though the IMED report disclosed that overall rate of ADP implementation increased to 23 per cent representing an average 6.0 per cent higher implementation than the corresponding period of the past two years, the government could not claim this to be its achievement due to the poor performance of the big ministries.
Besides the ministries of communication, power, water resources and housing and public works, six other ministries -- local government, health and family welfare, primary and mass education, agriculture, energy and mineral resources and education- failed to progress works of 70 per cent of their respective ADP projects. The ministries were able to make only 22 per cent progress of the works of 213 projects but failed to do make any progress in the implementation of 200 projects. They made impressive progress only in the case of implementation of 5.0 per cent projects. Satisfactory progress was made in the case of 84 projects.
Why is the performance of 10 ministries so important for the government?
Missing the target of ADP implementation has been a tradition in the country. The situation turned worse during last couple of years. The ministries that received bulk of the ADP fund for the last couple of years performed very poorly as far as ADP implementation is concerned their poor records, other six ministries did the same though being recipients of highest ADP allotment. These ministries had received 78 to 80 per cent allocation of the ADP budget but could only make 18 per cent progress in project implementation.
However, the government is happy with the overall performance of the ADP. Officials say compared with the previous years, the ADP implementation, including that of the 10 ministries has taken satisfactory. They consider that the taskforce will find realistic solutions to problems. So they believe the progress of the ADP projects under the 10 ministries would be accelerated automatically in the second half as it was happened in the past. They argue that progress of ADP in the first six months of any fiscal usually remain poor due to seasonal and other reasons.
For example, the housing and public works ministries informed the meeting that percentage of progress in ADP projects under their ministries would go up by 70 per cent with the release of fund for Hatirjheel-Begunbari like big projects. Water resource ministry has come up with reasons much as problems in acquiring land, late-release of funds and frequent change in design etc for its performance. Others ministries also place similar excuses.
Analysts, however, review the performance of the ministries differently. They consider that the present government is proceeding the way its predecessors did. The excuses like season and delay in tender process were placed by these ministries during the past ADP review meetings.
But they argue that there should have been some changes in the implementation of the ADP projects since the government has amended the public procurement act to speed up development works including tender award and release of project money. For example, the communication ministry which is the second highest ADP-project implementation ministry failed to bring any significant changes in ADP through the 'build operate transfer (BOT)' method for its major expensive projects. This ministry is responsible for implementing 125 projects but was able to spend 18 per cent of the fund which was 20 per cent in the 2008-09 fiscal year.
Critics tend to ask how would the taskforce any improvement in ADP implementation when it could not make timely assessment of the progress of first quarter of the ADP implementation. Going by the ongoing trends, it appears that ADP implementation would continue to falter, no matter what the policymakers or the multilateral lenders say.




Construction of two ICTs
Riverine transportation to go back to golden days
Fazlur Rahman
Two upcoming inland container terminals are set to revolutionise the country's largely neglected riverine transportation system as the exporters and importers would be able to cut container movement cost by 60 per cent and save significant amount of their shipment time once the service is introduced between Chittagong and Dhaka and Bangladesh and India.
Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) and Chittagong Port Authority are jointly building the country's first ICT in Pangaon on the bank of Buriganga, with a capacity to handle 116,000 to 160,000 twenty equivalent units (TEUs) annually.
On the other hand, Rupayan Group would start building the country's largest private port cum inland container depot at Narayanganj from March next year at US$40 million- a move set to revolutionise riverine transportation and cut container movement cost by 60 per cent.
Rupayan Port and Logistics Limited, a subsidiary of the group, has got government approval to build a 350,000 TEUs capacity ICT along with a jetty on a 27-acre of land in Bandar.
Industry people say the opening of RPPL along with the state-owned ICT at Pangaon in Narayanganj in mid-2010 would "revolutionise" container transportation between Dhaka and Chittagong -- the country's two main commercial hubs.
Many European countries and countries like China have already integrated their waterways network. River barge operators across Europe haul about 8.5 million TEUs containers inland while the Yangtze river network alone handles about 70 per cent of China's international trade in containers.
But that is not the case in Bangladesh although some 700 natural rivers and tributaries with an overall 24,000 kilometre long network crisscrossing the country, making it one of the largest inland waterway networks in the world.
Absence of river-based infrastructures, the export-import sector is deprived of the most economic and eco-friendly mode of inland transportation, directly affecting the viable pricing of goods.
Moreover, the Dhaka-Chittagong transport corridor, which generates 50 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and facilitates 85 per cent of the international trade through Chittagong Port, is proving costlier for the country's exporters and importers in terms of cost, cut-off time for shipment and uncertainty.
Constrained by rail capacity, costly container movement by road in Bangladesh is growing faster than the investment and maintenance capacity available for the road system.
But the Dhaka-Chittagong corridor would not be able to cope with the increased levels of traffic and will be prone to consistent transport gridlocks in days ahead.
According to a recent World Bank study, the country's inland water terminal has the potential to become a major actor in the transport of container between Dhaka and Chittagong and between India and Bangladesh.
Another study conducted by Asian Development Bank recently revealed Bangladesh could even raise its GDP by 1.0 per cent and foreign trade by 20 per cent if the inland water transport logistics systems are made efficient and competitive.
Experts think Kolkata, Haldia, Dhaka and Chittagong - the whole area is integrated and provides ample opportunity in terms of cost benefit. Businessmen of both the neighbouring countries would be benefited if internal container barge service is introduced between Chittagong and Dhaka and Bangladesh and India.
Chittagong Port currently handles 1.15 million TEUs annually, 80 per cent of these containers are Dhaka-bound. Only about 20 per cent of the Dhaka-bound containers move inland, railways picking up about 80,000 TEUs leaving the rest for the road transport.
The remaining 80 per cent are moved as break bulk cargo in overloaded, unsafe trucks contributing to higher cost, damages, pilferage and uncertainty in the delivery of shipped goods either way.
Industry people say transport cost would come down to less than 50 per cent of the existing cost if internal container barge service is introduced.
Together, the two ICTs would handle about half a million TEUs, which would be one-third of the total container expected to be loaded and unloaded at the Chittagong Port by 2012.
Containers arriving at the country's premier seaport in Chittagong would be brought by some 40 purpose-built inland container vessels through the riverine route to Narayanganj.
It would trim inland container transportation cost by at least 60 per cent. It will be safer than road and rail routes. Road transport very often leads to accidents and too much costly while a container has to stand on a queue for seven days for railway.
An exporter or a trader spends some Tk30,000 to bring a 40-feet container to Dhaka by trailer, which eats up a good portion of an exporter's profit and adds extra cost to imported items.
As a result, many traders have to un-stuff their containers in Chittagong before bringing the goods to Dhaka through lorries.
Cost of transportation would be brought down to Tk12,000 if the containers are brought by inland container vessels to be purpose-built for the two inland ports. The river terminal could bring down the cut-off time for export shipment to three hours or less.
Eighty per cent of the inter-country cargo traffic between India and Bangladesh could also be containerised.
Bangladesh imports from India are mainly handled by trucks coming in from all over Northern, Western and Southern India crisscrossing thousands of kilometres costing huge money for the Bangladeshi importers.
Benapole Land Port experiences frequent hold-ups, where 300 Indian trucks enter each day to unload cargoes with another 300-400 trucks waiting in the queue across the border for minimum five days.
Currently 220 plus 700-1,200 DWT dry cargo vessels ply between Kolkata/Haldia Port and Dhaka regions through the bordering inland waterways of Bangladesh and India. With the ICT projects in Dhaka, the container transport services would be faster, safer and cheaper than the current mode of transport.
The two ICTs would be used for transportation of more than one million tonnes of goods between Bangladesh and Kolkata in India under the existing inland water protocol between the two neighbours.
Exporters and importers would use Narayanganj as a port of call under the protocol to carry their goods to and from Kolkata. It will massively cut carrying cost and ease burden on Benapole land port.
Construction of the Rupayan port with full customs facilities would be completed by September 2011, making it the biggest private ICT in Bangladesh and the second largest after the Chittagong port-owned Newmooring Container Terminal.
The Group has readied financing and bought land for the project. Quay length of its jetty would be 240 metres and it can load and unload three container vessels a day.
Dhaka ICT is expected to be completed by the end of 2010.
Industry people say there is comparative advantage of transporting goods through inland container terminal as it is the cheap mode of transportation. Transportation through container cargo vessels has become important due to increasing trade growth. The lower transport costs and lower equipment harms have already made the inland container terminal services globally competitive.
The construction of inland container terminal would be a boon for the domestic shipbuilding industry as about 42 vessels between 1,800-2,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT) each and 60 river barges would have to be built in the next six years for Dhaka ICT and Rupayan Port.
It means they alone would keep several domestic shipbuilders busy for two-three years so the downturn-hit sector will no longer need to wait for overseas order.
Supply chain management has become a phenomenon after the onslaught of the economic crisis. There will be huge comparative benefits on all fronts if the internal container barge services are introduced between Chittagong and Dhaka.
The problem of lack of adequate infrastructure could be solved through public private partnership (PPP) initiative on build-own-operate-transfer basis, experts say.




Leaks and errors leave the Danes open to criticism
When the Copenhagen summit stumbled to an end on December 19, 2009, one person was notably absent from the press conference. Asked why the Danish minister responsible for the talks was not there, Yvo de Boer, senior UN climate change official, said he hoped Connie Hedegaard was "at home, on the couch, with a bucket of popcorn" after an exhausting two weeks.
Nonetheless, as the summit concluded well short of expectations set by the hosts after two years of painstaking preparation, it was telling that the Danes chose to slip quietly into the background .
Criticism of Denmark's handling of negotiations increased as talks stalled during the final week. With leaked copies circulating of draft texts prepared by the Danes, developing countries accused the country of favouring the rich world.
"There's a huge trust deficit deficit," says Jairain Ramesh, India's environment minister, "There has been no sincere effort by the Danish government [to broker an even-handed deal]."
Much of the criticism can be dismissed as an attempt to put pressure on the Danes and deflect attention from developing countries' own role in thwarting progress. But the frustration voiced privately by other European countries is harder to discount. Officials say the hosts made procedural mistakes and there were breakdowns in communication with the UN bureaucracy.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Denmark's prime minister, replaced Ms Hedegaard as conference president towards the end in a bid to break the deadlock. But, by many accounts, the process then got worse.
Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, did not hide her exasperation I when she arrived on the penultimate day. "It is; unfortunate there have been problems with the process," she said, without singling out the hosts.
Denmark is an easy scapegoat but few countries covered themselves with glory, It may be that no one nation has the diplomatic powers to forge the unanimity demanded by the UN system on an issue as complex as climate change.