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August 15, 2007 00:00:00


A dispute settlement in married life that ends up in a divorce is like chopping off the head to cure the headache. Modern quacks do not exercise the blunt latter option being aware that the patient must remain alive first to enjoy the benefit of the ultimate cure.
We find no worthwhile logic behind the IMF's obsession for having the electricity, oil and gas prices enhanced when the nation's fragile economic activities-industry and agriculture-draw some strength to survive from government's indirect support. Our situation is like that of western agriculture, which would crumble on withdrawal of massive government subsidies.
Quantify their subsidies to agriculture in terms of the gross domestic product of several developing countries. Almost half of Asia- minus China, India, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, does not produce as much as they pump in agriculture as official support. A subsidy of three dollars per cow, which they give to their farmers, is more than three times the daily earning per head among the world's poor in many of the impoverished Asian, African and South American countries. Be informed, promoting a right cause in the wrong time is as wrong as sadistic wars.
Latifa Sultana
Dhaka University

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