Monthly Archive

It often just creeps up on you, a tad insidiously sometimes. College, grad school, a few years of work experience in between, and after, and then some. And before we know it, we’re wearing the Probashi label and looking about a little confused, wondering where the last decade vanished.

Often we actively seek out others like us and sit around, often over the cha’er cup and chanachur, and try to find the right avenues to connect, reconnect, reach out, explore, discover, learn, understand and make a difference.

Once you’ve found your niche within the many expatriate initiatives, maybe you’ll contribute with ideas, with your volunteering time, or with constructive criticism. Maybe you will help these initiatives grow. In turn, maybe you’ll be inspired, informed, or hopeful!

“Kob’e Holam Probashi?” is one such expatriate initiative that I wanted to share with you today. Presented by Drishtipat London, it is the Premier Screening of “Deshantori” (Migrant), followed by a discussion and live performance.

Deshantori tells the tale of 26 migrant workers who left Dhaka with dreams of making it big in the glitzy “foreign” lands of Spain. It tells of their journey in 2005 through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea – a journey fueled so powerfully by hopes of a brighter future, yet a journey that only a fraction of the original 26 eventually survived.

The docudrama showcases a fascinating depiction of perspectives from across the cross section of the youth of our country, striving to leave home to join the migrant community. It revolves around the question that pops up ever so often, “Is this the country we fought to create 35 years ago?” and invariably ends in our youth’s infallible national pride and optimism, despite deep frustrations.

Deshantori is a must see. For all of us. The diaspora community benefits from a reawakening and a renewed connection – often the critical first step towards real meaningful involvement and contribution. Those of us in Dhaka will share in on the invigorating experience, and will feel spurred to greater civic consciousness.

Deshantori was screened informally in Boston last fall, and more formally at the Owning Our Future initiative in Dec 2006. It was screened last week in Dhaka, and will continue to be screened at different locations in Dhaka. On Feb 3, it will be screened in London. I believe there’s word of it reaching New York sometime in April, with a few more screenings planned for Boston as well. So stay on the lookout!

“Kob’e Holam Probashi?” will be presented on February 03, 2007, by the local London chapter of Drishtipat (http://drishtipat.org/). Drishtipat focuses on safeguarding human rights and social justice in Bangladesh. Their tagline of “Hear, Speak Out and Help” clearly demonstrates their strong commitment towards Awareness, Assistance and Advocacy. They have local chapters in NYC, DC, Boston, Virginia, Canada, London and in Australia and you can contact them to find out how you can be involved.

Often, my friends tell me that they want to be involved in somehow affecting the way things work back home in Bangladesh, or they want to volunteer and help out in some way. The frustrating block then is – how? As young academics and professionals residing outside of Bangladesh, do we always have access to information regarding the various avenues through which we can contribute to Bangladesh?

I’ve recently been involved with Owning Our Future, an initiative about a few months old, and with its roots in Boston and Dhaka. Part of the organizers’ vision to distinguish this endeavor from the countless other diaspora-based volunteer organizations is to start with a strong base in Bangladesh, and to help forge a bridge between the diaspora community and our home.

A bridge that will close the information gap and raise awareness about career opportunities, professional growth potential and ways to be involved in Bangladesh. A bridge that will close the gap between the need for expertise and professionals skills at the grassroots level in Bangladesh, and the wealth of resources that we share amongst us in the diaspora community all over the world. A bridge that helps us come closer to home, regardless of where we live, scattered throughout the world.

To share ideas and get involved, find them online.

A group of students, young professionals and music enthusiasts came together not too long ago, to celebrate their love for Bangla, Bangla music, and Bangla traditions and heritage. Their first program in 2003 was supported by almost a year long research into the history and evolution of Bangla music, coupled with 9-10 months of rehearsals with over 150 people involved in the project. They presented 1000 years of Bangla musical history, tracing how the needs of the times were expressed through the styles and musical forms of those times.

When asked which performance troupe was responsible for such quality rendition, the participants looked around and shrugged, “eito, amra kojon” [meaning, why, just a few of us].

And Amra Kojon they are.

The concept arose initially when a few music enthusiasts were frustrated by the division and grouping amongst ourselves based on perceived differences. Groups with different ideologies, different political affiliations, different religious faiths tended to cluster among themselves and the lack of collaboration was stifling the quality of music that each group were able to bring to their audience.

Amra Kojon wanted to come together, united by our common love for music, regardless of how different we were otherwise. We wanted to find out whether it was at all possible to maintain our differences, stay true to our different beliefs and ideologies, and yet to cooperate closely with a group of people who all shared our common passion for music.

Fascinatingly – somehow, it worked. We were able to put aside our differences and work together to showcase our musical heritage to a wide audience. Since then, the group has evolved, with a continuous flux of participants – and the one gift that each outgoing member takes away is the spirit of cooperation, of caring, giving and working together with others from a wide range of different backgrounds, beliefs and goals.

Amra Kojon is really a concept. Some have even called it a way of life. My involvement has taught me not only invaluable professional skills in my roles of responsibility within the organization, but also that tolerance for our differences can be such an enriching experience. It has definitely empowered me personally and I encourage you all to check out their website, keep up to date with events, and come join in on the fun when you can. While the group may not be able to solve world hunger, cure cancer and AIDS, or bring about world peace – it can definitely inspire YOU to try.

To find out what members and our audience say about Amra Kojon, visit the AK blog. If you’d like to be closely involved and share in on the magical experience, leave them a comment!

When we throw on our T-shirts, we rarely ever think about all the elements of this piece of garment. Who made it? Where did it come from? If we do ever think about our T-shirts, most us think about how cool we look based on what’s scribbled across the front: “Chicago Bulls,” “I [Heart] NY,” or “Life Sucks” or “I Hate Bush.”

In the nineties, socially conscious college students often gave thought to their T-shirts. Led on by the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) anti-sweatshop and anti-child labor movements, they would protest outside libraries, inside student unions, and write fiery letters to Wal-Mart executives to stop buying clothes from poor countries.

By the 2000s, the crescendo over child labor and working conditions in the apparel factories of poor countries like Bangladesh seemed to have calmed down, partly because many things in America operate on a “aajke ase, kaalke nai” basis, i.e. “here today, gone tomorrow”, and partly because some apparel companies actually started paying closer attention to labor standards in order to avoid getting lampooned into oblivion. But the issue hasn’t disappeared altogether, and could come back to town any time for another party.

Throughout the protests in American colleges, throughout the political roller-coaster rides in Bangladesh, and pushing through years of economic plight, Bangladesh continued to make T-shirts. Lots of them. Thanks to our excess supply of workers who are often willing to embrace wearisome manufacturing jobs, our easy access to garment materials, pretty decent industry management, and other factors, the Bangladeshi garment industry has flourished and has gained a strong foothold in the country.

The industry now brings in billions of dollars, supplies 75 percent of our export earnings, provides the livelihoods of 2 million young women, and is generally a sunny spot in the country economy.

Yet, few people in the West want to see the Bangladeshi garment industry in this light, and chosen to forget the early economy of the United States when child labor was considered a necessity, and factory conditions weren’t exactly dandy.

Some have even launched bizarre “Buy USA” consumer campaigns, pretending that any Western country could, for a second, compete to make T-shirts with any low-wage country where throngs of hungry workers clamor for T-shirt-making jobs to avoid getting pulled into a drilling workshop or into the sex industry. Yes, we are talking about those familiar low-wage countries where people live on less than $2 a day, there is no welfare, no social safety net, and no Democrats to argue for entitlement programs.

Perhaps that is why, in spite of vigorous efforts to shield U.S. apparel-making jobs from poor countries with the help of a quota regime, the numbers of U.S. apparel workers have shrank from 1.4 million to 270,000.

We should, of course, work towards a Bangladesh where young members of families who are below 12 or 14 would no longer need to go to work, and respect for human rights would run through people’s veins. But in the meantime, those of us in the U.S. of A and other Western places who may find ourselves in casual conversations with friends on this topic, need to tell those well-intentioned friends that their efforts are much better spent persuading companies to improve factory conditions, rather than persuading them to stop buying clothes from very poor nations.

At least many of the friends I’ve spoken to, have stopped peeking at T-shirt labels before making buying decisions.

A friend was telling me the other day how everything was looking up in Bangladesh now ever since the postponement of the elections. His source, reliably enough, was his mother back home, who had called to check up on her son, as mothers do. I really have no reason to disbelieve her, Bangali ghorer bou that she is. Her optimism certainly matches that of the stock market, almost always such a good indicator of a country’s state of political health. The streets are less violent these days, most people have run out of excuses to not show up at work or school, and probably less important but no less indicative, the newspapers are managing to save up on their red ink. We may indeed be on a break from democracy(and as The Economist has dubbed it, in the midst of ‘The coup that dare not speak its name’), but fewer points in our history have given this feeling that we are all bound together as a nation under what Rousseau would have called ‘the general will’.

The thing about democracy that has always troubled politicios is whether it should be an end in itself or the means to a greater end. Too often, and especially in the aftermath of the third wave of worldwide democratization that started in the 1970s, it has been concocted as the former. Consequently, many countries have jumped on the bandwagon with little regard for the hard part, which is staying on it, or staying on it with any degree of comfort anyway. Stanford’s Larry Diamond, in a paper studying the obstacles to democracy functioning properly in these third wave countries, has identified three key obstacles that are preventing many countries from being truly liberal democracies as opposed to the merely ‘electoral’ democracies that are prevalent in many parts of the world today. Broadly, these can be outlined as:

i)Political Corruption
ii)Rent-seeking behaviour
iii)Weak judicial systems

Where the prevalence of all three of these phenomena are high, it can be said that democracy is merely a smokescreen for a political system that has grown rotten to the core. In such a situation, democracy is rendered pointless since it nurtures a society where the vast majority of the population is denied equal opportunity. Even economic benefits which may or may not be forthcoming begin to lose their utility as the benefits accrue to only a select group of individuals who have their hegemony entrenched in the society. Although a democracy by name, the dynamics of such a society are antithetical to its very principles. The conversation will never die at a lunch between Mr. Diamond and anybody who has lived in Bangladesh over the last two decades.

There is no doubt that the limits on freedom imposed by General Ershad’s regime called for change, and democracy was the only viable alternative. But as time has gone on, we have shown ourselves quite incapable of dealing with it, at-least as long as the political scenario consisted in the main part of two parties whose differences lie not in the realms of ideology, social policy or a national vision, but almost exclusively personal issues. This is quite natural when party hierarchies are built along nepotistic lines, and we in Bangladesh have been unfortunate enough to be cursed with not just one such party, but two. Even as great an advocate of justice as Albert Camus once stated that though he believed in justice, he would defend his mother above justice. Similarly, whatever the merits or intentions of the respective families in the seats of power in the Awami League and the BNP might be, as good family men and women ourselves, we cannot expect them to ever conduct their politics in such a way as to compromise their own families’ positions. Especially when in the zero-sum game that is power (read=politics), any compromise on their part will lead directly to a benefit on their rival family’s part, and vice versa. It is not enough to vilify the two parties on grounds of their failures. Their failures have to be understood in order to be rectified, and what we need to grasp is that as long as our political consciousness consists almost exclusively of a family feud, there will be no place for national interest. Our salvation never lay in their hands.

This is of-course in reference to noises coming out of ‘Desh that whisper the current administration may be considering sending the current leadership in both parties to exile. This is admittedly far-fetched, but the collapse of democracy in neighbouring Pakistan did eventually result in similar consequences. Were it not for the additional problems brought on by 9/11, Pakistan could have been in a much better position now than it is already, which in itself is a significant improvement on where Bhutto and Sharif were leading them. I feel a kind of guilty pleasure at the prospect of this playground scuffle amongst dysfunctional grown-ups being taken elsewhere. We are an essentially political people, us Bangladeshis, and there will be no dearth of people to take their place, that is for certain. Politics will return to Bangladesh. It may take a while, but it will. That the current state of affairs is largely the result of a distinctly international recipe is also no secret, and thus we can carry on this period of rehabilitation with less regard to threats of sanctions, etc. It is important however, that before we reinstall democracy in our nation, we go through all the steps that constitute democratization. That we leave no stone unturned this time. So that we don’t handle ourselves quite as atrociously as we did the last time. The seperation of the judiciary from the executive, so long yearned for yet so long denied, and now finally delivered, is confirmation that our optimism is not misplaced.

It is rare to speak in favour of anything resembling a coup. But let not the need for political correctness prevent the truth being told. We, and we only if you are like me, are at our most optimistic since that other night sixteen winters ago.

I am so looking forward to the delivery from Amazon that should arrive in a day or two. I have, after arguing with myself about not having enough time for random reading, finally given in. I ordered the Buru Quartet. It was highly recommended on a blog I read regularly and like a lot as the least read great novel of the 20th century.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer “wrote” his epic quartet while imprisoned as a political prisoner by the Suharto regime after his bloody rise to power in 1965. He was already a well-known writer when he was imprisoned. The regime tried to break his spirit by burning down his library and depriving him of access to pen and paper. Yet, at the end of each day of hard labor, Pak Pram (as he was affectionately known) would gather the other prisoners around him and narrate his epic novel to them. They would put these down on paper. When he was finally allowed to write, his fellow prisoners shouldered his work so that he could finish his epic for posterity. Priests and river-boatmen would smuggle these manuscripts out for illicit publication. After his release at they end of 14 years, the quartet was final published, and immediately banned in Indonesia.

This should be an fascinating read. A true and compelling triumph of the human spirit.

Indonesia - or rather Java - seems to me to have a lot of cultural and sociological similarities to Bangladesh…

My co-blogger’s post on the BRAC University gives appropriate credit where credit’s due. I share his sense of optimism about the promising things that are happening there. Particularly impressive are the specialized Institutes and various research and program development partnerships that BRAC Univ. is setting up. There is a longer-term vision of what the institution can achieve and become that’s clear here that must be commended.

The mushrooming of private universities in Dhaka and increasingly, outside of Dhaka, has been a positive thing in many ways. For one, it’s created a sizable job market for the smarter graduates from the public and other private universities. Teaching at private universities is also a useful source of income for chronically under-paid public university professors and even some civil servants. Private universities have also probably brought more resources and investment into the higher education sector than one would find otherwise.

It’s not all positive, though. The fact that professors actually make more money teaching at private universities than at Dhaka University has had a negative impact upon the quality of teaching of many professors at Dhaka University, one hears.

But more importantly, many of the private universities are little more than fly-by-night operations. Departments and programs are opened without adequate facilities or faculties. And some of the better-known institutions have been guilty of this as well. Recall the student unrest over the Pharmacy Department at Stamford University back in the spring. Programs are marketed and sold to unsuspecting, ill-informed (and often, indigent or desperate) customers with promises of more than can be delivered. And then, there’s also the problem of standards.

How exactly the excesses and problems with standards should be dealt with is not an easy question. My normal inclination is to say that the market will take care of things as the private education industry settles into an equilibrium. But a number of considerations make me less certain, including:

- The value of educational enrollment to the consumer is not just about the value of what is taught, but also about status, which may have nothing to do with the value of what is taught. This is particularly true in our cultural conditions. Answering “what do you do?” with “I am a master’s student at XYZ” is deemed to be socially acceptable for a jobless 25-year old the way that saying, “I am jobless” or “I am looking for a job” does not. This is particularly true when the number of “acceptable” job opportunities are limited. This will mean that the market-driven standards will likely be lower than they would have been if status did not come into the picture.

A countervailing force to this of course will be that many institutions may have incentives (let’s say pride) to avoid getting a reputation as that XYZ institution where the jobless 25-year olds enroll to pass their time. And jobless 25 year-olds themselves will want to be enrolled in institutions which do not have such reputations so that enrolling in them remains socially acceptable. This may mean that many institutions will have pockets of low and high standards.
[We see this in the educational market in the US as well, btw. Noone fails from an Ivy League school, for example - not because everyone there's a genius or works hard.]

- A degree is a fairly long investment, switching costs may be quite high, and information about institutions may be costly for prospective students to find. Particularly, think about the students from outside of Dhaka who come to the city to enroll at a program that has been sold to them with glossy brochures and bright promises. There’s good reasons for the market to not work optimally.

Further, let’s say that the market does work, for the sake of argument. But by the time the market settles into equilibrium, fly-by-night operators will have run away with the savings and dreams of thousands of vulnerable individuals. What do you do about and for them?

Of course, one can claim that rational individuals will take these risks into account, and the price charged by the institutions will reflect these risks. From what I have seen though, even staying with homo economicus, herd models may be more applicable for what happens on the ground. And individuals really may not be rational about such choices in the first place.

So how do we fix the problem? This is a hard one. The tendency is to think that government regulation will fix the problem. But bureaucratic solution, particularly in a country like ours, are prone to regulatory capture. More fundamentally, why do we imagine that a bureaucrat in the education ministry will be in the best position to process information about the allocation of resources and balance competing considerations and claims? A better solution may be private-public partnerships in standard-setting, but again, there are pitfalls (collusive exclusion of competitors, for example, when an industry is allowed to work on setting its own standards) that one has to watch out for. This is one area that I hope to return to over the course of the next few months, as one of my classes addresses exactly these issues.

Not mentioning the State of Emergency in the first few posts of this blog would be as absurd as having a physical adda in the drawing room over cha and toast biscoot without mentioning , well, the State of Emergency.

Financial Times had an interesting item a few days ago, which many readers will surely have read already. Money quote, I thought:

“I don’t discount the possibility that the generals ask the two ladies to
take a holiday,” one Awami League leader said. “Pakistan is certainly a
model that could be followed here, even if they have far deeper grass-roots
support than Benazir and Nawaz.”

[Hat tip to Drishtipat Group Blog for the pointer. Check them out. There's been some interesting discussion there the last few days...]

There’s of course been a fair amount of speculation from all over the place about what really happened. The FT article reports on what may be the emerging consensus view:

“Five days after Bangladesh’s president, at the insistence of the army,
declared a state of emergency, resigned his post as head of the caretaker
government and cancelled the elections that were due to be held next Monday, the
full implications of the latest twist in Bangladesh’s political drama are only
just becoming clear. Few now have any doubt that the country is set for a
lengthy period of military-backed technocratic rule.”

My writing about the situation on the ground from 7879 miles (12679 kilometers) away would be nothing more than crass speculation. I am going to refrain from the temptation - hard though it is to do so. (I am hoping that some of our other bloggers who are on the ground shall have something to say about the situation). However, there are a few thoughts - long-term in nature - that might be worth sharing…

There’s a troubling tendency to personalize the crisis in our political system, I think. In one view, the problem is about (or with) the two netris - their clash of personalities, their mutual suspicion, their pathologies, insecurities, particular qualifications or limitations… Get the netris to meet at some prominent personage’s daughter’s wedding and smile at each other, or at least acknowledge each other’s presence, and we’re well on the way to solving our (political, at least) problems! Or may be, send them away into early retirement - and things will all be fixed!

In another view, our problem is about politicians and the fact that they are (or have become) corrupt. Prevent them from standing in the elections, excise them from the political process, or alternatively, elect honest candidates to office - and things will be fixed! Our crisis, in such views, is about the absence of able staffing and leadership. Change the leadership, reshuffle the staffing - and the nation shall change, for the better!

A corollary that one often finds attached with such viewpoints is the dream of a leader-hero who shall emerge and clean our Augean stables of instability, corruption and injustice.

It may happen that a change of personnel will lead to a transformation of our lot. But I would not count on it. In fact - it’s unlikely that it will do much, and we have enough data-points from our own historical experience to claim this with a fair amount of certainty .

For the underlying issues are institutional. It was almost inevitable - given a government of Men, not Angels - that we should end up where we have. In brief (I hope to flesh this out in a later post - and of course, this observation is not by any means original), the very combination of a first-past-the-post system and the ban on floor crossing in Article 70 leads us to the features of our political system that make it dysfunctional:

- the absence of internal party democracy

- the viciousness of the interactions between the two parties, and their propensity towards the use of violence

- the inability of credible third-parties to emerge

- and almost paradoxically, the unusual influence of fringe parties (and alliances with them) upon the stances taken by the major two parties

Zafar Sobhan was right when he wrote the extremely thoughtful and insightful obituary of the Fourth Republic a few weeks ago, before the emergence of the Emergency government. The Emergency government simply makes official the passing of our experiment since 1991.

The Five Point Program that seems to have been taken up by the Emergency government - of electoral reform, judicial and administrative depoliticization, fixing the power sector, good governance and jumpstarting an anti-corruption drive - is all well and good, and certainly very necessary. But it does not seem to be much of a move away from a view of our crisis as one of staffing and leadership. The underlying institutional issues still remain unaddressed. If we are at at a Constitutional Moment, should they be looking beyond mere administrative procedure? These are, of course, still early days - and not too much is known about the intentions and aims of the Emergency government. We wait.