You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
I too am traveling this week to the wonderful lakeside city of Chicago. Was reading the New Yorker magazine on the plane. Check out this article on great food and village hospitality Bangladeshi style:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/03/070903fa_fact_freudenberger
Can someone tell me (or care to speculate) why a Bangladeshi passport holder needs an airport transit visa for changing planes in Frankfurt, or for that matter, anywhere in Europe? I’ve just had an awful experience of being harassed by Lufthansa (even though the German consulate says that I shouldn’t need an air transit visa.)
I’m travelling all week, so blogging is going to be a little slow on my end. I’ll be back on September 2, hopefully with stories to tell about my travails.
While the Chief Election Commissioner goes around pleading like a school boy to the media (he’s been doing it for months) and even the president recently for lifting the ban on indoor politics, the caretaker government has been burying its head in the sand. After the street violence stemming from DU now it’s anybody’s guess what the government’s next move will be. However, if we are to hold elections by the end of 2008, it is absolutely imperative that the Election Commission hammers out the rules of the game with the politicians and political parties. Elections will be impossible without their active cooperation and participation.
We all know what the government is afraid of in terms of authorizing parties back into the public sphere: a premature and potentially violent movement to restore democracy, hold elections, and free political prisoners right away, aajke, akkhoni. The way this government has been treating political parties (much of it well-deserved, they’ve been destroying our country for too long), it is not unlikely that this won’t happen. But, if the CG thinks that continued political muzzling will somehow magically lead to free elections by 2008 it’s sorely mistaken. The history of democratization worldwide has been tumultuous and violent (I hope to write more about this later). And even with all the muzzling of parties, the country has still ended up with the all too familiar brickbats and teargas scenario in the last few days. Were party activists involved in this? You bet they were. The Chhatra Dal and Chhatra League cadres were certainly not meekly fence sitting during the melee. I am sure the political party activists have relished the government’s embarrassment/panic and may even have actively pushed things along. But the fact is, as far as newspaper reports go, hawkers, rickshawpullers, non-students were also involved. The government has failed the poor and it is now rudderless (as Saif points out). Few can be certain of the CG’s true motivations, but I am going to be optimistic and assume that it wants to hold elections in good faith but is unsure how to proceed without creating the scope for unrest and chaos. Somewhere along the way the CG got carried away and it is now totally lost.
Where does all this leave us?
I humbly recommend the following to-do list for the caretaker government:
1. Immediately ensure that the army does not come to the forefront: We cannot afford to have yet another misguided military takeover and total martial law. God save us from falling into that rut. Look at what’s happened to Musharraf . Why would any one ever want to be a dictator? The fun just doesn’t last! It’s not a stable career track.
2. Win the trust and cooperation of political parties: Perhaps the hardest task, but it needs to start right now, even if behind the scenes. Remember, no goodwill from political parties means no acceptable elections. If we are to have a democracy we can’t live without our political parties (as beastly as they have been). Build a good faith dialogue so that they are convinced that elections will be held by December 2008 and it is in their best interest to wait and refrain from creating mayhem. Try to make them less corrupt, less violent, and reduce their options for taking those nasty short cuts to the throne by focusing on item 4.
3. Publicly renew commitment to democracy and elections: I’m afraid mere words will no longer suffice. Once the dust has settled, lift the ban on indoor politics. Election Commission needs time to negotiate with parties and at least impose some modicum of reform within them. The nomination process and campaign financing are especially important areas to focus on. Continue own dialogue with political parties, don’t just rely on the CEC. Be firm when necessary to keep them in line but remember you’ll be in trouble if you can’t hold elections by 2008 (the recent DU incident should chasten you from pursuing outlandish ideas about ruling for a decade until the deep sea port is completed and we become the next Hong Kong).
4. Keep working to make key institutions independent of political interference: civil service, courts, police, Election Commission, Anti Corruption Commission. It’s not enough to declare institutions independent. Ensure especially that the recruitment, transfer and funding processes in all these institutions are bolstered with checks from political meddling (granted once a new democratically elected government comes to power all of these changes will be reviewed, but they’ll actually have a mandate to do so, and let’s vote for parties that promise to respect the independence of these institutions).
5. Continue prosecuting existing anti corruption cases in the MOST transparent way possible: Maintain complete and total respect for the legal process. This is the only way the outcomes will be acceptable to a majority of Bangladeshis. There will always be some people who will never accept their party leaders serving jail time no matter how well-deserved it is. Convince the rest of us that the politicians in jail really do deserve it. History will judge you much more kindly this way.
6. Pray for the best, buckle up for a bumpy ride, hold elections, leave with dignity and self-respect intact. The election will not be perfect and our parties will not transform themselves overnight. Your greatest achievement will be to block them from returning us to pre January ’07 Bangladesh and move us forward toward a democratic future. It won’t be pretty but it’s better than the alternative.
I’ve been tied up in job interviews the last few days, and have thus been unable to comment on the recent rioting in Dhaka and elsewhere. Sajid, I assume, has been unable to get on the internet.
We are at a critical point, no doubt, in the current State of Emergency. I have hardly been able to digest what has been happening. Like many in the Bengali blogosphere (including Asif S bhai at Drishtipat, whose posts, updates and links in the last few days have been excellent) I have mixed feelings about the violence, but I can see where it’s coming from. I hope to have a few substantive posts on this over the course of the next few days as things (and my life) hopefully settle down, but for now, broadly, here are a few things I think I think, that I hope to flesh out as well over the next few days:
* It’s been clear for a while that the SOE government does not have a systematic plan about what it wants to do and what the underlying principles (principles - not platitudes) that drive it. Given its largely directionless existence, the SOE government has had to resort repeatedly to political theatre as crutches. This strategy has not been unsuccessful - but such theatre can divert from the underlying lack of direction for only so long…
* It’s been clear that the SOE government has been losing control of things in the last weeks - and with it, its legitimacy in the eyes of many: a badly run relief effort, inflation, setbacks in the courts. And given that it’s spent a lot of its reservoir of political and moral capital that it should have held on to on political theatre and on things largely meaningless in the long run (like shutting down jute mills, and breaking buildings and slums in the middle of flooding season.)
* The rhetoric and haphazard attempts of the government to address its problems were increasingly smacking of desperation and disorder for some time, and this was clear in the fact tht they were increasingly ludicrous and unworkable (eg. attempting to force banks to limit interest rates charged to food importers) I am not on the ground, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the desperation could be smelt in the air by many.
* And desperation usually comes with someone snapping, like some idiots beating up Dhaka University students. The lesson to the army should be clear - if you can’t keep discipline over your own soldiers, how the hell do you plan on “disciplining” the entire populace? Get out of the business of centrally trying to establish your vision of order through brute force, intimidation and censorship.
* Except all indications are that this is not the lesson that the SOE government is learning. Instead, internet is down, the press is muzzled, and the CA goes on TV talking about “evildoers”.
* I shudder to think of what will happen if the SOE government packs up and just leaves. May be this makes me a reactionary. I don’t want a return to pre-January 11. And I definitely don’t want mobocracy.
* But I also don’t want a return to pre-August 22. My fear is that the SOE government will try to sweep away the unrest like dirt on the ground. What they need to be doing is sweeping away cobwebs of the mind.
Today’s Daily Star has an economics lesson from Ariana Ahmed. It’s a worthwhile economics lesson to give - as policy makers often forget the verities underlying the operations of markets and prices and suchlike. But I couldn’t help but feel a little queasy reading AA’s piece, ’cause it’s got a lot of underlying assumptions that may or may not be valid. I wish AA had done more to bring some of these assumptions to fore. If you are trying to teach basic economics to a government ostensibly led by an economist, you owe it as much.
Consider the basic assumption underlying AA’s model: Non-monopolistic price setting by the suppliers. AA basically assumes that the rise in prices is caused by a right-ward shift of the demand curve. This obviously leads to an increase in the price. And AA is right in pointing out that the government forcing suppliers to lower their prices will lead to a rightward shift in the supply curve- and again, an equilibrium with reduced supply and much higher price.
But there’s the assumption there that I find troubling - that the food supply in Bangladeshi markets is competitive. Now it’s possible the market is not competitive - and the suppliers are actually price setters, not takers. Read the rest of this entry »
Having lived in Dhaka for the last 10 months, recently on my way back to the US, I was casting about for a book to read on the plane. I wanted to keep it light but Harry Potter was sold out in Dhaka’s two posh but pathetic bookstores: etc. and word n’ pages (don’t get me started in lack of books and bookstores in Dhaka). Finally I took up Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss, feeling a bit silly (come on aren’t all these novels written about people like us, leaving home, making a new home, coming back home, not knowing which one’s the “real” home, feeling at home everywhere and nowhere and so on?). But it won the Booker, who knows, it could be profound, it could be wise, it will pass the time since I can’t sleep on planes. That Ms. Desai is a capable writer I already knew. I had read her first book, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard some years back. It was cleverly written and though the plot went haywire towards the end, I thought maybe a witty jester had finally popped out of the diaspora factory instead of the usual navel gazer/agonizer.
There certainly was a lot of hullabaloo about the Inheritance:
India Today raved:
“A delightfully original book…A triumph of the storyteller’s art…luminous.”
NYT opined:
“…the best kind of post-9/11 novel.”
Alas, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Ms. Desai writes so firmly within the tradition of the female novelist of South Asian leanings residing in London, New York, or both, (I’ll unfairly lump them together: Jhumpa Lahiri, Monica Ali, Arundhuti Roy (granted lives in India), Anita Desai, Zadie Smith) writing a bit about home and a bit about the “also” home that I felt like I had read it all too many times before. Maybe it was because a chunk of the novel was set in New York City, specifically, Morningside Heights, a neighborhood that I know reasonably well. To those who know the place, Grey’s Papaya and Grant’s Tomb make appearances. More likely it was because Ms. Desai used the tried and true mix, syrupy love (between a wealthy retired judge’s granddaughter and her lower middle class Gorkha physics tutor), bubbling up in the backdrop of rising social and political discord (agitation for Gorkhaland in Darjeeling). She then added together some immigrant angst (the family cook’s son Biju leads a subterranean life as an onion cutter/dish washer in NYC), a regrettable past (the judge as a village boy who travels to England for his Cambridge degree, faces subtle and devastating racism/alienation and upon his return takes out his self loathing on an infantile wife), as well as an unsettling present (the Gorkhas are usurping the enclaves of the rich expats out living their adventurous lives at the foothills of the Himalayas. A doddering and lovable Swiss neighbor, Father Booty, gets deported for residing illegally in India though he thought of himself as an “Indian” foreigner). All this is topped off with an uncertain future (What is the heroine to do? Alas as her world crumbles she realizes she must leave to make her own life. Biju comes back home, robbed penniless by the rebels, but to a loving father).
Perhaps I am being too harsh. Inheritance of Loss is a good read, there are some nicely turned sentences, engaging imagery (although note to writers of South Asian origin please shelve descriptions of the monsoon and the bazaar, enough said), a moment of Bengali pride (Bengalis are smart because they eat lots of fish), but don’t pick it up looking for a novel perspective on the immigrant life or even life in general. Chances are you already know what Ms. Desai is trying to say.
An excellent, succint piece by Jyoti bhai on DP Blog, on Inflation and food prices, that breaks down the issue, and even makes a few policy prescriptions that largely make sense to me. It’s a follow-up to Rumi bhai’s great post on his blog a few days ago. Required reading, both. As they say - check them out!
I really liked Jyoti bhai’s tracking of the Rupee-Taka exchange rate and food prices in the two countries. (I’m too lazy to do this right now, but deflating the food price with the exchange rate would further clarify the story that JB’s telling.)
I particularly found illuminating JB’s argument about food buffers, and how the Agriculture and Food Ministries messed up the process. I do hope JB does follow-up posts in the future on this issue, particularly the WB’s role in the failed process…
It’s been a while (eight years!) since I did macroecon, and I’m sure JB will find my questions to be more amateurish and immature than usual. JB says that the Taka should appreciate. I tend to agree with him that the impact upon exports won’t be too bad (particularly if it is combined with the impact of less port and strike-induced delays.) But won’t the appreciation of the taka have to be accompanied by an increase in the interest rates and a tighter monetary policy? What are the pros and cons of this at this moment?
(Before I lose the mental train that has just pulled into the desolate station that is my head: I wonder if anyone’s done an Alesina-type political business cycle analysis of the Bangladeshi economy, or for the Indian economy for that matter…)
I was a little more unsure about JB’s telling of the syndication part of the story. Wouldn’t we want to look at the short-run price elasticitiy of demand of various food stuffs? I would think that the elasticity of rice (and for that matter, most things that go into a basic Bangali meal) - at least in the short-run - is pretty low. It’s steeper for ilish maach, I would think, and there JB’s analysis does apply. In the long run, I guess people can substitute rice with other things (“Aloo khele mota hoi, e kothati shotto noi. Beshi kore aloo khan, bhaater upor chaap koman.” Interestingly, I haven’t seen public service announcements of this nature on BTV in the last few years…)
I also wish JB had said more about the argument that’s been made that the disruption of food supply networks because of the government’s anti-corruption drive has had some role to play in the recent rise in prices.
Two bad ideas in the BD newspapers today:
1. Public Health Engineering Department announces eviction drive in the slums. Talk about misplaced priorities, especially in the middle of the flooding season.
2. This is just unconscionable under a government headed by an economist and former head of Bangladesh Bank himself. BB Bank fixes 12% interest for import of all essentials. New Age reports:
The central bank on Tuesday fixed the interest rate for import financing of essential commodities at 12 per cent to ensure adequate supply and contain inflation, according to a circular.
It’s going to be able to do neither. In fact, rationing credit in this way will ensure reduced supply and increased inflation - the exact opposite of the intended effect.
Note to Bangladesh Bank - as well as to Bangladeshi bureaucrats and army types everywhere who are pre-disposed to think like central planners from the 70’s: Stop messing around with setting prices. If you want to subsidize stuff, subsidize stuff. But stop messing around with setting prices. It never works.
Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II. The Bard says it best:
Enter BRUTUS and CASSIUS, and a throng of Citizens
Citizens
We will be satisfied; let us be satisfied. Read the rest of this entry »
Thomas Wipperman and Timothy Sowula have a paper that’s available on Drishtipat blog that proposes to “raise the social and economic status” of rickshaw pullers through the nationalization of the rickshaw industry. Like others who have commented on Tim’s post and paper on DP Blog and elsewhere , I think the effort needs to be commended. The thoughts that motivate the piece - that rickshaw pullers deserve better, both from the State and society at large, and that rickshaws can play a larger role in our thinking about an effective transportation strategy for Dhaka - are ones that I agree with wholeheartedly.
There is however little else in the proposal that I do agree with. I think it’s fundamentally wrong-headed.
Consider the operational heart of the proposal - Tom and Tim’s token system. (Nifty diagram on Page 26.) Tokens are picked up by customers at shops. Read the rest of this entry »
August will always be the month of displacement in my mind. There is of course Partition. But August also brings to me memories from 1990, of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. My family was in Kuwait at that time.
Ten is awfully young to have life teach you that one’s certainties in one’s world, one’s assumptions about how things are and always will be, one’s little plans and hopes with people and things, are extremely fragile things. Ten is awfully young to come to the realization that home, even home, may never have more than an ephemeral meaning. And thus, in the shadow of every joy and every achievement lurks a wary doubt-filled uncomfortableness - an unlooked-for, grieving relative at a family celebration who you must, for your own sake, greet, embrace and shed tears with, if even for a bit.
My roommate in college would recall how relatives who fled from Sindh to India in ‘47 would keep wads of cash hidden in their mattresses. My brother recounts yet another perfect manifestation of the trauma of being uprooted from the verities of one’s life - the friend’s mother who carries her photo albums wherever she travels. These are not mere eccentricities.
But August also reminds me of how my parents patiently retrieved and consolidated the dank, crumbling flotsam and jetsam of our hopes, and rebuilt and built anew. August is also about such fortitude - and acknowledgement of and gratitude for being fortunate.
Less, much much less, fortunate this August are the victims of the recent floods in Bangladesh and elsewhere in South Asia. A number of organizations are collecting money and doing excellent work for flood relief. A provisional list is provided below. I would encourage readers to donate generously. I also hope that the work of relief extends beyond the immediate delivery of food, water, medicine and shelter to the victims - to helping those affected rebuild their lives, hopes and dreams in the longer run.
* Chief Advisor’s Relief Fund - check with your local Bangladeshi Embassy.
* Drishtipat - is collecting money for BRAC and Phiriye Ano Bangladesh (http://www.drishtipat.org/flood/ - Link also contains a couple of other organizations that are collecting money)
* Occassional Addafication blogger, Shamarukh Mohiuddin’s working with Global Works Foundation to raise money for flood victims. Donations are tax deductible. (http://www.globalworksfoundation.org/ )
* Oxfam America - Global Emergencies Fund (https://donate.oxfamamerica.org/02/gl_emerg)
* Oxfam UK - South Asia Flood Relief (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/emergencies/sasia_floods07.html)
Comment-ers, feel free to notify me of more organizations that you may know of that are doing relief work and seeking donations. I will add them to the list.
These things keep changing in terms of their content, but remain always the most seductive form of procrastination. I’ve borrowed the name but changed the format around a bit from the legendary Radio 2 show.
The ten records that would be the equal, and perhaps even preferable to any Man Friday were I ever to end up deserted on some island, as I most surely would if I ventured out to sea:
2.Up the Bracket-The Libertines
3.Santiago, Chile 23/11/2005-Pearl Jam
5.Hats off to the Buskers-The View
7.Automatic for the People-R.E.M
9.The Stone Roses-The Stone Roses
And one 60-minute mixed tape, for any songs I missed out:
3.Tangled up in Blue-Bob Dylan
5.What Katie Did-The Libertines
6.Everybody here wants you-Jeff Buckley
7.The Thrill is Gone-Gary Moore with B.B King
8.Local Hero(Wild Theme)-Dire Straits
9.Little Wing/Maggot Brain-Pearl Jam (Milwaukee, WI 7/9/95)
Hoping the island would have the natural accompaniments.
It’s time to revive this franchise. Via Marginal Revolution:
In fact, the world now has more regional trade schemes than countries.
Planning to head back to the City tomorrow. This blogger should then be back in action. In the meantime, the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Discuss.
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