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Friday, February 19, 2010

[ALOCHONA] BRAC in business



BRAC in business

Fazle Hasan Abed has built one of the world's most commercially-minded and successful NGOs

Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Arise, Abed

SMILING and dapper, Fazle Hasan Abed hardly seems like a revolutionary. A Bangladeshi educated in Britain, an admirer of Shakespeare and Joyce, and a former accountant at Shell, he is the son of a distinguished family: his maternal grandfather was a minister in the colonial government of Bengal; a great-uncle was the first Bengali to serve in the governor of Bengal's executive council. This week he received a very traditional distinction of his own: a knighthood. Yet the organisation he founded, and for which his knighthood is a gong of respect, has probably done more than any single body to upend the traditions of misery and poverty in Bangladesh. Called BRAC, it is by most measures the largest, fastest-growing non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the world—and one of the most businesslike.

Although Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel peace prize in 2006 for helping the poor, his Grameen Bank was neither the first nor the largest microfinance lender in his native Bangladesh; BRAC was. Its microfinance operation disburses about $1 billion a year. But this is only part of what it does: it is also an internet-service provider; it has a university; its primary schools educate 11% of Bangladesh's children. It runs feed mills, chicken farms, tea plantations and packaging factories. BRAC has shown that NGOs do not need to be small and that a little-known institution from a poor country can outgun famous Western charities. In a book on BRAC entitled "Freedom from Want", Ian Smillie calls it "undoubtedly the largest and most variegated social experiment in the developing world. The spread of its work dwarfs any other private, government or non-profit enterprise in its impact on development."

None of this seemed likely in 1970, when Sir Fazle turned Shell's offices in Chittagong into a refuge for victims of a deadly cyclone. BRAC—which started as an acronym, Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee, and became a motto, "building resources across communities"—surmounted its early troubles by combining two things that rarely go together: running an NGO as a business and taking seriously the social context of poverty.

BRAC earns from its operations about 80% of the money it disburses to the poor (the remainder is aid, mostly from Western donors). It calls a halt to activities that require endless subsidies. At one point, it even tried financing itself from the tiny savings of the poor (ie, no aid at all), though this drastic form of self-help proved a step too far: hardly any lenders or borrowers put themselves forward. From the start, Sir Fazle insisted on brutal honesty about results. BRAC pays far more attention to research and "continuous learning" than do most NGOs. David Korten, author of "When Corporations Rule the World", called it "as near to a pure example of a learning organisation as one is likely to find."

What makes BRAC unique is its combination of business methods with a particular view of poverty. Poverty is often regarded primarily as an economic problem which can be alleviated by sending money. Influenced by three "liberation thinkers" fashionable in the 1960s—Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich—Sir Fazle recognised that poverty in Bangladeshi villages is also a result of rigid social stratification. In these circumstances, "community development" will help the rich more than the poor; to change the poverty, you have to change the society.

That view might have pointed Sir Fazle towards left-wing politics. Instead, the revolutionary impetus was channelled through BRAC into development. Women became the institution's focus because they are bottom of the heap and most in need of help: 70% of the children in BRAC schools are girls. Microfinance encourages the poor to save but, unlike the Grameen Bank, BRAC also lends a lot to small companies. Tiny loans may improve the lot of an individual or family but are usually invested in traditional village enterprises, like owning a cow. Sir Fazle's aim of social change requires not growth (in the sense of more of the same) but development (meaning new and different activities). Only businesses create jobs and new forms of productive enterprise.

After 30 years in Bangladesh, BRAC has more or less perfected its way of doing things and is spreading its wings round the developing world. It is already the biggest NGO in Afghanistan, Tanzania and Uganda, overtaking British charities which have been in the latter countries for decades. Coming from a poor country—and a Muslim one, to boot—means it is less likely to be resented or called condescending. Its costs are lower, too: it does not buy large white SUVs or employ large white men.

Its expansion overseas may, however, present BRAC with a new problem. Robert Kaplan, an American writer, says that NGOs fill the void between thousands of villages and a remote, often broken, government. BRAC does this triumphantly in Bangladesh—but it is a Bangladeshi organisation. Whether it can do the same elsewhere remains to be seen.
 


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[ALOCHONA] Ah Rice ....



Ah Rice ....
 
 
 


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[ALOCHONA] Bangladesh: a quest for justice



Bangladesh: a quest for justice

The search for accountability for the genocide in Bangladesh in 1971 needs international support, write Jalal Alamgir and Tazreena Sajjad

IF ASKED to identify the five most known 20th-century genocides, most informed citizens would probably start with the Nazi holocaust and go on to name Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, and Darfur. There is little likelihood that they will include the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh – a tragedy that has become largely invisible in much of the world's public discourse about genocide.
   
It is an extraordinary act of forgetting. For the bloodbath in March-December 1971 – when the Pakistani army massacred a largely unarmed Bengali population in the then integral part of Pakistan's state known as 'East Pakistan', in an effort to quash the region's demand for autonomy – was at the time the biggest story in the world's media.
   
The killing-spree began with the slaughter of around 10,000 civilians within three weeks; by June 1971, headlines in the Sunday Times and New Statesman in Britain were referring to 'genocide'. In a pattern familiar from earlier experiences of genocide, specific categories of people were targeted: non-combatant Bengali men and boys (who were killed en masse); Bengali intellectuals, prominent artists, and cultural icons (who were rounded up by Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators in door-to-door searches and taken away for mass execution); Hindus; and women. Ten million refugees sought safety in India.
   The treatment of women was horrific. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 were raped and sexually violated. Many, including girls below 10 years of age, were kept as sex-slaves in military camps.
   
An accurate count of the victims has never been established; but it is estimated that these nine months saw at least one million people slaughtered, and perhaps as many as 3 million. Even the lower figure would make Bangladesh among the fastest as well as the largest modern genocides – comparable to those in Rwanda (800,000 killed in May-June 1994) and Indonesia (between 1 and 1.5 million killed in 1965-66).
   
   An elusive accounting
   BANGLADESHIS achieved their independence in 1971, but in subsequent years they were unable to find psychological or emotional 'closure' on the violent birth of the new state. Pakistan has not issued any formal apology for the atrocities its forces committed, although some elements of Pakistani civil society acknowledge the atrocities perpetrated against the Bengali people. India repatriated 90,000 Pakistani soldiers whom it had detained during the conflict, under the terms of the Simla peace accord; but neither they nor their commanders ever faced trial.
   
There was an initial effort to establish a process of accountability, when – within six weeks of independence – the post-liberation government announced the Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunals) Order. This was followed in July 1973 by the passing of the War Crimes Tribunal Act which allowed for the prosecution of individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In these early years of the new state, the government also arrested several thousand individuals suspected of war crimes. But in November 1973, amid fear of turmoil if the issue was pursued, prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman abruptly issued an amnesty order that released most alleged collaborators and made no further provision for ensuring accountability.
   
The decision [by the late Ziaur Rahman's regime] to permit the re-entry of Jamaat-e-Islami into Bangladesh's political scene [and its acceptance and indulgence by the Awami League, especially between early-1980s and mid-1990s] was an additional blow to the prospects for justice over the events of 1971. Jamaat had opposed Bangladesh's independence; it had organised the dreaded al-Badr and al-Shams death-squads that were responsible for mass killings; and it was led by people who had committed war crimes.
   
The party took advantage of its restored status to position itself as a kingmaker. It made an alliance with the rightwing Bangladesh Nationalist Party, gained the support of key military generals, and in 2001 saw its leaders inducted into the ruling cabinet. It eventually became the third most powerful party in the country, and used its strong links to the Middle East to import radical ideas into Bangladesh's national political discourse.
   
The impunity of the collaborators had a profound effect on Bangladesh's politics over later decades. The 1971 genocide became an artefact, a constant if shadowy presence but something removed from actionable politics. Two linked developments disrupted the veneer of 'collective amnesia': Jamaat's arrival in government, and the recasting of Bangladesh's liberation war as a 'civil war', in effect an event with limited casualties for which both 'sides' bore responsibility.
   
The politically-driven attempt to minimise the scale and horrors of the genocide by those directly complicit was vigorously opposed by the combatants of the 1971 war and their frontline commanders. They launched a nationwide movement demanding trials for the war criminals, and won strong support from human rights organisations, intellectuals, journalists, and families of the dead and disappeared. The centre-left Awami League endorsed the idea and included the prosecution of war crimes as a manifesto pledge in the December 2008 elections. Its landslide victory, and the crushing defeat of Jamaat, provided an opportunity to reopen histories, memories and court proceedings.
   
   An unfinished history
   BANGLADESH'S government has sought to deliver on its pledge to hold war-crimes trials, though it is facing renewed legal, political and logistical obstacles. Its current plan is to use the War Crimes Tribunal Act of 1973 (suitably amended) as a legal foundation for the establishment of domestic courts.
   
But a rushed and expedient process has brought problems. The government did not consider adequately the opinions of legal experts and advocacy groups which pointed out that the act's definition of key concepts (war crimes, rape, command responsibility) is incomplete or inadequate. There remain questions about procedural transparency, the independence and gender composition of the judiciary, and the expertise of prosecutors in criminal and international law. In addition, many survivors of the genocide are dismayed that the trials will focus only on local collaborators and will not allow the pursuit of Pakistani commanders.
   
Bangladesh does have competent lawyers and a legal system stable enough to initiate a domestic process; however, political volatility and the limitations of the 1973 act raise concern about whether an internal process alone can see the trials through to the end. Yet putting the trials on a solid footing is crucial to ensure that they will continue to have official political backing in the event that the Awami League is voted out of power when its term ends in 2013.
   
The international challenges are also daunting. The United Nations has pledged technical assistance, and recommended four of its war-crimes experts to work with Bangladesh's courts. But the act's provision for the death penalty will reduce international support. The interests of states in the region will also come into play. Pakistan opposes the trials, and has sought to mobilise the Jamaat-e-Islami's allies in the Middle East against them. India's backing for the process may be limited to rhetoric, as it has its relationship with Pakistan and the United States to consider. India also holds critical evidence that would assist court proceedings, and principled cooperation with Bangladesh would foster much-needed goodwill between the two countries.
   
The United States is both implicated in the genocide and uncomfortable in the process of establishing legal accountability for the crimes of 1971. Henry Kissinger, national-security adviser in Richard M Nixon's first administration, bears most responsibility for the US policy of backing its cold-war ally, Pakistan, in its brutal campaign. America should release all its official documents from that dark chapter in history.
   
Bangladesh needs support from friends and allies abroad if it is to bring the legal process to a successful conclusion. For there is an interest here that goes far beyond politics. The demand that those who perpetrated the crimes of 1971 should be brought to justice is a reminder that the policy of forgetting does not work because the victims always remember. True, a handful of trials will not vindicate the loss of 1-3 million lives and the sufferings of survivors. Many of those culpable of war crimes will, even in the most just outcome, never be found or punished.
   
Nonetheless, it is imperative that even limited justice is served for one of humanity's worst massacres. This will provide closure to a scarred populace; it will morally discredit entrenched policies of immunity; it will help strengthen the rule of law; it will mitigate persistent conditions for future conflict; and it will allow Bangladeshis at last to fulfil their core responsibility towards the dead – and the living.
   
openDemocracy, February 9. Jalal Alamgir is assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston while Tazreena Sajjad is a doctoral student at the American University, Washington DC
 



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[ALOCHONA] India Maoist attack kills 11 in Bihar village



India Maoist attack kills 11 in Bihar village

 
 

Suspected Maoist rebels have killed 11 people in an attack on a village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

 
Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh
Maoists have a presence across large parts of India
 
More than 100 rebels attacked Phulwaria Korasi village in Jamui district early Thursday morning, officials said. The assailants blew up a house with explosives, set on fire nearly 30 mud huts with thatched roofs, and opened fire at the villagers.

More than 6,000 people have died during the rebels' 20-year fight for communist rule in many Indian states.

The Indian government recently began a major offensive against the rebels in several states. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as India's "greatest internal security challenge". The rebels now have a presence in 223 of India's 600-odd districts.

'Revenge attack'

The attackers reached the village, nearly 200 km (124 miles) from the state capital, Patna, after midnight, BBC Hindi's Manikant Thakur reports from Patna. The rebels went around the village, setting homes ablaze and firing at people. The village is only three km from a police camp, but residents alleged that the police did not arrive there for several hours.

According to reports, the villagers had killed eight rebels about a fortnight ago and Thursday morning's attack was believed to a revenge by the Maoists. Local officials said the toll was expected to go up as several people were still unaccounted for. Some reports said the rebels had abducted a few villagers, officials said.

On Monday, the Maoists attacked a camp of paramilitary forces in the neighbouring West Bengal state, killing 24 troops. Nearly 50 rebels on motorcycles encircled the camp of the Eastern Frontier Rifles (ERF) at Silda village. The state government has ordered an inquiry into the killings.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8521269.stm

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[ALOCHONA] HMV record !



Farakka not at fault: water minister
 
Dhaka, Feb 18 (bdnews24.com) — Water resources minister Ramesh Chandra Sen brushed off a common allegation on Thursday that India's Farakka Barrage causes droughts and floods in Bangladesh, with the backdrop of renewed Bangla-Indo ties.

Referring to a long held contention that the barrage disrupted life and livelihoods in the lower riparian regions of the Padma river in Bangladesh, he said rather the harm done was due to corruption in river management projects.

"Corruption in dredging projects is responsible for all this," said Ramesh Chandra Sen at a workshop on regional cooperation at the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs on Wednesday. Without naming any names, Sen alleged, "One minister pocketed the money (in the past) avoiding necessary dredging."

Regarding the possibility of India constructing another dam, the Tipaimukh on the Barak river in Manipur state, he reiterated that the Indian prime minister had pledged not to construct anything that could be harmful for Bangladesh. "A dam can be set up only when the feasibility studies and the hydraulic survey assure that it would be harmless," the minister said.

The minister stressed on improved bilateral relations to address any complication regarding water sharing between the countries. The two-day workshop had two more sessions—role of media and trade—attended by home minister Sahara Khatun and commerce minister Faruk Khan.

Prime minister's advisor HT Imam said absence of good relation with India was a constraint to Bangladesh's development. "There have been a number of conspiracies which led to the deterioration of relations with India and fostered anti-India perceptions."

Commerce minister Faruk Khan said politicians and bureaucrats created the constraints in trade relations between India and Bangladesh. "Our politicians use trade as political weapon, although it ultimately benefits the people," the minister said.

"We're moving forward to address the problems after prime minister Sheikh Hasina's visit of India," he added. BILIA chairman Wali-ur Rahman chaired the sessions.


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