Banner Advertiser

Saturday, October 30, 2010

[ALOCHONA] All powerful CBAs in banks



All powerful CBAs in banks
 
 
 
 



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Russians join American troops in Afghanistan drug raid



I had no idea, Russia has also sent troops to Afghanistan. This means, troops of 57 nations are in Afghanistan and 58th is going to be Bangladesh. It would be the 7th Moslim Nation to join after UAE, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghistan and Tajikistan. Exact number of Troops arriving from Bangladesh is not known so far. May be India would be the next.
----------

 

Russia has criticized US anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan

Russian and US forces raided four drug laboratories in Afghanistan in their first joint anti-drug operation. More than a dent in trafficking, the raid represents growing cooperation between Russia and the West.

Russian and American forces conducted their first joint anti-narcotics raid in Afghanistan early on Thursday, signaling closer cooperation between the two countries in the battle to control drug cultivation in the war-torn country, the world's largest producer of opium.
Russian anti-drug chief Viktor Ivanov told a news conference on Friday that the raid took place near the Pakistani border, and that Russian and US forces were supported by helicopters and Afghan police.
"Four laboratories were found and destroyed - three for heroin and one for morphine," Ivanov said. "As a result, 932 kilograms (2,055 pounds) of very highly concentrated heroin and 156 kilograms of opium were destroyed."
 
[...]



__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Why India's Rise is Business As Usual



                 I am reposting a W. Dalrymple article that Rebecca had posted back in 2007.  No source URL is Rebecca's fault, not mine. 
 
                     In addition to what Dalrymple says here I would like to point out that unlike Columbus in the Caribbean islands and Spanish Conquistadors in South America, the Portugese were not able to engage in outright acts of genocide in India.  Standing in the way of turning savage heathens into civilized Christians were the Indian (Indo-Muslim) civilization.  Recent study of a Portugese language scholar from Brazil reveals how the Portugese royalties and Goan administrators were watching events in Agra's Mughal Court for an opportune moment to grab for the holy purpose of Christianization.  East India Company's paid factotums like John Stuart Mill and T. B. Macaulay hid their evangelicalistic desires under the cloak of European Enlightenment brought through an education system and an Indian Penal Code.
 
                Hindus of India should thank the Mughal India for providing a civilizational cover against the missionary European colonial zealots.
 
                        Farida Majid
............................................................................
 
Why India's Rise is Business As Usual

By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE 


 
The idea that India is a poor country is a relatively recent one. Historically, South Asia was always famous as the richest region of the globe. Ever since Alexander the Great first penetrated the Hindu Kush , Europeans fantasized about the wealth of these lands where the Greek geographers said that gold was dug by up by gigantic ants and guarded by griffins, and where precious jewels were said to lie scattered on the ground like dust.

At their heights during the 17th century, the subcontinent's fabled Mughal emperors were rivaled only by their Ming counterparts in China . For their contemporaries in distant Europe , they were potent symbols of power and wealth. In Milton 's Paradise Lost, for example, the great Mughal cities of Agra and Lahore are revealed to Adam after the Fall as future wonders of God's creation. This was hardly an overstatement. By the 17th century, Lahore had grown even larger and richer than Constantinople and, with its two million inhabitants, dwarfed both London and Paris .

What changed was the advent of European colonialism. Following Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to the East in 1498, European colonial traders — first the Portuguese, then the Dutch and finally the British — slowly wrecked the old trading network and imposed with their cannons and caravels a Western imperial system of command economics. It was only at the very end of the 18th century, after the East India Company began to cash in on the Mughal Empire's riches that Europe had for the first time in history a favorable balance of trade with Asia . The era of Indian economic decline had begun, and it was precipitous. In 1600, when the East India Company was founded, Britain was generating 1.8% of the world's GDP, while India was producing 22.5%. By 1870, at the peak of the Raj , Britain was generating 9.1%, while India had been reduced for the first time to the epitome of a Third World nation, a symbol across the globe of famine, poverty and deprivation.

In hindsight, what is happening today with the rise of India and China is not some miraculous novelty — as it is usually depicted in the Western press — so much as a return to the traditional pattern of global trade in the medieval and ancient world, where gold drained from West to East in payment for silks and spices and all manner of luxuries undreamed of in the relatively primitive capitals of Europe.

It is worth remembering this as India aspires to superpower status. Economic futurologists all agree that China and India during the 21st century will come to dominate the global economy. Various intelligence agencies estimate that China will overtake the U.S. between 2030 and 2040 and India will overtake the U.S. by roughly 2050, as measured in dollar terms. Measured by purchasing-power parity, India is already on the verge of overtaking Japan to become the third largest economy in the world.

Looking back at the role Europeans have played in South Asia until their departure in August 1947, there is certainly much that the West can be said to have contributed to Indian life: the Portuguese brought the chili pepper, while the British brought that other essential staple, tea — as well as the arguably more important innovations including democracy and the rule of law, railways, cricket and the English language. All contributed to India 's economic resurrection. But the British should keep their nostalgia and self-satisfaction surrounding the colonial period within strict limits. For all the irrigation projects, the great engineering achievements and the famous imperviousness to bribes of the officers of the Indian Civil Service, the Raj nevertheless presided over the destruction of India 's political, cultural and artistic self-confidence as well as the impoverishment of the Indian economy.

Today, things are slowly returning to historical norms. Last year the richest man in the U.K. was for the first time an ethnic Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, and Britain 's largest steel manufacturer, Corus, has been bought by an Indian company, Tata. Extraordinary as it is, the rise of India and China is nothing more than a return to the ancient equilibrium of world trade, with Europeans no longer appearing as gun-toting, gunboat-riding colonial masters but instead reverting to their traditional role: that of eager consumers of the much celebrated manufactures, luxuries and services of the East.

William Dalrymple's latest book, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857, has just been awarded the Duff Cooper Prize for History and Biography 
 
 
 




__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Re: Trade gap with Delhi increases to $2.91b

Dear Alochoks,

The trade gap between India and BD has continued to widen and the current government has done nothing about this matter. India is choking the BD economy by exporting huge quantities of goods that local industry can not compete with.

An article on the Daily Star states that BD could earn $2.3Bn over 30 years if she allows trasit facility to India and other countries! This is a paultry (peanuts) figure compare to how much India will benefit in terms of export revenues! BD earns more in exporting garments and other goods in a single year!

If India is allowed to export their goods and services via BD it will make their goods (such as garments, leather and electronics good) more competetive compare to BD and most of the industries in BD will disappear overnight.

A relative of mine works in an air freight company. One day I asked him why most of the garment manufacturer are located around Dhaka and Chittagong? He stated that if we had garment factories in places like Rangpur or Dinajpur - then the transit cost of finished products makes it less competetive to sell to the foreign buyers. Northern towns like Rangpur and Dinajpur are only 150 miles way from the Capital!

Whereas cities like Delhi, Mumbai in India are thousand miles away from the ports of Chittagong. By transiting their goods through BD they will save significant amount of hard cash in exporting their goods. They will be more competetive and our industries in BD will not be able to compete with Indian industries.

Does our politicians care about this at all? Does the civil society of BD - those babu sahibs living in luxury apartments in cities of BD give a damn about this? Well, I live in the UK and I could say to myself it does not affect me, so why should I bother writing this from thousands of miles away from BD? It appears that some of us living thousands of miles way from home cares more about the home than those who are living in it!

Salam.
-----------------


--- In alochona@yahoogroups.com, "ezajur" <Ezajur@...> wrote:
>
> An hour of Faruk's valuable time at the Indian ministry should soon solve the problem.
>
> Also, with a bit of luck we could sell enough fish and gadha marka batteries at the border haats to really close the trade gap.
>
>
>


------------------------------------

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.comYahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alochona/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
alochona-digest@yahoogroups.com
alochona-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
alochona-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[ALOCHONA] Leave the Army Alone



Leave the Army Alone

 

Recent unfortunate incidents at Rupganj have raised concerns. The bottom line is that the patriotic armed forces of the country must be above all controversy. If the Rupganj incident is taken as an example, it is clear that they had done nothing without government clearance. The project was a government-approved decision and so the army should not have had to bear the brunt of criticism. Such confrontational incidents go against the interests of the nation. As we see one institution toppling after the other, we cannot help but feel alarm where the armed forces our concern. The government should avoid using the army beyond their "terms of reference", for things like traffic control, dal bhaat projects and so on. This institution cannot be allowed to succumb to intentional or unintentional controversy. The army must be let alone. Maj Gen (Retd) Syed Muhammad Ibrahim, Bir Protik analyses the Rupganj incident for PROBE

by Maj Gen (Retd) Syed Muhammad Ibrahim, Bir Protik

India became independent on 15 August 1947 but only on 15 January 1950 did the first Indian officer (Lt. Gen. K.M. Cariappa) took over as the first Chief of Army Staff. Early in his tenure, Cariappa was told by Prime Minister Nehru to convert the psyche of the Indian Army from being an instrument of power-display of the British colonial government to an instrument of commitment and love towards the common men of sovereign India. This, of course, was a two way process. People had to be told in a language and manner which they understood, about the army's role and the way the people could help the army to play that role. Simultaneously, all ranks of the army, particularly the officers had to master the art and norms of dealing with civilians of all types in a working democracy. General Cariappa accomplished this task very well during his four year long tenure. In deed, India honored Cariappa by appointing him a Field Marshal in April 1986 in consideration of his invaluable contribution to the army in the initial years after independence.  

Bangladesh Army was born through blood and sweat, as it inched forward during the 266 days long War of Liberation in 1971. The guns and the bullets whatever few there were in the hands of the freedom fighters, were but an essential asset. However, the greatest strength of the freedom fighters and the most valuable asset the freedom fighters possessed was the love and commitment of the people. The 9 month long war was for the most part, a guerilla war. The freedom fighter-guerillas were like fish in water. True, the generation of active participants of the war is no more in service; thus the legendary bondage between the army and the people seems to have developed fault-lines. I say so because, 39 years after independence of the country, the army suddenly came to a face to face stand off with common men in a part of the country: Rupganj thana in the district of Narayanganj. Let me go a little back in our history.

On 02-03 January 1993, there was trouble between Bangladesh Navy in 'BNS Isa Khan' and the neighboring people of Bandar Tilla in Halishahar in southern part of Chittagong city. Mistakes had been first made by sailors, indeed they were making it for quiet sometime without any effort of correction. Local people reacted but while doing so they also made mistakes. However, the mistake made by both parties equally, on the days of trouble was to encourage rumors and not act on proper information in time. Timely intervention by political leaders of both major parties helped resolve conflict. Two senior officers of the Navy were considered to have fallen short in their ability to command during the crisis, thus they were given early retirement. The public did not have commanders to be punished!

In 2008, army camp in the gymnasium of Dhaka University came under fire from unarmed students and teachers of the university. The turmoil surfaced on a particular afternoon but discontent had been simmering for quite sometime. Parts of Dhaka city were ablaze for two days. Did not any one high up in the command on the armed forces made query about the unfeasibility of maintaining an army camp in the heart of the university?

In 2007 and 2008 during caretaker government, Operation Dal-Bhat created shortage of man power in the border, it created shortage of trust and confidence in the mind of the soldiers about the officers and it created an opportunity for the men to discover the negative loopholes in consumer-commodity business. Finally it left deep scars in the BDR which became gangrenous. Ultimately the worst carnage took place on the 25-26 February 2009. Was it a must to have employed the BDR in the said operation and invite the gangrene? The gangrene was not cured because no medicine was given, on the other hand it spread because outsides provided virus-food to the gangrene. The mutiny at Pilkhana on 25 February took place under the flood light of television cameras and spot light of the government machinery. The highest military command of the country stood deaf and dumb-founded, motionless while 57 bright officers got killed. Media brothers and sisters intended no harm, but harm came without telling them. Early in 2010 an army Sergeant in Baghaichori of the district of Khagrachhari in Chittagong Hill Tracts was assaulted by local hill men. After Pilkhana and after Khagrachhari, army-bashing on the talk-shows became a fashion till somehow the reins were pulled.  

Rupganj is a 'thana' in the district of Narayanganj, astride river Sitalakhya. Upazilla Headquarters is located at Murapara on the Eastern bank of the  river. Crow-fly distance from Dhaka cantonment to the upazilla headquarters is about 11 kilometers due east. There is a major road on the eastern side of Dhaka city called Progoti Sarani. From the American Embassy (located on the Progoti Sarani) in Baridhara diplomatic zone, Murapara is about 8 kilometers due east. The land on the eastern side of Dhaka city and on the western side of Sitalakhya, is low lying.

Basundhara Residential Area now lying in north-east corner of Dhaka city is very well known and pieces of land are very costly there. The creators of Basundhara were excellent entrepreneurs. It has added more than seventy thousand apartments to Dhaka city, it has provided space for a very large convention center, an internationally reputed hospital and international quality school. It has also shown the way how to fill-up low lying lands and create residential areas. To the businessman in real estate or housing sector, it has shown the path of making money. As a result, north-east of Dhaka city, east of Dhaka city, south of Dhaka city and south-east of Dhaka city has seen blossoming of numerous housing companies or real estate companies. Some companies are big while most are small. Few only have sufficient land to organize a housing area. All of them have they ability to influence news paper reading and TV watching members of the public. Government organization called RAJUK has created Purbachal 10 km. north-east of Uttara Model Town and 6 km. north-west of Murapara.

There are two ways of developing an area for housing. If the land or area is low lying then it has to be filled up by sand or earth; where as, if the land or area is high ground then it has to be leveled. Purbachal is a mixer of high ground and low lying ground. Private sector housing companies found the low lying areas around Dhaka a heaven, because profit margin is better.  The authorities of the army housing scheme or society seems to have followed the foot steps of Purbachal and Basundhara, if not other real estate companies operating in the same area. They did not passively realize that putting your step on the mark of your predecessor's foot is also difficult; modification is needed. Fighting a war needs courage, intelligence and reasonable resources. Conducting in the business of buying and selling land requires intelligence, patience and the decision to be semi-truthful. Readers of Bangladeshi newspapers between 24 and 26 October and the viewers of Bangladeshi TV channels can make their own interpretation. Listeners of BBC Bangla Service have heard the Brigadier General In charge of the Army Housing Society (AHS) Project and myself together between 6:30 and 7:30 am on Tuesday 26 October. 

From the good old days of British Army, residential areas were developed, within or in the outskirts of major cities like Delhi or Karachi,   only for defense personnel. The tradition was followed by the Indian Army and Pakistan Army with minor modifications to suit changing times. Bangladesh Army also followed the same legacy and style. There are four (Banani, Mohakhali, Baridhara and Mirpur) Defense Officers Housing Societies in Dhaka city; and one in Chittagong city next to the cantonment. Such land belonging to the Ministry of Defense and spare-able for housing societies has become scarce now. But the necessity of creating accommodation for retired army officers remains as strong as it was one or two or three decades ago. Only as an example, about four hundred plus retired army or navy or air force officers were given plots in the DOHS Mohakhali. Another one hundred plus officers were given one plot per four officers. Five hundred plots or five hundred buildings are now sheltering more than four thousand families.

Junior Commissioned Officers (JCO) of the armed forces also deserve attention in respect of giving them accommodation in retired life. By the time they go on retirement, they are close to 50 years of age or little more. Those who lose land and homestead due to river erosion, remain particularly worried about post-retirement life. Their savings are not enough to enable them for buying land in prime locations of major cities. In 39 years of independent Bangladesh this matter drew attention, but not enough concrete effort towards mitigating the problem. In this column also I am not delving into the problem any more. 

To meet the unavoidable requirement of housing for armed forces officers without any land being available in the Ministry of Defense, many alternatives were thought of. The best was possibly chosen. AHS was organized in the style of a limited company but limited companies are not run in a military manner; they are run according to the Companies Act 1994. Only law does not make a company walk or run; men make the difference. The task that AHS took upon itself was cumbersome, and in the context of land selling / land buying culture, tricky. To drive this point home and to conclude that the trouble at Rupganj was unavoidable, I am quoting couple of sentences from page 101 and 102 of the book 'Bangladesh: Reflections on the water' by James J. Novak.

"… Bangladesh's middle and upper classes are rife with vicious rumors and are staggering under the weight of fear and insecurity that paralyzes thought and creates hysteria unknown in the West or modern Japan. This undercurrent discourages experimentation, creates skepticism about new courses of action, and plays into the culture's traditional value system, which is based on shunning those who seek wealth or disrupt societal values rooted in rule of elders, as in the villages. Even more, it kindles a corrosive suspicion of other people's motives, a suspicion that runs deep within those who lead the country. … Such attitudes discourage entrepreneurial activities and make success something to hide behind false humility. … Such corrosives hate also is expressed in litigation, where land-lords sue one another over petty slights or worse, fabricate criminal charges and bribe judges or even opposing lawyers. …". To make the readers understand what he wrote thus far, James Novak quoted a devilishly cruel description of the Bengali character given by an English historian by the name of Macaulay (sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century); it reads: "What the horns are to the buffalo, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty according to the Greek song is to women, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. …" .

Major General Ibrahim hates the statement of historian Macaulay but if there was any space where Macaulay could be accommodated, it was and is, in the vicious business of land buying and land selling. So quite naturally and totally unknowingly, bosses and executives of the AHS walked into the vicious arena in Rupganj. By courtesy of TV channels, daily newspapers and internet, whatever has become public knowledge about the AHS and problem with them in Rupganj indicates that the plan was over- ambitious and was being implemented in a military fashion. Area being anticipated to be purchased was too large. Seniors of the AHS antagonized others in the same business, they passed military style orders to pure civilian officials and they scared those who used to earn a good living by doing the middle-men's job in the business of land buying and land selling. Hostility towards the AHS ran across political boundaries. Rumors flew faster than imagination and could not be checked—particularly on 23 October. Given the circumstances including the rumors, the explosion of popular anger and instigated-violence at 'Tanmashari army camp' on the morning of 23 October 2010 was due.

The AHS was a project approved by the government, the deployment of soldiers was a known phenomena but the management of the project was not in proven hands. Efforts to avoid the explosion were made, but only at the eleventh hour. Efforts could not over power the conspirators. The project was not supported by adequate intelligence-cover. One of the final and finer comments is that man-management within the army is a direct command function, while managing men not in uniform by military commanders is a catalytic function.

The involvement of officers and men in uniform in paddy fields and play field of schools has been questioned not by us, the retired community, but by the larger civil society. I have no ready-made answer to all the queries of all the people, and I have full appreciation of the sensitivity of the situation being faced by the armed forces, nay the army. Lives of soldiers were saved, loss of civilian life was minimal. The army-command deserve and need our good-wishes.

Given the burden of service anywhere in the country and abroad, a military officer is bound not to find time and secure environment to invest in land. We want to discourage military officers from getting bogged down into land-related litigations. Therefore, the necessity of creating housing facilities for the retired community is beyond question. The AHS can go on, of course, under a different style of management, in Rupganj or better locations. The Government of the popular leader Sheikh Hasina will hopefully continue to support the AHS. With government blessings, RAJUK and Ministry of Public Works can offer a helping hand. 'Land Developers Association' and REHAB can offer business collaboration on mutually beneficial terms. The area proposed to be purchased can be reduced in size for the present and enlarged incrementally. Giving priority to serving officers of the armed forces, not army only, a modest beginning can be made.

Damage whatever had to be, to the honor, sentiments and image of the army, individually or collectively has been done. The explosion has injured the self respect of the junior, the expectations of the mid level and the confidence of the elders in the army. What has it done to the retired officers? They are saddened, I for one when called upon to comment in the media, I am left bewildered; how do I honor the ego and emotion of my former profession and my current environment? What is not welcome is politicization of the incidence. There are only two major political parties in the country; they can divide anything in the country between the two. We urge upon them not to lay political hands on the armed forces. The gains if any on the part of either will be very temporary. On the contrary the two major political parties can contribute towards restructuring the relationship between the armed forces and the public in the area of the explosion, as well as across the country.

The role of the military in a democratic environment has to be understood for the second time and fresh. The higher echelons of command and administration within the defense-world may give a thought to redefining two items, namely: (firstly:) parameters of civil military relations in Bangladesh and (secondly:) ways of executing welfare-projects of the armed forces. Being the founder chairman of a registered political party which profess 'Kallyan' meaning welfare, I can only pray for the best for everyone as I close the pen, seven minutes after sunset on the 26th October 2010. The army needs to be left alone.

Major General Ibrahim was a gallant freedom fighter, a brilliant student and a successful military commander. Having left the sword in 1996, he took up the pen—he has done very well in that. One of the leading security analysts in the country, he is currently a PhD Researcher in the University of Dhaka. He writes for Bangla Language dailies as well as for PROBE.


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

[ALOCHONA] Fw: Rascals, rogues, freebooters [1 Attachment]

[Attachment(s) from Isha Khan included below]



--- On Sat, 10/30/10, humayun gauhar <humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com> wrote:

From: humayun gauhar <humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com>
Subject: 004 Rascals, rogues, freebooters
To: "Humayun Gauhar 786" <humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, October 30, 2010, 2:31 AM

Pakistan Today                                                    October the 31st 2010

 

Rascals, rogues, freebooters

Humayun Gauhar

 

Winston Churchill was against 'granting' independence to India and Pakistan just yet. They are not ready for it, he argued. On the eve of independence, he wrote:

 

"Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all leaders will be of low caliber and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India and Pakistan will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air and water would be taxed."

 

Was Churchill right? Young Ammar Belal the fashion designer told us in an interview what it is like 63 years later. Asked, "How do you characterize the Pakistani way of doing business?" he replied, "Survival in the Gaza Strip." Well put Sir, very well put indeed. However, if you think things are dire now, "you ain't seen nothin' yet." You do not know how bad it will – will, not can.

 

We of this benighted subcontinent have all worked overtime to prove old Winston right, with Pakistan leading the field. As for India, all I can say is that the India that propaganda presents to us is an illusion, quite another country from the reality on the ground. The pipedream purveyed is that it is equal or even second to China. Really? With 76 percent of its people living in poverty, and growing? What price then the story of its great 'economic success' told in cold statistics? What has it done for its people? Pakistan is not far behind with 74 percent living in poverty and 50 percent in abject poverty, and growing too. So let us make a dish fit for a pauper out of all the reports on the economy that only underline their authors' alienation from reality. At least the hungry will have something to eat; paper is, after all, a vegetable. Pakistan has the added distinction of becoming America's vassal, its sovereignty nothing more than symbols like a flag, a national anthem, a parliament house, palatial residences for its president and the prime minister and a Supreme Court building whose only distinction is that it could win an architectural competition.

Some writers often trot out a statement they attribute to the Quaid-e-Azam, that each successive government of Pakistan will be worse than its predecessor. Very Churchillian, but frankly, I cannot believe how such an intelligent man could have made such a preposterous statement, for it immediately begs two question:

"If you already knew this, Sir, why didn't you do something about it, like quickly make Pakistan a constitution signed and authenticated by you? It would have been very difficult for any subsequent parliament to mutilate, leave alone abrogate. You had enough time to prepare the document before Pakistan's inception. It would have been debated for three months in the constituent assembly that we inherited and then passed."

The second and more difficult question is: "If you already knew this, Sir, why did you make Pakistan in the first place? Was it not the idea that those Muslims of India who lived in Pakistan would be better off? How could that be possible if you already knew that we would have progressively deteriorating leaders and governments?"

I find it difficult to believe that Jinnah could have made such a stupid and callous statement and would like to know where he did so and when. Otherwise, those who purvey this are committing defamation and calumny.

Rascals, rogues, freebooters; leaders of low caliber and men of straw with sweet tongues and silly hearts we have had many. They have always fought amongst themselves and indulged in petty political squabbles but when survival or some petty political advantage so demands, they become bedfellows. They have plundered and looted the country no less than the British colonizer did. They are the colonizer's successors and come from the same mould forged by Macaulay that created a small class of Indians who would be British in every respect except for the colour of their skins, to act as their agents to exploit the native and plunder the country. They remain agents of he new colonizer America now called hegemon in modern political jargon, exploiting their people to the hilt, allowing them to be bombed, mindlessly following IMF-World Bank nostrums to economically colonize us to the point where we have mortgaged our children's futures and our country's soul. They could never tell the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. The time for delicacy has gone: today our government is totally and irrevocably bankrupt, our people are hurtling into ever-increasing poverty, governance is absent because government is absent, institution is preying upon institution, security is singularly absent and there is a free for all. Why labour the point: everyone knows about it.

With hopelessness piled upon frustration, no wonder there are angry people who criticize the likes of me who advocate that the system be allowed to proceed unhindered so that the people have time to learn. "You pseudo armchair intellectual with your amply belly full can say that, while more and more people will descend into greater wretchedness and want while your precious 'learning process' goes on." I not only sympathize with this sentiment, at one level I agree with it. But what is the alternative? That my understandably frustrated critics do not say. You only abort the process of a system when you have not only something better to replace it with but as importantly the means to implement it. What could the alternatives be? Certainly not another bout of army rule. We have to understand that the military is a part of the small establishment that benefits from this system and the anti-people status quo that it spawns. When it takes over, it does so to save the status quo and protect the benefits and privileges of the ruling class. It does not know any better. To expect revolution from a coup is not to understand either. A revolution upturns the existing status quo; a coup d' etat is literally a "hit against the State" that happens to save the status quo. They are two diametrically opposed things.

Look at past coups, even civilian ones, that claimed to be revolution. Lenin's 'revolution' was a coup by a minority (Bolsheviks) against the majority (Mensheviks). It failed and left the Russian people and those of their empire in no better a condition than they were in before. Colonel Nasser claimed a revolution of Arab socialism that would create a greater Arab union that he called the United Arab Republic. Decide for yourself. Colonel Gaddafi claimed that his coup was a revolution and even made it seem so by standing up to America for many years; today he has totally capitulated. To my mind, only three revolutions in modern times have been genuine: the Cuban, but poverty is still rife there, except for an excellent medical service. The Iranian, too early to tell, but while it stands up to America's bullying bravely its people are no better off, in danger of getting mired in obscurantism rather than a dynamic, modern ideology. The Chinese that has worked beautifully, has taken the greatest number of people out of hunger and poverty in the shortest time and made China into a growing economic and military powerhouse that is now challenging America sole superpower hegemony.

Do we have the possibility of a genuine revolution on our radar screens? I'm afraid not, unless you consider the polyglot that is called the 'Pakistani Taliban' revolutionaries. I do not. We will only descend into obscurant religious warlordism.

But remember one thing: all this talk about Pakistan being a failed or a failing state is just so much claptrap. Actually, we are a predator state. About that later.

humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

END



Attachment(s) from Isha Khan

1 of 1 File(s)


__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___

Re: [ALOCHONA] The danger of Grameenism



Friends


The Modern age invented "Micro-Credit" is a another tool of exploitation by the interest group serving the cause of the shrewed 1st World the so-called Champion  of the HR bla bla bla ????????? 

Robert McNamara, the great War Lord( Vietnam war) of Pentagon then President of WB and father of large scale NGO'sm throughout the globe had the mission n vision to lay a strong net work on the poor world in guise of dole giver(NGO's) and develop a formidable force called pressure group to keep the local politics on their toes and control.
He was very much successful in his endeavour which paved the way of birth of GRAMEEN/BRAC/PROSHIKA/ASHA ETC ETC N HUNDREDS OF MONEY LENDING SHYLOCK'S  in Bangladesh alone.
These NGOs are just implementing the cherished goal of the founding father n keeping the populace under their grip as defaulter n force them to act as pressure group favouring one or the other political parties or business interest groups.

Lot of evaluation has been done by concerned groups regarding the efficacy of the coveted "MICRO - CREDIT"  but the finding are not encouraging and exciting as propagated by them as well the Norwegian Committee for Peace.  

Faruque Alamgir

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 1:14 AM, <qrahman@netscape.net> wrote:
 

There are too many Micro-credit institutions in our country. Too often I heard many horror stories about "Kisti" and how worried some people are about it.

However when you have a headache, you do not cut off your head, you should seek medication for i t and "Fix" the problem.

Few can argue if we would have been better off without any kind of micro-credit initiatives. We are imperfect people with "Perfect" expectations from others!!

Well, let us look into the "grameen" model and shave off what does not work and keep what works. Maybe these institutions needs to be monitored/regulated more. With our available mobile and IT technology, it is not hard to do.

Dr. Yunus has a little weakness for glamor world. Last time I checked, it is not a crime.
:-)

Personally I am happy that, he chose to think differently than others. He TRIED to help some women in front of him. How many of us goes beyond "Ideas" and makes an attempt to make a difference in lives of poor in our country?

If we think differently and become business "partners" of these people as the next "Phase/model" of micro-credit rolls out of our "Idea" factory. It may bring better results.

How about micro-insurance for reducing some of the risk factors from the very poor?

How about a "Pick performance analysis" of Grameen Bank, so we can repeat the successful ventures and stop the project that failed borrowers in the past?

I feel almost every problem we face has some solutions for them. We just have to look for it.





-----Original Message-----
From: Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com>
Sent: Thu, Oct 28, 2010 12:57 pm
Subject: [ALOCHONA] The danger of Grameenism

 

The danger of Grameenism

By: Patrick Bond

Far from being a panacea for fighting rural poverty, microcredit can impose additional burdens on the rural poor, without markedly improving their socio-economic condition. (Also below, Khorshed Alam on why microcredit initiatives inspired by Mohammad Yunus's vision and implemented by Grameen Bank and other NGOs have not gone nearly as well in Bangladesh as has been publicised worldwide.)
 

For years, the example of microcredit in Bangladesh has been touted as a model of how the rural poor can lift themselves out of poverty. This widely held perception was boosted in 2006, when Mohammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, the microfinance institution he set up, jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize. In Southasia in particular, and the world in general, microcredit has become a gospel of sorts, with Yunus as its prophet.


Consider this outlandish claim, made by Yunus as he got started in the late 1970s: 'Poverty will be eradicated in a generation. Our children will have to go to a 'poverty museum' to see what all the fuss was about.' According to Milford Bateman, a senior research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London who is one of the world's experts on Grameen and microcredit, the reason this rhetoric resonated with international donors during the era of neoliberal globalisation, was that 'they love the non-state, self-help, fiscally-responsible and individual entrepreneurship angles.'

Grameen's origins are sourced to a discussion Yunus had with Sufiya Begum, a young mother who, he recalled, 'was making a stool made of bamboo. She gets five taka from a business person to buy the bamboo and sells to him for five and a half taka, earning half a taka as her income for the day. She will never own five taka herself and her life will always be steeped into poverty. How about giving her a credit for five taka that she uses to buy the bamboo, sell her product in free market, earn a better profit and slowly pay back the loan?' Describing Begum and the first 42 borrowers in Jobra village in Bangladesh, Yunus waxed eloquent: 'Even those who seemingly have no conceptual thought, no ability to think of yesterday or tomorrow, are in fact quite intelligent and expert at the art of survival. Credit is the key that unlocks their humanity.'


But what is the current situation in Jobra? Says Bateman, 'It's still trapped in deep poverty, and now debt. And what is the response from Grameen Bank? All research in the village is now banned!' As for Begum, says Bateman, 'she actually died in abject poverty in 1998 after all her many tiny income-generating projects came to nothing.' The reason, Bateman argues, is simple: 'It turns out that as more and more 'poverty-push' micro-enterprises were crowded into the same local economic space, the returns on each micro-enterprise began to fall dramatically. Starting a new trading business or a basket-making operation or driving a rickshaw required few skills and only a tiny amount of capital, but such a project generated very little income indeed because everyone else was pretty much already doing exactly the same things in order to survive.'

Contrary to the carefully cultivated media image, Yunus is not contributing to peace or social justice. In fact, he is an extreme neoliberal ideologue. To quote his philosophy, as expressed in his 1998 autobiography, Banker to the Poor,

I believe that 'government', as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a 'Grameenized private sector', a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.
At the time as he wrote those words, governments across the world, especially in the United States, were pulling back from regulating financial markets. In 1999, for example, Larry Summers (then US Treasury secretary and now President Barack Obama's overall economics tsar) set the stage for the crash of financial-market instruments known as derivatives, by refusing to regulate them as he had been advised.

The resulting financial crisis, peaking in 2008, should have changed Yunus's tune. After all, the catalysing event in 2007 was the rising default rate on a rash of 'subprime mortgage' loans given to low-income US borrowers. These are the equivalent of Grameen's loans to very poor Bangladeshis, except that Yunus did not go so far as the US lenders in allowing them to be securitised with overvalued real estate.

Yunus has long argued that 'credit is a fundamental human right', not just a privilege for those with access to bank accounts and formal employment. But reflect on this matter and you quickly realise how inappropriate it is to compare bank debt – a liability that can be crushing to so many who do not survive the rigours of neoliberal markets - with crucial political and civil liberties, health care, water, nutrition, education, environment, housing and the other rights guaranteed in the constitutions of countries around the world.

Microcredit mantras
By early 2009, as the financial crisis tightened its grip on the world, Yunus had apparently backed away from his long-held posture. At that time, he told India's MicroFinance Focus magazine the very opposite of what he had been saying: 'If somebody wants to do microcredit – fine. I wouldn't say this is something everybody should have' (emphasis added). Indeed, the predatory way that credit was introduced to vulnerable US communities in recent years means that Yunus must now distinguish his Grameen Bank's strategy of 'real' microcredit from microcredit 'which has a different motivation'. As Yunus told MicroFinance Focus, 'Whenever something gets popular, there are people who take advantage of that and misuse it.'

To be sure, Yunus also unveiled a more radical edge in that interview, interpreting the crisis in the following terms. 'The root causes are the wrong structure, the capitalism structure that we have,' he said. 'We have to redesign the structure we are operating in. Wrong, unsustainable lifestyle.' Fair enough. But in the next breath, Yunus was back to neoliberalism, arguing that state microfinance regulation 'should be promotional, a cheerleader.'

For Yunus, regulators are apparently anathema, especially if they clamp down on what are, quite frankly, high-risk banking practices, such as hiding bad debts. As the Wall Street Journal conceded in late 2001, a fifth of the Grameen Bank's loans were more than a year past their due date: 'Grameen would be showing steep losses if the bank followed the accounting practices recommended by institutions that help finance microlenders through low-interest loans and private investments.' A typical financial sleight-of-hand resorted to by Grameen is to reschedule short-term loans that are unpaid after as long as two years; thus, instead of writing them off, it lets borrowers accumulate interest through new loans simply to keep alive the fiction of repayments on the old loans. Not even extreme pressure techniques – such as removing tin roofs from delinquent women's houses, according to the Journal report – improved repayment rates in the most crucial areas, where Grameen had earlier won its global reputation among neoliberals who consider credit and entrepreneurship as central prerequisites for development.

By the early 2000s, even the huckster-rich microfinance industry had felt betrayed by Yunus' tricks. 'Grameen Bank had been at best lax, and more likely at worst, deceptive in reporting its financial performance,' wrote leading microfinance promoter J D Von Pischke of the World Bank in reaction to the Journal's revelations. 'Most of us in the trade probably had long suspected that something was fishy.' Agreed Ross Croulet of the African Development Bank, 'I myself have been suspicious for a long time about the true situation of Grameen so often disguised by Dr Yunus's global stellar status.'

Several years earlier, Yunus was weaned off the bulk of his international donor support, reportedly USD 5 million a year, which until then had reduced the interest rate he needed to charge borrowers and still make a profit. Grameen had allegedly become 'sustainable' and self-financing, with costs to be fully borne by borrowers.

To his credit, Yunus had also battled backward patriarchal and religious attitudes in Bangladesh, and his hard work extended credit to millions of people. Today there are around 20,000 Grameen staffers servicing 6.6 million borrowers in 45,000 Bangladeshi villages, lending an average of USD 160 per borrower (about USD 100 million/month in new credits), without collateral, an impressive accomplishment by any standards. The secret to such high turnover was that poor women were typically arranged in groups of five: two got the first tranche of credit, leaving the other three as 'chasers' to pressure repayment, so that they could in turn get the next loans.

At a time of new competitors, adverse weather conditions (especially the 1998 floods) and a backlash by borrowers who used the collective power of non-payment, Grameen imposed dramatic increases in the price of repaying loans. That Grameen was gaining leverage over women – instead of giving them economic liberation – is a familiar accusation. In 1995, New Internationalist magazine probed Yunus about the 16 'resolutions' he required his borrowers to accept, including 'smaller families'. When New Internationalist suggested this 'smacked of population control', Yunus replied, 'No, it is very easy to convince people to have fewer children. Now that the women are earners, having more children means losing money.' The long history of forced sterilisation in the Third World is often justified in such narrow economic terms.

In the same spirit of commodifying everything, Yunus set up a relationship with the biotechnology giant Monsanto to promote biotech and agrochemical products in 1998, which, New Internationalist reported, 'was cancelled due to public pressure.' As Sarah Blackstock reported in the same magazine the following year: 'Away from their homes, husbands and the NGOs that disburse credit to them, the women feel safe to say the unmentionable in Bangladesh – microcredit isn't all it's cracked up to be … What has really sold microcredit is Yunus's seductive oratorical skill.' But that skill, Blackstock explains, allows Yunus and leading imitators
to ascribe poverty to a lack of inspiration and depoliticise it by refusing to look at its causes. Microcredit propagators are always the first to advocate that poor people need to be able to help themselves. The kind of microcredit they promote isn't really about gaining control, but ensuring the key beneficiaries of global capitalism aren't forced to take any responsibility for poverty.
The big lie
Microfinance gimmickry has done huge damage in countries across the globe. In South Africa in 1998, for instance, when the emerging-markets crisis raised interest rates across the developing world, an increase of seven percent, imposed over two weeks as the local currency crashed, drove many South African borrowers and their microlenders into bankruptcy. Ugandan political economist Dani Nabudere has also rebutted 'the argument which holds that the rural poor need credit which will enable them to improve their productivity and modernise production.' For Nabudere, this 'has to be repudiated for what it is – a big lie.'

Inside even the most neoliberal financing agency (and Grameen sponsor), the World Bank, these lessons were by obvious by the early 1990s. Sababathy Thillairajah, an economist, had reviewed the Bank's African peasant credit programmes in 1993, and advised colleagues: 'Leave the people alone. When someone comes and asks you for money, the best favour you can give them is to say 'no'… We are all learning at the Bank. Earlier we thought that by bringing in money, financial infrastructure and institutions would be built up – which did not occur quickly.'

But not long afterwards, Yunus stepped in to help the World Bank with ideological support. When I met Yunus in Johannesburg, not long before South Africa's April 1994 liberation, he vowed he wouldn't take Bank funds. Yet in August 1995, Yunus endorsed the Bank's USD 200 million global line of credit aimed at microfinance for poor women. However, according to ODI's Bateman, the World Bank 'insisted on a few changes: the mantra of 'full cost recovery', the hard-line belief that the poor must pay the full costs of any program ostensibly designed to help them, and the key methodology is to impose high interest rates and to reward employees as Wall Street-style motivation.'

Bateman also remarks on the damage caused to Bangladesh itself by subscribing to the microcredit gospel: 'Bangladesh was left behind by neighbouring Asian countries, who all choose to deploy a radically different 'development-driven' local financial model: Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, China, Vietnam.' And the countries that were more reliant on neoliberal microfinance soon hit, Bateman insists, 'saturation, with the result of over-indebtedness, 'microcredit bubbles', and small business collapse.' Just as dangerous, Yunus's model actually 'destroys social capital and solidarity,' says Bateman. It is used up 'when repayment is prioritised over development. No technical support is provided, threats are used, assets are seized. And governments use microfinance to cut public spending on the poor and women, who are left to access expensive services from the private sector.' The Yunus phenomenon is, in short, a more pernicious contribution to capitalism than ordinary loan-sharking, because it has been bestowed with such legitimacy.

Bateman records extremely high microfinance interest rates 'everywhere'. In Bangladesh, for instance, these are around 30 to 40 percent; in Mexico, they go up as high as 80 percent. No wonder that in the most recent formal academic review of microfinance, by economist Dean Karlan of Yale University, 'There might be little pockets here and there of people who are made better off, but the average effect is weak, if not nonexistent.'

As the Wall Street Journal put it in 2001, 'To many, Grameen proves that capitalism can work for the poor as well as the rich.' And yet the record should prove otherwise, just as the subprime financial meltdown has shown the mirage of finance during periods of capitalist crisis.


The latest figures suggest that nearly 70 million people (out of 150 million total) in Bangladesh are still living below the poverty line; of those, about 30 million are considered to live in chronic poverty. Grameen Bank now has around seven million borrowers in Bangladesh, 97 percent of whom are women. Yet after decades of poverty-alleviation programmes what effect has Grameen had in its home country? The microcredit initiatives inspired by Mohammad Yunus's vision and implemented by Grameen Bank and other NGOs have not gone nearly as well in Bangladesh as has been publicised worldwide.

To start with, the terms of microcredit in Bangladesh are inflexible and generally far too restrictive – by way of weekly repayment and savings commitments – to allow the borrowers to utilise the newfound credit freely. After all, with a first repayment scheduled for a week after the credit is given, what are the options but petty trading? The effective interest rate stands at 30 to 40 percent, while some suggest it goes upwards of 60 percent in certain situations. Defaulters, therefore, are on the rise, with many being compelled to take out new loans from other sources at even higher interest rates.

Worryingly, in the families of some 82 percent of female borrowers, exchange of dowry has increased since their enrolment with Grameen Bank – it seems that micro-borrowing is seen as enabling the families to pay more dowry than otherwise.

Only five to 10 percent of Grameen borrowers have showed improvement of their quality of life with the help of microcredit, and those who have done will tend to have other sources of income as well. Fully half of the borrowers who could not improve were able to retain their positions by taking out loans from multiple sources; about 45 percent could not do so at all, and their position deteriorated. Many are thus forced to flee the village and try to find work in an urban area or abroad. It has now become clear that most Grameen borrowers spend their newfound credit for their daily livelihood expenditure, rather than on income-generating initiatives.

The main difference between microcredit lenders and feudal moneylenders was that the latter needed collateral. It is true that microcredit has created money flows in rural areas, but also that it created a process through which small-scale landowners can quickly become landless – if one cannot pay back the money at high interest rates, many are forced to sell their land. In cases of failure of timely repayment, instances of seizure by Grameen of tin roofs, pots and pans, and other household goods do take place – amounting to implicit collateral.

This does not mean that credit is not useful to the poor and powerless. The problem lies in the approach taken. Poverty is conceptualised extremely narrowly, only in terms of cash income; when in fact it has to do with all aspects of life, involving both basic material needs such as food, clothing and housing; and basic human needs such as human dignity and rights, education, health and equity. It is true that the rural economy today has received some momentum from microcredit. But the questions remain: Why has this link failed to make any significant impact on poverty? Why, despite the purported 'success' of microcredit, do people in distress keep migrating to urban centres? Why does a famine-like situation persists in large parts of Bangladesh, particularly in the north? Moreover, why does the number of people under the poverty line keep rising – alongside the rising microcredit?

In fact, poverty has its roots and causes, and expanding the credit net without addressing these will never improve any poverty situation. Experience shows that if countries such as Bangladesh rely heavily on microcredit for alleviating poverty, poverty will remain – to keep the microcredit venture alive. Grameen Bank's 'wonderful story' of prosperity, solidarity and empowerment has only one problem: it never happened.

~ Khorshed Alam

~ Patrick Bond is a senior professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa. Khorshed Alam is executive director of the Alternative Movement for Resources and Freedom Society, based in Dhaka.




__._,_.___


[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com




Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___