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Saturday, February 20, 2010

[ALOCHONA] Destination Dhaka



Destination Dhaka

Kornelius Thimm, an MBA student at IMD, takes an elective course in Bangladesh, and learns that the country's future lies in protecting the industry of its past

Jan 21st 2010 | From The Economist online

It sometimes seems as if the financial crisis has touched every aspect of my time at business school. Throughout my one-year MBA at IMD in Switzerland, I have engaged in countless discussions about bail-out programmes, economic-stimulus packages and restructuring efforts across all industries. But how does the financial crisis effect a country that was struggling before the crisis and that does not have the financial and economic backbone of America, Europe or China?

This was one of the questions that a small group of IMD students explored when we chose the Bangladesh elective course, led by Professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann. We travelled to Dhaka for eight days to better understand how the power of innovation in business models and technology can generate inclusive growth.

This was my first trip to Bangladesh, one of the least developed countries of the world. I had not expected that I would be so captivated by the country as well as the people and their positive attitudes in light of the challenges they face.

Arriving in Bangladesh the first discovery was that Dhaka is truly the "rickshaw capital of the world". It seems that life in Dhaka is dominated by these elaborately-decorated vehicles. They are everywhere and transport everything—not just people, but also goods like goats, fridges, five-metre-long bamboo sticks and anything one can imagine that can be sold. As much as they give flexibility and service, they are also the reason for many accidents and the permanent traffic jam.

I was also surprised to see thousands of small stores and markets on the bustling streets. It seems that every ground floor in Dhaka is used for several single-room stores with open fronts that are only closed a couple of hours late at night. These shops can range from workshops or pharmacies to beef butchers. The markets are spread throughout the city, covering streets, whole city blocks and sometimes several building levels. Similarly well-organised, stores for fresh foods have well-separated vegetables and fruits outside in the sun and potatoes and onions in the shade. Separate areas are reserved for spices and dry ingredients where the smells of thousands of flavours overwhelm the senses.

But how do these small-store businesses, in a capital city of 15m people, contribute to the development of the country? Are they relics of the past and unimportant in today's global markets? Or could these types of businesses support Bangladesh's economy by creating employment, developing the domestic markets and ultimately fighting poverty? For me this question boils down to whether their business models are sustainable and if innovation can help to develop and increase the output.

Which came first...

To find this out we looked at the development of agriculture. Based on a mostly fertile soil with good access to fresh water, this industry has been the backbone of rural Bangladesh and could be one of the emerging sectors in the future. Local companies like Pran Foods that invest in food processing and sales capabilities have benefited. Today Pran Foods is not only one of the largest FMCG companies in Bangladesh, but also exports processed products to more than 70 countries. Its suppliers, the farmers in rural Bangladesh, also profit from this constant demand.

In Lagalia, in the district of Gazipur, we visited a chicken farmer who also produces biogas. Most Lagalia farmers specialise in chicken and egg production. Jointly they have a daily transport of products to Dhaka where they sell to retailers and markets. And by collecting the chicken waste in an underground container, they generate biogas, which is used for cooking and to generate electricity. The remaining waste is then used as a fertiliser.

Gas for heating and electric power is still rare in the countryside of Bangladesh. These micro biogas plants are an innovative and sustainable way to bring development. The independence of infrastructure and development are central pillars to inclusive growth. But there are still many questions about how this idea can be brought to a larger scale. Who can invest in such projects? How can rural markets for gas and electric power be developed? Should the government or other stakeholders like utility companies be involved? Is this model sustainable or just the "gap-filler" until the national grid system is installed and stable?

After looking at these very different examples of small- and medium-size enterprises in Bangladesh the question, it seems, is not whether these are relics of the past and unimportant in today's global markets; it is whether the only sustainable development in Bangladesh is through these companies. The responsibility of governments and regulators is to protect and even support these businesses by giving clear guidelines that encourage further entrepreneurship and innovation.

Overall our trip to Bangladesh was enlightening, thought-provoking and a great first-hand learning experience—especially after having spent so much of my time on the MBA programme visiting businesses in the developed world. After seeing the challenges of Bangladesh—like the negative effects of globalisation, regional conflicts and global warming—I am convinced that future leaders have to consider the global effects of their actions more now than ever before. Even more, these leaders should dedicate a certain amount of their time, money and influence to tackle these challenges. It is something I have made up my mind to do.
 


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[ALOCHONA] Barrister RAFIQUE-UL HUQ



Barrister RAFIQUE-UL HUQ

A lawyer through and through

 
HE WAS an activist of the Juba Congress, led by the late Indira Gandhi, when he was a student. He was elected social secretary to the Calcutta University Central Students' Union, twice. However, his involvement in politics ended with his days at the university. 'I had to struggle to establish myself. I had to be busy in earning my livelihood,' says Rafique-ul Huq.
   
Born in 1935 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Rafique became a barrister-at-law in 1961, came back to Dhaka in 1962 and started practising law at the High Court. He became an advocate to the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1965.
   
As is the case with all success stories, he got a couple of lucky breaks. In 1965 his senior Ashraful Hossain was busy with the arbitration on the dispute between Pakistan and India over Rann of the Kutch island. Rafique had to seek time for the hearing in a series of cases due to the absence of his senior counsel. He started moving the cases after the court had asked him to.
   
Allah Buksh Khoda Buksh Brohi, a legendary lawyer of the time, also gave him a break in the same year. Brohi hired him as a senior counsel in a tax-related case. As Brohi was moving the case before the Supreme Court, presided over by the chief justice Cornelius, Rafique tried to make some points to Brohi but failed. Eventually, Rafique was allowed to present his arguments. Not only did he win the case but his arguments impressed Justice Cornelius so much that the chief justice made him an advocate to the Supreme Court.
   
Rafique became widely known during the two-year rule of the emergency regime. He does not normally practise criminal law although he was top of the class in criminal law at Calcutta University in 1957. However, during the tenure of the interim government, he started moving criminal cases filed against the Awami League president, and now prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, Khaleda Zia, and other political heavyweights.
   
He was widely acclaimed after securing a series of High Court orders and verdicts including bail and suspension of proceedings against high-profile politicians and businessmen. As amicus curiae, he secured a High Court verdict that observed that the court had the power to grant bail in cases under the emergency power rules.
   
Rafique had to move the criminal cases of the politicians during the emergency regime as 'most of my friends who have name and fame as lawyers had either gone into hiding or did not dare to move the cases.' Rafique did not face any threat from the emergency regime for moving the emergency cases, rather 'the DGFI men used to send me gifts.'
   
'Moving the cases of Hasina, I could pay my gratitude to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman...Similarly, I am lucky to defend Khaleda Zia,' he says.
   
Rafique does not consider his legal battle against the emergency regime as a battle against the army as an institution. Against the backdrop of political turmoil, the army came to the scene on January 11, 2007 through the declaration of the state of emergency. The regime launched drive against graft. 'But, some army officers broke records in corruption. They extorted businessmen. The army, as an institution, was, however, not involved. The army should bring those ambitious officers to book.'
   
The politicians, he believes, should take lesson from the sufferings they had to face during the emergency regime and institutionalise democracy.Rafique recalls how his move during the emergency rule to bring Hasina and Khaleda across the table 'in the interest of democracy and for an end to the culture of mudslinging between the two parties' ran into resistance from within the political establishments.
   
Syed Ashraful Islam, then the AL spokesperson, pointing at Rafique, had said, 'Politics is none of their business…They should not try to meddle in politics….'Both Hasina and Khaleda agreed to sit together, Rafique says. 'But Hasina phoned me from abroad after Ashraf's comment and told me that she would consider the move after her return.' Although his move was foiled, Rafique still thinks the two top leaders should sit together on every national issue.
   
He is also dissatisfied with the justice delivery system. He blames the emergency regime for the downfall of the judiciary. 'During the regime, kangaroo courts were set up which were competing to jail people. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court had become "stay court" to halt the High Court orders that had given some respite to the people. The High Court, however, played a proactive role.'
   
He is also dissatisfied with the present scenario in the courts. 'Today, the state attorneys, especially the attorney general, are threatening Supreme Court judges.' A senior High Court judge, who is scheduled to deliver verdict in a case moved by Rafique, told him a few days back, 'Do you think I would be allowed to deliver the verdict.' 
   
'If senior judges express such despondency, how can the judiciary run?' he laments. 'The state attorneys are acting not as the counsels for the state, but as the party activists. The lawyers, especially the state attorneys, also have the duty to ensure justice in the courts. I was also the attorney general and that too under Ershad. But, I never played the role the attorney general is now playing.'
   
Rafique was made attorney general in 1990. 'Before assuming the office of the attorney general I had told Ershad that he must not give any illegal instruction to me. As attorney general, in many cases, I had argued that the government did wrong. During that period, only three detention orders were finally upheld by the High Court and the court had declared illegal the rest of the detention orders as I pleaded those were illegal.'
  
 Rafique was an elected member of the executive committee on International Taxation of the World Association of Lawyers. He was also member of the world executive committee of Foreign Trade and Investment (Washington) and of the Bangladesh delegation to the UN General Assembly (1990).
   
He was a member of the National Commission on Money, Banking and Credit and chairman of the sub-committee on banking laws (1984) under the commission which drafted the current banking laws of Bangladesh, chairman of the corporate laws committee (1990), member of the company law reforms committee (1977) and member of the committee for improvement of the stock exchange market in Bangladesh. 
   
During the era of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he drafted the laws on nationalisation. The same Rafique was asked by Ziaur Rahman to draft the laws on denationalisation. This time Rafique wrote the laws sitting in Bangabhaban and he used to go there through the backdoor. 
   
Once Zia asked him, 'You wrote the laws on nationalisation and again you wrote the laws on denationalisation…Do you not have any principle?' Rafique replied, 'I am a lawyer and I work for my client.' He did not take any fees for drafting those laws on nationalisation and denationalisation.
   
Rafique hails from Subarnapur village under Barasat in West Bengal of India. 'My family was a doctors' family,' he says.His father Momenul Huq was a physician. His paternal uncle was the principal of Dhaka Medical College. One of his brothers is a physician.
   
Rafique had to became a barrister to marry, and that too, a doctor, Farida Huq, a renowned microbiologist. The marriage was settled at their early ages. His mother-in-law, Mrs Ameena Rahman, wife of the late Habibur Rahman, who was the owner of Paramount Press, had told him that he would have to become a barrister so that he could earn a lot of money. 
   
Rafique had to do job in London to bear the costs of obtaining his bar-at law. He earned Tk 50 as fees for moving the first case in 1962. That was a civil case of some Sattar. He started earning a lot in 1968, when AK Brohi engaged him in a case at Tk 7,500 per day. With the money he earned from the case, Rafique built his house at Purana Paltan. Before building the house, he had been using the piece of land to cultivate paddy.
   
Since then, Rafique has earned a lot materialising the dream of his mother-in-law. He spends most of his earning in charities. Ameena Rahman recently died at 'Ameena Rahman Coronary Care Unit' at the BIRDEM Hospital. The CCU was set up in March 2009 after her name at a cost of Tk 1 crore, donated by Rafique. 
   
His involvement in charitable works began in 1972, when he established the Dhaka Shishu Hospital. The hospital started operation in a tent at Dhanmondi. Later Sheikh Mujibur Rahman allotted a plot at Agargaon area, where the hospital is now situated. As Rafique refused to take any fees for drafting the laws on denationalisation, Ziaur Rahman gave Tk 50 lakh for the hospital and with the money the trust of the hospital was formed.
   
In 1986 he established Subarna Clinic at Chandra crossing in Gazipur for the poor. A family can get free medical treatment at the clinic with a health card to be obtained from the clinic at a cost of Tk 10 only.
   
He is the pioneer of the Ad-Din Women's Medical College and Hospital at Moghbazar in Dhaka. He is life member and vice-chairman of the Diabetic Association of Bangladesh and member of its national council (since 1976), life member of the Bangladesh National Society for the Blind, chairman of Society for Education and Care of Hearing Impaired Children of Bangladesh, chairman of the Management Committee of BIRDEM Hospital and secretary general of the Management Board of Dhaka Shishu Hospital.
   
Rafique has also started construction of a 12-storey building at Ashulia for the establishment of a modern cancer hospital.His only son Faheemul Huq is also a barrister. Faheem's wife is a non-practising lawyer. 'I have told my son that all my money will go to charities and he needs to earn for his family.'



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[ALOCHONA] NYT - Burmese Refugees Persecuted in Bangladesh



Appalling! I guess we have forgotten we were once refugees!!

 

February 21, 2010

Burmese Refugees Persecuted in Bangladesh

By SETH MYDANS

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/world/asia/21bangladesh.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

 

BANGKOK — Stateless refugees from Myanmar are suffering beatings and deportation in Bangladesh, according to aid workers and rights groups who say thousands are crowding into a squalid camp where they face starvation and disease.

 

In a campaign that seems to have accelerated since October, the groups say, ethnic Rohingya refugees who have been living for years in Bangladesh are being seized, beaten and forced back to Myanmar, which they had left to escape persecution and abuse and which does not want them.

 

"Over the last few months we have treated victims of violence, people who claim to have been beaten by the police, claim to have been beaten by members of the host population, by people they've been living next to for many years," said Paul Critchley, who runs the Bangladesh program for the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders.

 

"We have treated patients for beatings, for machete wounds and for rape," he said, quoting a report issued Thursday that describes the situation as a humanitarian crisis. Some had escaped after being forced into a river that forms the border with Myanmar, formerly Burma. "This is continuing today."

 

Since October, he said, the unofficial Kutupalong makeshift camp with its dirt paths, flimsy shacks and open sewers has grown by 6,000 people to nearly 30,000, with 2,000 arrivals in January alone.

 

They are among about 250,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh, a Muslim minority from neighboring Myanmar, where they do not have citizenship and are subject to abuse and forced labor, and where they cannot travel, marry or practice their religion freely.

 

Despite the hardships, people are continuing to flee repression and fear in Myanmar, and when they are deported, many return, several people said.

 

About 28,000 of them have been recognized by Bangladesh and documented as refugees. They receive food and other assistance in a camp administered by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and have not been subject to the abuses and forced returns described by other Rohingya, said Kitty McKinsey, a spokeswoman for the agency in Bangkok.

 

The government has not allowed the agency to register new arrivals since 1993.

 

Most Rohingya in Bangladesh have no documentation and struggle to survive, evading the authorities and working mostly as day laborers, servants or pedicab drivers. They have no rights to education or other government services.

 

"They cannot receive general food distribution," Mr. Critchley said. "It is illegal for them to work. All they can legally do in Bangladesh is starve to death."

 

The current crackdown is the worst they have ever suffered, according to aid workers and the refugees themselves.

 

"Over the last month and in Cox's Bazaar District alone, hundreds of unregistered Rohingyas have been arrested, either pushed back across the border to Burma or sent to jail under immigration charges," said Chris Lewa, who closely follows the fate of the Rohingya as director of the Arakan Project, which also issued a report last week.

 

"In several areas of the district, thousands were evicted with threats of violence," she said. "Robberies, assaults and rape against Rohingyas have significantly increased."

 

A risky route to a better life, by sea to Thailand and then to Malaysia for work, was cut off after the Thai Navy pushed about 1,000 Rohingya boat people out to sea last year to drift and possibly to drown.

 

More than a year later, more than 300 are known to be missing and more than 30 are confirmed to have died, Ms. Lewa said. No boats are reported to have landed in Thailand in the recent post-monsoon sailing season.

 

"The brutal push-backs and the continuous detention of the survivors seems to have stopped the Rohingya from doing it again," Ms. Lewa said. "That horrible action has had the effect of basically stopping people from leaving."

 

In Bangladesh, the situation in the unofficial camp is becoming desperate, aid workers and refugees said.

 

"We cannot move around to find work," said Hasan, 40, a day laborer who lives with his wife and three children in a dirt-floored hovel made of sticks, scrap wood and plastic sheeting. He said he had no way to feed his family.

 

"There is a checkpoint nearby where they're catching people and arresting them," he told a photographer who visited recently. Like other refugees here, he asked that his last name not be used for fear of reprisals.

 

"We aren't receiving any help," he said. "No one can borrow money from each other. Everybody's in crisis now." People do what they can to survive.

 

"When I visit the camp," Mr. Critchley said, "I see small girls going out in the forest to collect firewood, and we have treated young girls and women who have been raped doing this."

 

In its report, Médecins Sans Frontières said that a year ago 90 percent of the people in the makeshift camp were already running out of food.

 

"Malnutrition and mortality rates were past emergency thresholds, and people had little access to safe drinking water, sanitation or medical care," the report said.

 

The overcrowded camp has become an incubator for disease, Mr. Critchley said, and with the monsoon season peaking in late March and early April, medical workers fear a lethal spread of acute diarrhea.

 

"International standards would assume that a latrine is shared by 20 people," Mr. Critchley said. "With the number of latrines in the camp, over 70 people share each latrine. I've seen small children using piles of human feces as toys."

 

The Rohingya know that they live at the very bottom of human society, that they are not wanted anywhere and that they are outsiders without legal standing or protection.

 

Abdul, 69, who has lived in Bangladesh for more than 15 years, said that those thoughts disturbed his dreams.

 

"When I sleep I think that if someone kills an animal in the forest they are breaking the law," he said. "They are caught and punished. But as human beings it isn't the same for us. So where are our rights? I think to myself that we are lower than an animal."

 

 



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[ALOCHONA] Combing operation,foreign intelligence agency and some unknown faces



Combing operation,foreign intelligence agency and some unknown faces
 
 


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[ALOCHONA] Mossad's Licence to Kill



Mossad's Licence to Kill



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