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It was not usual, nor routine, to be greeted by two great news on a single day, both happy in their own ways. The newspapers on June 2, 1953 carried the headlines ‘Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II’ and ‘Mount Everest Conquered.’ He, like other citizens in Pakistan and India, took the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II with mixed feelings. He was no longer a British subject, suffering the ignominy of one being ruled by outsiders. There was no official celebration and jubilation that was de rigueur on such on occasion. Being free, he and his countrymen could rejoice and wish her well without a sense of obligation. But the coronation also evoked nostalgia about the past. Raj was a daily humiliation for the subjugated but it also introduced modernity in every sphere of life. Revulsion and admiration jostled with each other vying for their places in the heart and mind. Coronation of queen Elizabeth II renewed that ambivalence. It reminded the citizens, the literate ones, of the evil that was Raj and also the progresses achieved during its time. The debate would go on, about the legacy of Raj among the scholars and the educated classes. Each class would judge it from its partisan point of view. As for the vast multitude, wallowing in ignorance, illiteracy and groaning under the burden of life, change of rulers would mean very little. The rulers would continue to be their ‘Mai baap’, irrespective of the colours of their skin. They would not know if a princess had become a queen and even if they were told, it would not change the rhythm of their daily life a whit.
   In the morning of 2nd June, when he read the news of the coronation in the headlines, it made him aware about history vividly. The memory of the British rule was still fresh in mind. He remembered instantly the photograph of King George VI hung on the wall in every office, school, college and other public buildings. He could easily recollect the memory of Union Jacks flying in their mast, ubiquitously. All those belonged to the past but not so distantly as not to allow a resonance from a news like the coronation. So much had been left behind by the British rulers touching almost every aspect of life that it would be difficult to think of them as mere itinerant aliens. The sub-continent had seen many empires, but none equaled that of the British, in the scope and extent of changes wrought by them in the life of the people they ruled. The school that he was attending, the subjects he were reading and the newspaper that brought news about home and abroad were their contributions, among others. No doubt, these changes would have come even without them, under different circumstances. But given the history of pre-British India, it would have taken many years and even then most probably in a desultory manner. There was also little doubt that whatever the British did by way of modernization was primarily to perpetuate their rule but there was a degree of enlightened self-interest, too. Be that as it may, being free he and his countrymen could be generous in admiring the British. Without rancour and a sense of humiliation, that a subject people feel, he could rejoice at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She was not their Queen, but still symbolised the shared experience of the colonial era. To disown her was to be disinherited of the legacy, even when it was a mixed blessing. Moreover, as head of the British Commonwealth, she represented the present and future relationships of former colonies with the mother country, based on equality and co-operation. One could not remain bitter about the past interminably and at the same time enjoy life. It might not be possible to forget the unsavory part of the past but forgiveness was not beyond the pale. As he read the news of Queen Elizabeth II ascending the throne of Britain he had a curious feeling. It was the news of another country and yet there was a resonance in his mind, if not in his heart.
   As he read the news of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation he realised the part played by luck in one’s life, even when he or she is a royal. If Edward VIII had not abdicated from throne of England because of his love for a divorcee named Willis Simpson, the throne would have passed through Edward VIII’s heirs and not his brother King George VI’s, who succeeded him. There was no other case in recorded history where a reigning king gave up his throne in order to be with the woman he loved. When Edward VIII abdicated Great Britain was at the height of its imperial power and the sun literally (physically?) did not set in the British empire. To give up such an empire required a greatness of heart and also a deep-seated contempt for power and pelf. The empire builders must have squirmed at the belittling of their grand project by the love-sick king. King Edward VIII should be seen, not as a foot note in the history of British Empire, but as a chapter that threw light on the futility of it all. Almost single-handedly, he tore down the edifice of emphire.
   The news about the conquest of Mount Everest, published on the same day, was one of great excitement and shared glory. For thirty years expedition after expedition took place to conquer the highest peak of Himalayas which was also the highest in the world. Mount Everest, with its height, harsh climate and treacherous ridges challenged the most intrepid mountaineers. It defied all attempts by waves of adventurers, until 29th May. On that day a British expedition team, led by John Hunt, with members including Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and Tenzing Norkey, a Nepalese Sherpa, made the successful climb on top of the world. The ascent was the last such achievement of the British Empire. He would read later that though the news was sent on 30th May, it was published in the Daily Times on 2nd June, 1953, the very morning of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was seen as too much of a coincidence. Rumours floated that The Times delayed publication of the news of the ascent in order to make it coincide with the coronation. But this was debunked by Jan Morris, the correspondent of The Times, who accompanied the expedition and sent the message on 30th May. There was no long-distance radio on Everest then and the message took time in travelling, it was explained. Many years later he read Jan Morris’s account of the first head experience about the conquest of Everest and the news sent about it. In the final assault on the highest peak only Edmund Hilary and Temzing Norkey took part, while the rest of the team stayed behind in the last Base camp. Morris wrote of the occasion: ‘On the afternoon of 30 May I was with Hunt and most of the climbers some 22000 feet up in the western Crw, awaiting the return of the New Zealander and the Sherpa Tenzing Norkey from their attempt upon the summit. We did n’t yet know whether they had got there.’ Then after a pause he wrote: ‘there they are!’
   Queen Elizabeth had been given the news on the eve of her coronation. On 2nd June the whole world came to know about the coronation and the conquest of Everest, one news was already known and anticipated, the other was a complete surprise but no less joyous than the first, perhaps even more.
   Mount Everest was known as Peak XV until 1856 when it was named after Sir George Everest, the Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843. The naming coincided with an official announcement of the mountain’s height (290535 ft), taken as the average of six separate measurements made by the Great Trigonometrical Survey in 1850. The mountain’s actual height and the claim that Everest was the highest mountain in the world had long been disputed. But with improvement in measuring techniques all doubts were set at rest. Most Nepali People refer to the mountain as ‘Sager Matha’, meaning ‘Forehead of the sky.’ The Tibetans, including the Sherpa people of Northern Nepal, call the mountain as Chomolungma, Tibetan for’ goddess mother of the world.’ Traditionally, people who lived near the Mount Everest revered the mountain of the Himalayas and imagined them as the homes of the gods. Because the peaks were considered sacred, no local people scaled them before the early 1930s. However, when foreign expeditions brought tourist money and western ideas to the areas, people of the Sherpa ethnic group began to serve as high-altitude porters for them.
   The difficulties of climbing Mount Everest were legendary. Massive snow and ice avalanches were a constant threat to all expeditions. The avalanches thundered off the peaks repeatedly, burying valleys, glaciers and climbing routes. Hurricane-force winds were well known hazards on Everest, blowing off taints or ripping them to shreds. Hypothermia, a dramatic loss of body heat, was also a major hazard in this region of high winds and low-temperatures. After the conquest, pressmen asked Hilary why did he attempt the ascent? His reply was: ‘Because it was there.’
   But who climbed the Everest first? Both Hilary and Tenzing could not reach the narrow top at the same time. The two men refused to state which of them actually first reached the summit. It remained a closely guarded secret. But one can easily imagine who was the first.

Through a maze of complexities within the insurance industry, the private non-life insurance companies in Bangladesh, which saddled the government protected horse many years ago, have arrived at a very distinct milestone.
   
   This is Year Twenty-o-Five.
   Quite significantly, this year, the first generation of the private sector non-life insurance companies in Bangladesh will embark on their 20th year of operation. There are three this year, the first among which is Bangladesh General Insurance Company, which opened its door to the public on July 29, 1985. Next year another six companies will bid adieu to their years of growing pains and reach the double decade plateau. By the end of 2008, there would have been 16 companies in total that would have stretched their lives onto two full decades, growing up from those early years of denationalization of the insurance industry in 1984, made possible with the amendment of The Insurance Corporations Act 1973.
   If the paramount idea behind the government’s decision to centralize the insurance industry (The Insurance Corporations Act 1973) was to pick up the shattered pieces of the insurance industry pounded into ruins along with the other industries during the liberation war, the decision in 1984 was certainly a noteworthy signal to involve the private sector in bringing about the revival of what was once a flourishing industry.
   The renaissance, however, has not been as buoyant as one would have anticipated. Densely saturated with intricacies that hinder progress, the private sector insurance companies gingerly trot along, hoping to achieve equilibrium in the industry that has been elusive so far. The sector’s scorecard does show some growth, but it is hardly something to write home about. What is staggering to envisage, though, is how these companies —- there are 42 now — struggle to operate in an industry besieged with colossal tribulations ranging from intense competition to dealing with redundancies of an Act that was penned during the colonial times, and others that stretch from spiraling cost of doing business to the government’s reluctance to free up the market from its control.
   Ironically, the government’s decision to privatize the industry was, and sadly enough still remains today, an iniquitous proposition. Prior to the 1984 amendment, Sadharan Bima Corporation, the state-owned insurer, was the sole supplier of insurance in the country. While liberalizing the industry, the government allowed private insurance companies to operate, but maintained the status quo of a market by limiting competition. It allowed its protected horse, Sadharan Bima Corporation, to not only feed on the 100% of the public sector business, but also nourish on the private sector business competing in direct clash with the private insurance companies. Given the fact that 80% of the total premium volume of the country came off the public sector, it was a tough ask for the private insurance companies to see significant growth.
   
   And that was not the end, absurdities multiplied further!
   The Act of 1984 enforced upon all private insurance companies a mandate to obtain 100% reinsurance protection from the Sadharan Bima Corporation. Logic defies the rationality that a competitor be handed over the joystick to oversee the 100% reinsurance portfolio of its competitors.
   Needless to say, these restrictive provisions did not sit well with the free-market insurance connoisseurs overseeing the renovation of the private sector. Consequently, due to their intercession and lobbying against the aforementioned irrationalities, the government was forced to adapt changes by way of the Insurance Corporations (Amendment) Act 1990. That, too, was controversial, then. It still is, today. The new changes in 1990 now allowed the private sector insurance companies to underwrite 50% of the insurance business that stemmed from the public sector and relaxed the private insurance company’s compulsory reinsurance cession to Sadharan Bima Corporation from 100% to 50%. These changes were only but a little loosening of the government’s grip on the chokehold applied on the private sector. Fifteen years later, in spite of the voices from within the private sector accenting vociferously against this unfairness, status quo regains it form.
   All this rhetoric to glorify the plight of the private sector will fall a bit short if a thing or two is not said about how we got here in the first place, insurance-wise that is. The origins of insurance in this part of the world, of course, are entwined in the legacy of the British occupation of our lands. Among the many hand-me-downs that the British offered us for being submissive to their despotism, economic or otherwise, was the introduction of general insurance to us. In 1850, the British set up Triton Insurance Company in Calcutta, which was the first general insurance company in the Indian subcontinent. This move, along with the introduction of the Insurance Act of 1938, provided positive impact in the non-life insurance industry in greater India.
   Paradoxically, the Insurance Act of 1938, which at the time was introduced to bring about reforms in the Indian insurance industry, is still the guiding light for the Bangladeshi insurance industry. Interestingly, although the British have long since gone and the Indian and Pakistani insurance industries, the others who inherited the 1938 Act, have made significant changes to it, we continue to be governed by it even though the law has outlived its utility.
   The dawn of this millennium saw the entry of another 19 non-life insurance companies in the private sector, bringing the total number of companies to forty two, not counting Sadharan Bima Corporation. The theory that the more the players, the better the competition and better the quality of service, does not hold water here. The insurance pie was still not big enough to go around the table once comfortably. This is mainly because the industry, sadly enough, could not properly invest its effort into developing products and markets outside the traditional sphere of insurance, i.e., the marine, the motor and the fire insurances. The private sector has always been dejected with the mindset of the insuring public, which remains conservative and cautious. Insurance, unfortunately, has always been at the bottom of the list of priorities of the insuring public, which is often forced to the extent of insuring its risk only due to the mandatory requirements necessitated by government directives or bank’s insistence. Armed with these harsh realities, the private sector has always opted for high-wealth clientele, niche marketing mainly in the urban centers of trade and industry, thus ignoring other potential markets segments.
   
   Is there a way out of this logjam?
   Development and reform in the industry is the order of the day. If provided by the open-mindedness of the government, and adopted by the private sector with sincerity, it will surely abridge the way to a healthy and robust insurance sector in the years ahead. Reforms in the sector, such as the recast of the 1938; realistically addressing the dynamics of the insurers and the insured under the present day’s perspective; bringing the insurance sector under the ambit of the ministry of finance, and the strengthening of the office of the controller of insurance with more regulatory powers will not only enable the industry to deliver its services in a more expeditious manner, but will also promote and ensure orderly growth of the industry and bring about a positive environment for healthy competition. Such pragmatic streamlining must address the spiraling cost of doing business by way of the revision of out-dated caps provided for management expenses and solvency margins, and allow the private sector to freely invest its funds. Lastly, all the players in the industry must seek newer markets by concentrating in designing specialized products that will compliment the traditional products. Developing niche markets in the health, household and liability insurance fields will bring about substantial premiums which otherwise lay untapped.
   In spite of all the roadblocks, the private sector insurance industry has contributed immensely to the country’s economy in the trade, commerce and financial sectors and has been a major facilitator in job creation in country. The industry desperately looks forward to the positive changes that will surely maximize its essential contribution to economic growth and prosperity in the coming decades ahead.
   The writer is additional managing director, BGIC

Yes, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been an extraordinary expedition. Not because of terrible lies (regarding WMD) and tempting lures (oil); both are the assumed and arrogated privileges of modern day ‘monarchs’ on march towards a second ‘Roman Empire’.
   An expedition ‘extraordinaire’ for its audacity, its contempt for public intelligence, its utterly unconvincing babble of ‘liberty’, ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ – all of which have been invented afterthoughts as the original lies exploded. This expedition has gone bad; it now stinks up to the ceiling. Gone so rotten that the all too familiar assertions like ‘will stay the course’, ‘till the job is done’ sound increasingly hollow. Not even a manipulated ‘Iraq Referendum’ will give glory though it might just give a flimsy cover to declare a ‘victory’ and hasty withdrawal of occupation troops. History has precedence; history can well be repeated. In the long drawn out Vietnam expedition too, the then US president Johnson had made similar pronouncements when the end became inevitable. The facade of a ‘pyrrhic victory’ gave a convenient cover for evacuation by America. Vietnam has not been the same again. Nor will Iraq. But withdrawal will come; the sooner the better, for both Iraqi and the American public.
   The world public was never amused; Iraq offered no entertainment for the discerning, however obscenely the TV footage on Iraq war was aired, and seductively commented upon by instant ‘experts’ and ‘compliant academics’. It is shameful and an insult to freedom of media that most major media were found willing and compliant not to tell the truth but to trumpet the ‘official’ line.
   This expedition, to the horror and disdain of those who know better, managed to turn the mythical link between Iraq and global terrorists into a grim reality; a reality that threw Iraq into an inferno that had been beyond imagination of even its worst enemy. This expedition has plunged the already volatile Middle East into instability and insecurity. Even for America, it drained the wealth and is taking daily toll of lives (though the coffin boxes are hidden from public view).
   The gullible American public, duped and deceived by the administration, is getting uneasy as days and weeks fail to bring good news. Ironically or by intent, the only positive outcome has been the sense of greater security of Israel – that regional ‘gendarme’ propped up by unstinting and unquestioned support by successive American presidents and public.
   This blotched expedition proves yet again there are limits to the power and reach of even the mightiest military; there are limits to the infallibility of grandiose worldview of the most adroit and self-glorifying intellectuals and schemers.
   There is a difference. Very adroit intellectuals, schemers and prophets ensconced in the Pentagon, think tanks, and Heritage Foundation and universities (popularly called ‘neocons’) will without doubt recover and regroup but never acknowledge any responsibility for Iraq debacle. They will ponder before drawing boards to sketch new expeditions.
   But the public at home and in Iraq, as well as the ‘patriotic’ military, will have paid an unnecessary and extraordinarily heavy price without any relief or reward. Imagine if a small fraction of the cost of Iraq war had been spent on physical and social infrastructure, the deaths and destruction of Katrina would have been minimal; the despair of millions of poor households without education and health care would have been minimal.
   Is it not strange and unacceptable that the two leaders (Bush and Blair) elected by popular vote can remain insensitive to the real needs of the electorate? How hypocritical, that these leaders are the loudest champions of democracy; they are eager and ready to commit costly and futile adventure to spread ‘democracy’ everywhere! Which in actual fact enriches the vested quarters who profit by war and armaments.
   All presidents finish their appointed term of office; the electorate votes in another president. What however is never canceled are the enormous physical destruction and mental defilements wrought by ‘democratic dictators’ elected or otherwise. Like Cindy Sheehan (the American mother of Casey Sheehan), thousands of Iraqi mothers are demanding to know why their sons died, were tortured, and where they have ‘disappeared’? Who if any elected president or prime minister will stand up and reply?
   A world where ‘leaders’ lead by lies; where mass murderers hide behind mask of liberty and freedom; who conquer and subjugate other peoples, is certainly not safe in their hands.
   Yet all is not lost. Humanity has not struggled in vain for past centuries. Yet, it is an unfortunate time in history that human civilisation and fundamental values have become a pawn in the hands of few dictators and democrats alike. The strength they depend upon is military force; they are devoid of moral or ethical force. Individual faith and piety are not enough in such a world environment. People as citizens have power to punish; punish they must those who deceive them and defile their intrinsic values. The global ‘hegemon’ might be discomforted and deflected by armed resistance (as in Iraq and likely elsewhere) but can only be defeated by resounding call for global ethics.