Editorial
Those suffering workers
The day-long hartal called by the Jute, Yarn and Textile Workers’ and Employees’ Action Council throughout the country on Saturday should have been a good reason for reflection on the part of those who matter in policy making. At a time when trade unions are increasingly seeing an erosion in their authority and influence, which is again owing to a number of inevitable factors, it is significant that such a general strike was called and indeed took place, even if it was not observed in totality. The circumstances in which workers have found themselves all over the country in the past few years is explanation enough for the enervated nature of their position. Perhaps nothing can explain the plight of the working classes better than the decision some years ago to close down the Adamjee jute mills as part of a restructuring programme by the government.While one certainly realises a huge need for the country to explore newer ways of coming by progress, one of the ways being a discarding of measures and methods that have outlived their efficacy, one does not let go of the thought that the interests of workers and employees have not quite been served in these last few years.
The very fact that Saturday’s hartal was supported by the political opposition demonstrates the serious concern of the country over the problems faced by the jute, yarn and textile sector. One can have a glimpse of the problem through observing the differences in the Indian and Bangladesh conditions, at least where the place of jute is concerned. While the authorities in West Bengal have gone full scale into the business of strengthening the jute sector, here in Bangladesh jute has been going through a very bad form of neglect at the hands of the authorities. The decline of jute has meant the country’s scrambling to find other sources of economic profit, notably in the garments sector. But even garments are now faced with new risks in light of the new conditions arising out of the WTO factor. As for yarn and textiles, it hardly needs to be repeated that our local industries all over the country have lately fallen in a comatose state owing to the entry of such products from across the frontier. The media, including some of the television channels, have carried extensive reports on the disuse into which many yarn and textile factories have fallen. Overall, then, the situation in the jute, yarn and textiles sector is of a sort that raises some very legitimate questions about the nation’s economic future. More significantly, we have today arrived at a situation where the very concept of disinvestment needs a fresh looking into. The indifference to jute on the part of the powers that be has quite taken a toll by now. There have been persistent reports of political and bureaucratic failure to buy quality jute for the mills. Nothing, it seems, has been done about reports of a scam involving a purchase of low grade jute for the mills, a shady deal that has brought into question the role of politicians, civil servants and jute buyers and suppliers. There are other issues that the government cannot look away from. Clearing the outstanding dues of workers happens to be one of them. Most important, there needs to come into the thought process of the authorities the question of the mills and factories that have been closed. Of course it is easy for mills to be declared closed. But who then deals with the resultant problems?
Saturday’s general strike has, we hope, left a good number of people thinking sympathetically about the plight of those whose lives have somewhat gone awry in the mills and factories they once were employed in. Ignoring their problems will only add to the impoverishment of the masses.
Dealing with movie obscenity
Despite the visible hullabaloo over the screening and production of films containing obscene material, local films are still not free from the clutches of profanity and gratuitous display of the female anatomy. However, it is definitely a positive sign that a film which in recent times came into the centre of discussion for its bawdy characteristics has been banned permanently; in addition it is believed that legal steps will be taken against those involved in the production and the direction of that particular film.
Obviously, we feel a sense of relief because the right step has been taken. Now, this move may deserve applause but let us not be complacent with one isolated incident. The film in question has been banned due to its questionable elements but out there we have many other films, which are being screened along with shocking elements.
We know it for a fact that many films are passed through the censor board without the vulgar parts, which are later on added to the film when they are shown in the rural areas.
Of course we do have reason to worry because we are left wondering about the kind of social education villagers, both young and old, are getting through these movies. So far most newspapers have condemned these films and their makers but one question is: how do these films manage to become commercially viable if people are not around to watch them? Well, the sad truth is that the phenomenon of the obscene films has evolved so solidly over the last decade that a large section of the audience, carefully desensitised, is now getting entertainment from them. We have to accept this as a fact because without patronage these movies would not have survived. If that is the case, perhaps the time has come for the authorities to think about films produced strictly for adults. When films are labelled then at least a certain group of people below the age limit of 18 can be prevented from watching them. Regrettably, vulgarity that is shown in most local films centred around graphically titillating rape scenes.
Honestly speaking, the beast of obscenity has become so powerful that concerted all out efforts are needed from all quarters to ensure a remedy. Otherwise, we will fool ourselves with singular incidents of banning films as the actual force of smut keeps on gathering strength.
WOODLAND WANDERINGS
Since men took a stroll on the moon...
In 1969, Liu Shaoqi, a veteran of the communist revolution in China and long-time ally of Mao Zedong, died in prison, a sorry victim of the country’s chaotic Cultural Revolution. It was a death that would not be known to the outside world until the 1970s, when the full extent of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution began to trickle outward to the world,
writes Syed Badrul Ahsan
The face of the moon was changed forever in July 1969. Two men, for the first time in recorded history, took a stroll on its surface before coming back home to Earth. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, through the collective efforts of some of the best minds in science, proved conclusively that it was possible for man to step out of his earthly limitations and go forth into the unknown in search of the mysteries of Creation. They also demonstrated, to something of regret on our part, that henceforth the moon was not to be, could not be, the focus of poetry in our lives any more. It would, in essence, be inappropriate for us to refer to the pristine beauty of the moon as a way of explaining the leaping romance in our souls. It would be impolitic, from the moment Armstrong spoke of that small step and giant leap thing, to describe the women we loved as emblems of enduring charm shaped in the gleam and glamour of the moon.
Since that quantum leap in physics, indeed in all of science, the world has veered off into newer directions. Whether or not that movement has all been to the positive benefit of people everywhere remains a huge question. But back in the summer of 1969, the thought that the destiny of men was one and indivisible took grand hold of all of us. We did not think, at the time, of a future where men would still do other men to death. Rwanda was far from our minds. The three million who were to die to free Bangladesh were people who marvelled, like the rest of us, at man’s amazing ability to peer into space and then to journey deep into it. Serbs and Croats and Bosnians, unified in Tito’s Yugoslavia, were yet to begin killing one another. Back in 1969, as President Richard Nixon welcomed the astronauts of Apollo 11 home, a new phase in history, as some people saw it, was in the making. It was something about the year that was, in some rather surprising ways, magical and therefore appealing. Significant hints lay embedded in the year about the future shape of history. And, with that, there came the feeling too that in 1969, there were monumental departures and some pretty rude shaking of the earth’s crust in terms of politics.
In April 1969, President Charles de Gaulle gave up, without any second thought, the pomp and glitter of office. He thus proved true to his promise, which was that if he lost a referendum on the constitution he would retire. The electorate, a big portion of which had moved heaven and earth the previous year to bring his government toppling down, went gleefully into ensuring that the general lost. And when the results of defeat came in, De Gaulle simply handed over the powers of the presidential office to the speaker of the national assembly, Alain Poher, and went off to Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. If anything, De Gaulle’s departure from office was a deeply saddening affair for Richard Nixon. Only three months into office himself, the American president clearly expected to be part of a trans-Atlantic process where he could shape the future of the globe in association with the French leader. For Nixon, De Gaulle had always been a hero, and not least because when nearly everyone had given up on the idea of Nixon’s ever returning to centre stage after 1962, it was the French president who kept telling people that there was something of the destiny about Nixon. The future belonged, he made it clear, to the man who had lost to John Kennedy and Edmund G. ‘Pat’ Brown. It was only natural, therefore, that one of the first global figures Nixon chose to call on after his inauguration in January 1969 was President De Gaulle. They talked of history, of the nature of men, of the consequences of the Second World War.
A remarkable degree of political change came over, in 1969, in West Germany. Having struggled through three years of a grand coalition with the Christian Democratic Union’s Kurt-George Kiesinger, Willy Brandt of the Social Democratic Party opted out, reached out to the Free Democrats of Walter Scheel, and shaped a new government for the country. The rise of Willy Brandt was one of the more seminal events in the history of Europe since the end of the war in 1945. The socialism that Brandt espoused spoke of politics based on social democracy. His links to the Socialist International were very broad indications of the transformations that were about to take place in western Europe as a whole. It was from Brandt’s theory of government and politics that men in the future, such as Mario Soares of Portugal and Felipe Gonzalez of Spain, were to draw inspiration in the future. But in 1969, if the departure of Charles de Gaulle was a narrowing of the parameters of greatness in terms of the personalities running politics, the rise of Willy Brandt was fresh indication that statesmanship was not about to decline any time soon. A year on from 1969, Chancellor Brandt would become the first post-war political leader in Europe to send out the message that the Cold War needed to be brought to an end. As part of a policy of reaching out to the communist east, Brandt spoke of Ostpolitik. It was détente, or a forerunner of it. He travelled to East Berlin to speak to East Germany’s Willi Stoph. The historicity of the occasion could not have been lost on others. Ostpolitik was the testing ground for European integration of the future. In the times immediately ahead, it was the example upon which Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger would explore the eventual opening to China and the beginning of the SALT negotiations with the Soviet Union.
In 1969, the new American administration in Washington moved to cut the costs of the military conflict in Vietnam. It was a war that had compelled Lyndon Johnson to stay away from seeking a second term in office. It had left American society divided, bitterly. The division had been reflected, in stark fashion, through the candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy for the presidency. In the event, Kennedy was murdered in Los Angeles and McCarthy’s crusade, after some brief flashes of brilliance, petered out at the Democratic Party convention. The late starter George McGovern naturally found it hard to make an impression. But everybody agreed that 1972 was the year for him, an election that he would lose badly to Nixon, by a landslide. If 1968 had not been a fraught time and if he had not been vice president under Johnson, Hubert Humphrey might have become America’s president. In the polls, he constantly trailed Nixon. He was not willing to go against his president’s policy on Vietnam, a failure for which he was endlessly berated in the media. He offered to engage Nixon in a television debate, but the Republican, burnt in the encounters with JFK in 1960, refused to be tempted by the invitation. When a chance came for Humphrey to overtake Nixon, it was through Johnson’s suspension of the bombings over North Vietnam. But it was too late, perhaps too little. And yet there are people who to this day feel that had the election been held a couple of days after it actually took place, Richard Nixon would have been the man to lose a presidential bid for a second time. Humphrey, as it turned out, would return to the Senate, dissipate through cancer and eventually die. All things considered, 1969 was the year of Richard Nixon. Having told Americans repeatedly during the campaign that he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, Nixon moved to cobble into shape a programme he called Vietnamisation soon after taking office. It was a measure aimed at turning over, gradually, responsibility for the battlefield to the South Vietnamese army and a phase-wise withdrawal of US soldiers from the country. Few in America and elsewhere expected the South Vietnamese to withstand the sustained onslaughts of the communists, but everyone agreed that for America, it was important that its men come back home. Nixon was trying to do just that, a step he called peace with honour. Peace would eventually come to Vietnam through the communists forcing their tanks through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon. For America, though, there would be little honour in the outcome. There is never much glory in defeat. By 1975, America and its allies in South Vietnam stood beaten and tired.
In 1969, Liu Shaoqi, a veteran of the communist revolution in China and long-time ally of Mao Zedong, died in prison, a sorry victim of the country’s chaotic Cultural Revolution. It was a death that would not be known to the outside world until the 1970s, when the full extent of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution began to trickle outward to the world. In the same year, Indira Gandhi broke free of the Congress syndicate of old men who had thought they had her in their control. When men like K. Kamaraj threw up Neelam Sanjiva Reddy as their nominee for the Indian presidency, Indira Gandhi turned her back on them, swiftly had her followers regroup in the Congress-I and nominate Verahagiri Venkata Giri as the man for the presidency. Giri won, Indira’s power went into steep upward mobility and the old men became extinct.
Since men first walked on the moon, the world has never been the same. Science has reached out to the stars; politicians have risen and fallen by the wayside. Statesmen have gone into terminal decline and pompous little men and women have taken upon themselves the pretence of godly authority. The moon does not inspire men of romance into serenading the women of passion any more.
E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk
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