Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

Abandoning the salvage operations of MV Raipura was at best a sad circumstance and at worst an insensitive act. There can hardly be any excuse for the fact that over the days spent in attempts to lift the launch out of the depths of the Jamuna nothing was finally done. It all goes to demonstrate the cavalier, even shameless attitude we have adopted towards dealing with natural disasters on the rivers. When we are informed, repeatedly, that the wires and coils necessary to pull the sunken vessel to the surface have snapped, we begin to wonder what the authorities at inland water shipping have been doing over the years. The salvage vessels that are in operation should have been consigned to the junkyard decades ago and their places taken over by new rescue vessels. As to the matter of experienced divers, we have precious few who can be used or who can utilise their experience and training in the matter of rescuing people or retrieving bodies. One would have thought that in a country so defined by its rivers, the authorities would have taken care about preparing as many divers as they could for deployment in times of emergency. It is now clear that anyone who has the misfortune of losing his life on the river must tell himself before that tragedy occurs that nothing can possibly be done to save him or recover his remains once his body floats to the bed of the river.
   The authorities have cited, as a not very credible reason, the prevalence of storms and rain to explain why they have had to abandon the recovery programme. The move cannot be accepted with equanimity for two very good reasons. The first is that the decision to stop the rescue attempt sends out the very bad message that all those lives lost do not matter to the state and that the kin of the dead and missing, all of whom have been waiting on the banks of the Jamuna for days to come by some news about their loved ones, are people who can be dismissed in very insensitive manner. The second reason is that it is never a judicious move on the part of government-run institutions to give up an emergency rescue operation only because of bad weather. Are we now expected to accept the thought that whoever dies in a river disaster in future and in the midst of bad weather will be abandoned to his fate? The more important reality that the BIWTA people should be dealing with is the matter of how the efforts of so many people to bring the sunken vessel to the surface did not succeed. In a very broad sense, one can easily argue that the methods that were employed to retrieve the vessel were quite primitive and not something that one can expect in these modern days of sophisticated technology. It all raises, in turn, the question of why in all these years (when a good deal of unproductive activities have been indulged in by successive governments) no one in the administration has had the inclination or determination to modernise our river safety systems. A state of affairs where storm-related warnings cannot be disseminated in time for people to move to safety is appalling. Even in such a simple area as daily weather forecasts, it is to our huge embarrassment that we often find the predictions going wrong.
   The time has arrived for a proper, concentrated focus to be placed on such issues. The regulations that are in place regarding public safety on our roads and rivers must be enforced. It is not a very enlightening spectacle watching our political and bureaucratic functionaries telling us, every time a mishap occurs, that the government is constrained by the absence of proper equipment and manpower from doing its job of saving people or making sure that their bodies are recovered in time for a decent burial.

First Ladies, celebrities
and rescue vessels

Laura Bush has been travelling through the Middle East. On Sunday she was literally mobbed by Jewish protesters who clearly felt her husband’s administration was doing certain things wrong about the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations. That may well be the case. But what is of bigger importance here is the reality of the US First Lady finally striking out on her own. Or you could say that Mrs. Bush has now made the conscious decision of being in the public eye through highlighting some particular policies of her husband’s government. Whether or not she will have any impact is of course an entirely different matter.
   The story of America’s modern First Ladies makes interesting reading. If you recall the times of Hillary Clinton, now a US senator, you might have to pause a while, for the spouse of Bill Clinton was never a First Lady in that conventional sense of the meaning. She was, and remains, a powerhouse in her own right. But go back to the others. Eleanor Roosevelt quickly stepped out of FDR’s shadow to popularise public causes, so much so that Harry Truman decided it was quite proper for her to speak for the United States at significant international forums. Those who came later —- Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson —- were, however, quite content to be in the shadow of their husbands. Rosalynn Carter tried being her own personality, but the brevity of her husband’s presidency quite did not allow her to see her full potential realised. Barbara Bush never pretended to be anything but the wife of George H.W. Bush.
   And that is how the history, or part of it, of America’s First Ladies reads. Seriously, though, do First Ladies matter? Or has it all come to a point where First Ladies are merely another way of upholding the celebrity culture which has become so much a part of America’s psyche? You might understand that a little when you reflect on Jennifer Lopez’s presidential ambitions. Or was she merely being funny?

The chairperson of the Dhaka Education Board, in company with quite a few others, will likely be embarking on a visit to a number of countries in the Middle East one of these days. Lest you be under any illusion, the trip will be, wholly and unequivocally, at state expense. The estimates are that as much as Taka 40,00,000 will be expended by the government treasury to finance the trip. And the trip, as the gullible ones in our midst will tell you, is being organised to enable these eminent personalities to have a glimpse into how about a thousand or so of our Bengali young men and women, all in the Middle East, have been faring at the on-going Higher Secondary Certificate examinations. The really discerning ones, however, will tell you that the trip is just one of those affairs when some people, unable to resist the temptation of a trip abroad at government expense, will simply go out of the country and make themselves happy. It is one of those jaunts which our public officials —- high, middle and low —- are generally fond of. It has happened before and you can be sure it will happen again. But surely what does give a serious twist to the imagination is why the chairperson of the Dhaka Education Board, or for that matter any education board in the country, feels she or he must travel to those countries. The visit will do nothing by way of drawing investment to the country. There is absolutely no possibility of the Dhaka Education Board chief and her team making a positive contribution to Bangladesh’s foreign policy through undertaking that trip. And if it is mere concern about how those young Bengalis have been doing at the exams, one might as well ask if the state has finally stumbled on a policy where some officials, among whom is the private secretary to the minister of education (what is he doing being part of the team?), can make overseas trips in the interest of some examination or the other.
   All of this raises some rather interesting points. The board chairperson has of course told the media, in this case a particular newspaper, that indeed there has always been some allocation relating to the kind of trip she means to undertake. Maybe, maybe not. The bigger issue is one of why such trips are necessary at all. Besides, a good number of subjects have already been covered by the HSC examinees in the last few days. By the time our team of distinguished people finally leaves for the Middle East, the examinations may well be over and done with. But let us move back to those interesting points. If now the chairperson of the Dhaka Board really goes on that trip with her fellow officials, under what rule can we in future prevent the chairman of a department at a university from demanding that the vice chancellor and the university administration send him abroad to observe how examinations are conducted there? Even better, there could be some people with quick bright minds ready to leap forth with the suggestion that the chairman of the nation’s Public Service Commission undertake, in future, a trip to London to gauge the performance and related affairs of those Bengalis who happen to be appearing at the civil service examinations per courtesy of the Bangladesh High Commission. So, you see, holding a position of public importance has huge advantages in this country. Only weeks ago we were enlightened with reports of four of our parliamentarians going all the way to North America to educate themselves on the prospecting of natural resources. You almost feel that once they are back, these wonderful foursome will plunge, physically, into the job of helping us all in extracting gas and oil from deep within our soil. We do thank our lucky stars, though, that at least four other members of the delegation decided to abjure the trip because they thought there was nothing to learn through such a trip. There are, after all, powerful people in this country who sometimes turn out to be sensible beings as well.
   On a serious note, though, you cannot but realise that all these efforts on the part of the nation to indulge the powerful ones around us has been having a toll in terms of not just financial resources but national self-esteem as well. If you go through the records, you might come upon the tale of a chief election commissioner who insisted that the Americans invite him to Washington in order for him to get a feel of how the election system is run in the United States. Eventually the Americans did invite him, or that is what we have been told. But until they did, they were not quite ready to comprehend the notion of why Bangladesh’s chief election official needed to go into the intricacies of the American election system. There is not and there never will be, after all, any compelling circumstance for the people of the United States of America to go for a caretaker system of government, of the kind that we have here in Bangladesh. In the United States, candidates for political office and their goons do not occupy polling booths. So what did the trip achieve? Nothing, you might say, except for the fact that the chief election commissioner enjoyed the trip. Any trip to America by anyone is an enjoyable affair, provided it comes with the right reasons. But let that pass. The bigger problem for us is that ever so often we have had the ungainly spectacle of politicians and officials making all those trips abroad at state expense with, in the end, hardly anything to show for results. It is not merely the question of how much money is coughed up by the state exchequer to fund such high profile visits. There is too the issue of how Bangladesh’s diplomatic missions remain burdened by all this weight of protocol responsibilities to be carried out in order for these carefree, and often demanding, visitors to be kept in a happy frame of mind. The sight of diplomats at various levels neglecting their prescribed responsibilities in order to cater to the needs of the visitors from back home is perhaps one of the sorriest spectacles in the story of the nation’s diplomacy. When a visiting bureaucrat (and he is visiting because he happens to be accompanying two lawmakers on a trip to a European country) disappears for days together with the vehicle hired for the MPs (the MPs being thus forced to move around in a vehicle of the embassy), you know how callous the whole method of governance has turned out to be. Or take the case of the well-known physician who decided, in his wisdom, to undergo a process of thorough medical examination on one of his jaunts abroad. The next thing you know is that he submits the bill of expenses incurred for his treatment to the embassy, which can do nothing about it. It is then that he tries out other methods, among which is the establishment of contact with a relative of one of the most powerful of governing political beings back home. The state thus loses much in pampering this single individual. No one thinks of filing charges of corruption.
   In the later part of the 1990s, some individuals, all well-known in their professional regions and chosen to be members of a committee tasked with suggesting the ways and means by which the state electronic media could be granted autonomy, chanced upon the brilliant thought that a knowledge-oriented trip to a few countries before they got down to business would be useful. And thus they travelled to a number of charming places, met media officials there, came back home to submit a report, which report was eventually sat upon by the government. And that was that. You can now sit back and go into calculating the disturbing mathematics of the expenses behind the trips.
   It is an unfortunate country. It is forever fate that overcomes us. We do not have the means to lift a simple sunken river ferry out of the river. Our national airlines are in need of new, modern aircraft. Our people need good drinking water, our sons and daughters need to go to school, our young people are in desperate requirement of jobs. None of this matters to our elite. They will go abroad, indeed they must. They truly believe it is all in the interest of the future of this precariously impoverished land.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk
   (Talleyrand’s World will appear next week)