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The hawkers are back on the streets of Dhaka city. The ubiquitous presence of the hawkers is a quiet, successful revolt against the elitist emergency rulers who, in their quixotic exuberance, have been trying to implement an open-ended agenda to reshape the polity in its entirety –– from slum to politics, from textbooks to ethos of nationhood. The demand of life is much more resilient and stronger than the diktats of the rulers –– whoever they may be or under whatever system of governance.
   This has happened in the aftermath of the August 20-22 countrywide campus upheaval. The single-man judicial inquiry may come out with an accurate or inaccurate account of the violent protest and the disproportionate use of force by the ruling coterie to suppress it. The courts may or may not find the 36 accused in the 13 cases guilty and dispose of the cases accordingly. The plethora of conspiracy theories may continue to confuse the people. The intellectuals may carry on, ad infinitum, the debate about the judiciousness or recklessness of the leadership of the Dhaka University Teachers’ Association, in demanding the withdrawal of the emergency and joining the students’ protest. But the fact remains that there is a widespread public perception that the poor, including the hawkers, who had become collateral victims of the draconian emergency dispensation, joined the fray and thereby became associate winners as well as beneficiaries of the students’ protest.
   The withdrawal of the military camp from the DU campus and the unprecedented expression of regret by the head of the government, chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, for the alleged misbehaviour of the army men with the students, were remarkable achievements of the initial agitation of the students. The subsequent spread of the agitation beyond the campus –– for whatever reasons, by whosoever and through methods fair or foul –– allowed the hawkers and the poor like them, who were smothered under the boots of the law enforcers in the initial days of the emergency, to reclaim, to a certain extent, their position in society. The hawkers re-asserted their right to livelihood. The powers that be were pragmatic enough to gracefully concede a defeat and refrained from persisting with the insensitive anti-hawker drive. The Ramzan also came handy as an excuse for the relaxation.
   This is not to celebrate the crowding of roads by hawkers as a good thing. This is rather to emphasise that the sudden jolt on the campus, how much one may criticise or denounce it as adventurism or a conspiracy, displayed, nonetheless, a flash of ‘people power’. The mettle of the emergency rule was tested and also was established a new equation between the emergency rulers and the poorer sections of the population like hawkers, wayside traders and slum-dwellers. This new equation is not a formalised one but a reality on the ground which goes to the advantage of both the sides. The poorer sections of the population got an immediate relief and the ruling coterie a breathing space in its battle against the extant political establishment.
   The main contradiction: The apparent conciliatory attitude towards the hawkers in the wake of the campus upheaval does not indicate by any means that the powers that be are yet in a mood or prepared to take an enlightened view of things. This would have required addressing of the main contradiction of the post-January 11 Bangladesh –– the emergency.
   The emergency has, on the one hand, robbed the people of their rights and freedoms, and, on the other, put a bar on the constitutional power struggle among the various factions of the ruling class, organised in the political parties. The latter factor threatens to further distort the political process and even to disrupt, once again, the chequered legacy of constitutional governance in the country.
   Whether the political parties are pro-people or anti-people is besides the point as the present ruling coterie also belongs to the same ruling class. Also is not of much relevance the first euphoric support the emergency received from the unsuspecting common people and some sections of the elites who were and still are disgruntled with the existing political parties. They supported the emergency under an illusion of finding greater freedoms and better governance compared to the performance of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League under the leadership of former prime ministers Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina respectively. With rights and freedoms curtailed, the economy worsening and the standard of governance deteriorating, even the business leaders have now become sceptical about the benefits of the emergency.
   There is, therefore, always a possibility of the people and the political parties combining against their common enemy, the emergency.
   The weaknesses of the political parties: The political parties, however, do not at the moment pose much of a threat to the powers that be. The burden of the past misdeeds, internal dissensions and the fetters of the emergency have paralysed the big political parties like the Awami League and the BNP. The smaller parties and certain big names in politics with inconsequential parties, like Dr Kamal Hossain, neither have their constituencies among the workers, peasants and the professionals, nor can claim to have any respectable number of safe constituencies for parliamentary elections. Besides, viable left alternatives to bourgeois leadership has long been absent in the country.
   The weaknesses of the political parties are manifest in their acceptance of the emergency when it was proclaimed, in their subsequent muted criticism of the emergency, in their shyness to render support to the sporadic movements of the peasants, workers and the students, in their meek condonation of the abuse of the constitution by the Fakhruddin government and the Election Commission, and in their eagerness in biting the baits of the so-called indoor politics and roadmap to election under the shadow of the emergency.
   The Achilles heel of the ruling coterie: The discomfiture of the political parties is not, though, a comfort for the powers that be. The very emergency is a badge of shame –– a loud public acknowledgement by the ruling coterie that the situation of the country is abnormal. The emergency is thus not a solution of the festering political problem but is a bigger problem. And the ruling coterie, formally represented by the Fakhruddin government, is not a part of the solution but a part of the problem itself.
   The emergency enables the ruling coterie to project and employ the immense power of the military, police and the bureaucracy, unencumbered by the usual restraints of the constitution. (Making a distinction between ‘power’ and ‘strength’, the celebrated author Vikram Seth in his masterpiece, A Suitable Boy, advises: ‘Don’t use force, use strength.’)
   A government in the modern state-system draws its strength from the constitution. The ruling coterie has drifted far away from the constitutional bound. For all the flexing of muscles of state power, this emergency government is inherently a weak, nervous government.
   The abuse of constitution by an unelected caretaker government which is tantamount to the usurpation of power is no less, if not more, repugnant an act than the abuse of power and corruption by a palpably bad elected political government.
   And the commitment of the powers that be to cleanse politics, political parties and the polity and present the people with a clean elected government is the Achilles heel of the ruling coterie. For the fulfilment of this commitment they are dependent on the cooperation of the politicians and the political parties.
   Twenty20 cricket vs Test cricket: Herein lies the relative strength of the political parties and the politicians vis-à-vis the ruling coterie. For the latter, time is fast running out but the former can wait till the other makes a fatal mistake or wears itself out.
   The ruling coterie, as an interim caretaker government, is constrained to play the shortest version of Twenty20 cricket in power politics, albeit through the proxy of their collaborating parties and politicians. The political parties and the politicians who matter –– to name, the Awami League under Hasina and the BNP under Khaleda –– seem to have decided, on the other hand, to engage the powers that be in a Test match of politics.
   Meanwhile, the whole country is literally littered with dry faggots of discontent –– be it the market place, mills and factories, campus, farm land or slums. In the absence of leadership from the political parties and forces, possibilities of sporadic agitation, latest one being at the Savar EPZ on September 15, taking place more frequently are very high. The powers that be can hardly afford to allow time and scope to the existing political leadership to regroup or new political forces to emerge to cash on the popular discontent. For them, a spectre of discontent and destabilisation stalks the countryside.
   No cause for despair: At the same time, the compulsion of the Election Commission to hold dialogues with the political parties has put politics back on the agenda. The dynamics of politics and the volatility of the street on the one side, and the response to these by the powers that be, on the other, will shape the immediate future of the polity.
   If politics fails to establish its hegemony over the situation and the powers that be get desperate to implement its open-ended reforms agenda including the ‘minus-two formula of politically liquidating Hasina and Khaleda, it will be a bad time for the rights and freedoms of the people and their democratic aspirations.
   But, keeping in mind the experiences of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, this need not be a cause to panic or despair. As American poet, Carl Sandburg, celebrates the ever-renewable strength of the people:
   The people will live on.
   The learning and blundering people will live on.
   They will be tricked and sold and again sold
   And they go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
   The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
   You cannot laugh off their capacity to take it.
   The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.
   A preview of such a ‘cyclonic drama’ was witnessed during the August 20-22 countrywide campus upheaval, originating from the campus of the Dhaka University, the birthplace of all the big movements of the past in this country.
   NM Harun is contributing editor of New Age. He can be reached at: badrun123@dhaka.net

The disaster which took place as a result of heavy rainfall in Chittagong on the 11th of June, 2007, needs assessment of why it took place. The death of more than a hundred people due to the landslide caused by the rains has brought home to us some rather unpalatable truths about a situation that has been in the making for a long time.
   At least 128 people were killed and hundreds more injured as torrential rains sparked off a series of devastating landslides in Chittagong, plunging the country's second largest city into chaos. The highest number of casualties occurred at Lebu Bagan of Chittagong Cantonment, Power Colony at Pahartali and Garbibullah Shah’s mazar (shrine) adjoining Kusumbagh Residential Area. According to various newspapers and the electronic media, the relentless cutting of hills is mainly responsible for the frequent landslides, including disaster of the 11th of June in Chittagong. However, after the field visit to the above mentioned areas on the 26th and 27th of June, we were surprised to discover, after interviewing the affected families and observing the surrounding areas, that what we have learned from the media is not the whole truth.
   In the case of Lebu Bagan, the affected hills were just within the northern periphery of the army’s residential area of Chittagong Cantonment. The Army Firing Range is located on the eastern side of the hills. The affected people have been living on the foothills for the past 20 to 40 years. According to an elderly foothill dweller, ‘We have been occupying this land before the War of Liberation and have never experienced such phenomena as the recent landslides.’ Most of these people migrated from Barisal and Noakhali because they lost their lands due to erosion of river banks. At present there are about 150 households residing in the affected area, of which 50 were severely damaged by the sudden landslide on the 11th of June, which also caused 70 casualties.
   After interviewing the affected people, we got to know that the hill is privately owned and the owner has allowed these refugees to settle beside the foothills without asking for any rent. The first generation of settlers subsequently constructed shanties and rented them to other fellow refugees. A percentage of the rent goes to the owner of the hill.
   The most astonishing thing we found out, both by interviewing the affected people and from our own observation, was that the hill has never been cut by earth traders! The landslide on the 11th of June occurred naturally, but the media gave the wrong impression by stating that the disaster in that area occurred as a result of unplanned and relentless hill cutting. According to the local people there were much heavier rainfalls in the past (1991 cyclone), but there was no fatal landslide or mudslide. The local perception of the incident was that in the past years rainwater infiltrated the hills, causing the top soil to slowly loosen up. In addition they mentioned that holes were created by bullets on the other side of the hill where the Army Firing Range is situated, because of which the inner core of the hill might have been loosened, leading to the landslide. From our observation of the affected area, we found out that the local people were correct to some extent as the soil is covered by only wild herbs and shrubs which do not have deep, penetrating roots. The soil of the hill is sandy. In view of the fact that there has been no plantation of medium sized or large trees on the slopes of the hill, the sandy topsoil never had the opportunity to harden and was thus vulnerable to erosion by intense rainfall over the years.
   In the case of the landslide at Garbibullah Shah’s Mazar adjoining Kusumbagh Residential Area, the same information was gathered by interviewing the local people who said that none of the adjoining hills were ever cut! They also mentioned that on the other side of the hill the Chittagong Metropolitan Police’s firing range is situated, and the innumerable bullets fired for target practice have been creating holes in the hill, thus allowing the rainwater to seep into the core of the hill, causing big chunks of soil to break up and erode over time. To some extent the locals’ statement has some logic as in both cases the firing ranges are situated beside the hills. Further geological analysis is needed to test this hypothesis.
   When we visited the other areas affected by landslides, more or less the same type of scenario was observed! The significant thing observed in all the areas affected by the landslide on the 11th of June was that no incidents of hill cutting in the recent past were recorded. Rather the landslides occurred due to natural processes as there was no tree cover on the hills, causing the soil to be eroded over time by rainfall and surface water run-off. If there were plantations of trees on the slope, surface water run-off could not have loosened the top soil, and the disaster would not have happened. So plantation of trees (preferably native species) is an effective and environmentally sound solution to prevent any future occurrence of landslides in these areas.
   In order to prevent further occurrence of landslides, the Department of Forest has planted seedlings of Acacia (Acacia mangium), Raintrees and Jackfruit trees, et cetera, after 6 days of the incident on the slopes where landslides had occurred. Other than that, a local NGO and the army have identified the houses that are possibly vulnerable to landslides, and have declared them to be abandoned.
   In order to prevent such disasters in the future, the most important thing is to identify those areas in the city which are vulnerable to landslides and to make the people of those areas aware of the potential threat of future landslides. After visiting the other affected areas, we have identified Matir Jhorna lane under Lalkhan Bazar as the area that is most vulnerable to landslides, because a huge slum and low-cost houses have been set up on the slopes and foothills of this area. People living in these susceptible areas have to be re-located gradually to safer parts of the city. Otherwise there might be a huge number of casualties in Chittagong if earthquake or any kind of natural disaster occurs.
   Recommendations for the metropolitan area
   Hill cutting should be totally stopped.
   Developing or levelling of undulating land should have proper peripheral land slope or retaining wall.
   Setting up of slums on the sides of hills should be stopped.
   Proper plantation of trees and creation of green belts on hills can prevent landslides or reduce their frequency.
   No agricultural cultivation should be allowed on hills.
   Quick drainage of rainwater is very essential to reduce vulnerability to landslides.
   Buildings can be constructed on hills with proper drainage and sewerage systems without disturbing their natural slope.
   Rules should be framed to construct houses at a safe distance from hills. The safe distance can be calculated according to slope and type of soil. The safe distance from a hill is usually equal to the height of the hill. Further distance should be added for the inertia of motion of the sliding earth.
   Atif Md Safi and Mohammad Mohaiminuzzman Khan work at the Wildlife & Nature Conservation Society of Bangladesh as research officers.

A state of parallel worlds determines almost everything we do and how we do it, everything we know and how we know it. The word that once described it, class, is unmentionable, just as imperialism used to be. Thanks to George W Bush, the latter is back in the lexicon in Britain, if not at the BBC.
   Class is different. It runs too deep; it allows us to connect the present with the past and to understand the malignancies of a modern economic system based on inequity and fear. So it is seldom spoken about publicly, lest a Goldman Sachs chief executive on multimillions in pay or bonuses, or whatever they call their legalised heists, be asked how it feels to walk past office cleaners struggling on the minimum wage.
   Just as elite power seeks to order other countries according to the demands of its privilege, so class remains at the root of our own society’s mutations and sorrows. In recent weeks, the killing of an 11-year-old Liverpool boy and other tragedies involving children have been thoroughly tabloided. Interviewing Keith Vaz, chairman of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, one journalist wondered if ‘we’ should go out and deal personally with our vile, mugging, stabbing, shooting youth. To this, the nodding Vaz replied that the problem was ‘values’.
   The main ‘value’ is ruthless exclusion, such as the exile of millions of young people on vast human landfills (rubbish dumps) called housing estates, where they are forearmed with the knowledge that they are different and schools are not for them. A rigid curriculum, a system devoted to testing children beyond all reason, ensures their alienation. ‘From the age of seven,’ says Shirley Franklin of the Institute of Education, ‘20 per cent of the nation’s children are seen, and see themselves, as failures . . . Violence is an expression of hatred towards oneself and others.’ With the all-digital world of promise and rewards denied them, let alone a sense of belonging and esteem, they move logically to the streets and crime.
   And yet, since 1995, actual crime in England and Wales has fallen by 42 per cent and violent crime by 41 per cent. No matter. The ‘violence of youth’ is the accredited hysteria. A government led for a decade by a man whose lawless deceit helped cause the violent deaths of perhaps a million people in Iraq invented an acronym –– Asbo –– for a campaign against British youth, whose prospects and energy and hope were replaced by the ‘values’ expressed by Keith Vaz and exemplified by Goldman Sachs and the current imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
   Take Afghanistan, where the irony is searing. In less than seven years, the Anglo-American slaughter of countless ‘Taliban’ (people) has succeeded in spectacularly reviving an almost extinct poppy trade, so that it now supplies the demand for heroin on Britain’s poorest streets, where enlightened drug rehabilitation is not considered a government ‘value’. Parallel worlds require other elite forms of exclusion. At the Edinburgh Television Festival on 24 August, the famous BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman made a much-hyped speech ‘attacking’ television for ‘betray[ing] the people we ought to be serving’. What was revealing about the speech was the attitude towards ordinary viewers it betrayed. According to Paxman, ‘while the media and politicians feel free to criticise each other, neither has the guts to criticise the public, who are presumed never to be wrong’. In fact, ordinary people are treated in much of the media as invisible or with contempt, or they are patronised. Two honourable exceptions were the GMTV presenters cited and mocked by Paxman for their humanity in standing up for an ex-soldier denied proper treatment by the National Health Service. Paxman called for a more ‘sophisticated’ and ‘honest’ approach that accepted the public’s approval of low taxes –– taxes that are not rationed when it comes to propping up hugely profitable private finance
   initiatives in the Health Service or squandered
   on waging war, regardless of the public’s
   objections.
   Not once in his speech did Paxman refer to Iraq, nor did he tell us why Blair was never seriously challenged on that bloodbath in a broadcast interview. That the BBC had played a critical role in amplifying and echoing Blair’s and Bush’s lies was apparently unmentionable. The coming attack on Iran, led again by propaganda filtered through broadcasting, is from the same parallel world, also unmentionable.
   Znet , September 8, 2007