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THE statement of the inspector general of police, Nur Mohammed, that the law-enforcement agencies ‘will not give the Sarbahara people any chance to surrender’ and ‘will pull out their roots’ has had us both shocked and surprised. His statement tends to suggest that it was more than a war cry against the operatives of an underground extreme left movement; it was somewhat a declaration of primacy of vigilantism over the rule of law. The statement was surprising because it came from an officer who has risen through the police ranks reportedly by dint of professional and personal integrity and efficiency, and commitment to the rule of law.
   His statement, put together with the steady surge in the number of custodial deaths, be they in ‘crossfire’ or because of torture, in recent times, tends to reinforce the suspicion that we have articulated in a previous editorial comment, i.e. the state and its manager, the government in other words, are too eager to espouse such extremist means as extrajudicial killings in their fight against extremism of the political groups opposing the existing socio-economic formation. The statement seems to also reinforce our suspicion that the ongoing anti-extremist effort is directed primarily at the underground extreme left outfits. While the radical right organisations are no less disruptive and destructive, and working with equal, if not more, vigour to change the existing system, the government and the law-enforcement apparatus of the state have thus far been rather lenient, when dealing with them. If we contrast the fate of Mofakhkhar Chowdhury, Abdur Rashid Malitha and Mizanur Rahman of the Purba Banglar Communist Party with that of Shaikh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, the differentiated attitude of the government becomes all the more clear. While Shaikh Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai were afforded the scope to stand trial, Mofakhkhar, Malitha or Mizanur Rahman never made it past custody of the law enforcement agencies.
   Here it is important to note that many, if not most, of the Sarbahara operatives may have long digressed from their political ideals and indulged in self-seeking criminal activities. They may also have unleashed a reign of terror in some parts of the country. However, there are laws to deal with such excesses. The rule of law dictates that even the vilest of criminals reserves the right to be tried in a competent court of law and be treated as innocent until proven guilty. More often than not, captured radical left operatives fall pray to vigilante justice meted out by the law enforcers, while their counterparts on the radical right, when arrested, ware afforded the right to defend themselves in the courts of law.
   Such an attitude seems to have been inspired by the imperialist agenda pushed by the United States across South Asia and other parts of the world where democracy and the rule of law are yet to take firm roots; an agenda that readily rejects the leftist ideal of political and economic egalitarianism and demonises its proponents as terrorists and enemies of democracy.
   However it may be, the statement of the inspector general of police strikes at the very concept of the rule of law and could inspire the law enforcers to be more trigger-happy than they already are. Hence, we demand that the top police official immediately retract his statement.

Quarishi’s comment ominous

WHEN a politician like Ferdaus Ahmad Quarishi comments on a sensitive national or political issue, we feel the need to pay close attention to his words and his message. It is not because he has significant public support, which he does not. It is because Quarishi appears to enjoy the status of the most favoured politician by the emergency government. In the months following the declaration of the state of emergency, when political activity of every kind was banned altogether, Quarishi was somehow able to set up a political party of his own and take out motorcycle processions to create fanfare around his re-entry into active politics without any objection from the government. His actions during that period only lent credence to a widely held public perception the military-controlled interim government was directly supporting and sponsoring him and trying to set up a king’s party through him to challenge the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League. Although his stock has appeared to have dipped since, he still remains one of the most active surrogates of the present regime.
   Against this backdrop, when Quarishi makes a statement of public import, we are inclined to believe the message that he wishes to send out is not entirely his own but reflects the current thinking of the present regime. Therefore, we have reason to feel both worried and troubled by his latest statement that the current regime need not stick to the Election Commission’s roadmap of holding elections before the end of this year and should, if it feels necessary, take more time to hold parliamentary elections. It appears to suggest that as a surrogate of this government, Quarishi is either testing the waters or creating the grounds for the present regime to wiggle its way out of the elections that it promised to hold before the end of this calendar year. We hope, desperately, that such is not the case and that Quarishi’s sentiments in this regard are his alone.
   However, in case our fears are justified and that the present regime is indeed considering the further delaying of the parliamentary elections that were supposed to have been held 19 months ago, we take this opportunity to give the current regime two warnings. First, delaying parliamentary elections will further complicate rather than ease the political situation and make it much more difficult for this regime to hold participatory and credible general elections in future. And second, the potential for a mass political movement to bring down this regime will be greatly enhanced and if such a movement is waged, the cost of it – political, economic and social – will have to be borne by not only this regime but by us all.

ON AUGUST 21, New Age reported that the military-controlled interim government of Fakhruddin Ahmed had issued an order directing private universities located in Dhaka’s residential areas to move to their alternative campuses within three months. Of the 51 private universities currently operating in the country, 41 are located in residential areas, being operated out of rented apartments and residences. While a handful are gradually developing their permanent campuses on Dhaka’s outskirts, most have even failed to even acquire the land they need. Given this scenario, a three-month time span is unreasonable for a university to shift its premises – and even if 30-odd universities are suddenly in the market looking for new premises, the expectation that the order will be practically enforced is quite absurd. In a sense then, the order in question is more of a publicity stunt than constructive planning by the education adviser and his colleagues, especially since the interim government has roughly three months left in its self-proclaimed tenure, and will likely not be held accountable for what happens after.
   Sixteen years have now gone by since the Private University Act of 1992 allowed the private sector to foray into higher education for the first time, with Clause 4 of the act requiring that a university can only occupy temporary premises for five years before it must move to its permanent campus with a minimum area of five acres. In these sixteen years, not a single private university has moved to its permanent campus, and not a single university has suffered any consequences.
   This lingering fiasco over premises, however, is symptomatic of a number of grave inconsistencies that are becoming part and parcel of a section of private sector higher education institutes in Bangladesh. A recent episode of the investigative programme Xplosive, aired on the Dhaka-based channel Ekushey, exposes what can only be described as horrifying criminal practices perpetrated by a number of private universities in the guise of higher education.
   The programme, which was aired August 23, focused on two private universities in particular, both based in Dhaka. The Bangladesh University, in operation since 2001, claims in its website that it ‘maintains close collaboration with the University Grants Commission (UGC), the Ministry of Education, Govt of Bangladesh and American, British, Netherlands and other universities’. The programme features an interview with Quazi Azher Ali, the vice-chancellor of the Bangladesh University, in which he openly admits that he has allowed teachers of Dhaka’s Mohammadpur Preparatory Girls High School to teach classes at his university, and asserts that he will continue to do so in the future. ‘[When we started the university] they came to me and said “sir, let us teach here as well – let us learn”, so I let them,’ was his response to a query in this regard. When the journalist in question pointed out that Azher’s own teaching career, spanning 1956-1958 by his own admission, does not meet the government’s requirements for a university vice-chancellor, he responded that this was not the case and that he was the founder and chairman of the university and that was qualification enough. The Bangladesh University’s is not an isolated case: a number of universities, the Dhaka-based University of Liberal Arts for instance, have vice-chancellors of dubious, limited, or no discernable background in academia or teaching.
   Dhaka’s Southeast University, meanwhile, is exposed in the Ekushey investigation as operating a range of fraudulent operations in the name of distance learning. Although the government is yet to grant distance learning licences to any of the private universities, the Southeast University vice-chancellor, M Shamsher Ali, is on record admitting that his university offers such distance-courses to students across the country. Once again, this is not an isolated transgression: many of the private universities are stumbling over each other to set up small offices in districts outside Dhaka to capture the distance learning market, though it is illegal for them to do so. In both these cases, it is obvious that these universities are taking advantage of the shortage of higher education institutes in the country, and cheating students desperate to gain an edge over their peers in the job market, by charging large sums of money for a certificate that could not certify anything more than a poor quality education. The fact that this fraud is being carried out in the name of education is a travesty, and that the government is complicit in this fraud by licensing such universities and letting them carry on unpunished is unforgivable.
   The truth of the matter is that over the past two decades private sector higher education has emerged as an area of investment where the scope to achieve supernormal profits are phenomenal. Many, or most, of the 51 private universities in the country are not run as centres of education and learning. They are operated in a way that squeezes the maximum amount of profit out of the minimum amount of investment and operating costs – as is the goal of any other business. What else could possibly be the motivation to allow school teachers to teach at the university level, or attempt to snag distance learning students who require few teachers or university infrastructure to complete a degree?
   It is in the context of these issues that an amendment to the Private University Act of 1992 has become long overdue, if only to address the plethora of unanticipated loopholes that some universities have taken advantage of in the earlier law to carry on a venal and fraudulent business that sells poor education for large sums of money. While Fakhruddin Ahmed and his colleagues have recently drafted a Private University Ordinance 2008, and while it does take some dynamic measures in addressing the outstanding issues, overall it has been drafted with little or no public debate or discussion, which in itself is not an acceptable route to introduce such a key law.
   It is important to point out, however, private sector higher education is demonised — as a whole — for these exploitative and fraudulent practices of a few, an approach that is both illogical and agenda-driven. It is a citizen’s right in Bangladesh to get free primary education as provided by the state – and this space must be kept beyond the reach of private sector invasion. There is no doubt that the state also has an important role to play in providing subsidised higher education to greater and greater numbers of students who emerge from the secondary education system with adequate qualifications. But there is also little doubt that private sector higher education can also play a significant role in lifting the standards of academia in a country with innovations and up-to-date curricula that public university teachers are often out of touch with. In Bangladesh, the state continues to fail in terms of quality and capacity to offer higher education to its meritorious students, and anybody who attempts to argue that Dhaka University or Chittagong University, as examples, are leagues ahead of the country’s best private universities, has either not attended state-run universities since the nineties, or is intentionally misleading his audience.
   If it is so that a shopkeeper faces legal action for rigged weights, or a fraudulent manpower agent can be arrested for misleading his clients, so it must be with private universities if they mislead or cheat their clients. There is little mystery over what the government should do in this regard. In fact, what is a mystery is why the University Grants Commission, which has the power to cancel the registration of any university, has repeatedly remained silent about errant private universities. If action is taken against such universities, the bureaucrats should not be spared, if only as a precedent.
   But the bigger question that we must ask ourselves in the context of these revelations is: can universities be allowed to run as businesses and still be expected to meet quality standards on their own. Is it ethically sound to argue that it is market forces of demand and supply that will ultimately separate the grain from the chaff, as it happens, say in the market for colas or soaps? The new law being mulled to govern private universities is possibly going to feature a clause that imposes a limit on what a private university can charge a student per credit. Perhaps, what we should really be mulling over is whether the law shouldn’t feature a clause that requires all universities to be operated as non-profit organisations.
   mahtabhaider@gmail.com

IT WAS called the post-Cold War era after the end of the bipolar world. After the brief Russia-Georgia clashes, we have entered the post-Georgia era. Even as the West digests the impact of the confrontation, a new European, if not world, order is emerging.
   One consequence is obvious: Russia has drawn new red lines the West must not cross. Second, Washington must now confront the fact that the brief phase of the United States practically running the world is over. Third, the post-Cold War architecture Washington had built, by disregarding Russian interests even in its own backyard and preparing to meet the challenge posed by the emerging superpower China, has to be redrawn.
   Whatever rhetoric the United States and European Union employ, Russia’s re-emergence as a major power will involve altering the facile assumptions of a prone Russian Federation accepting crumbs offered by the West. Thus, the Cold War organisation seeking to change its appearance cannot render Russia as an island hemmed in by its immediate neighbours owing allegiance to a distant country whose intentions are far from benign.
   More importantly, the United States cannot base elements of a missile defence plan on Russia’s doorstep in Poland and the Czech Republic with impunity, ostensibly to guard against distant rogue elements or states. These countries, former satellites of the Soviet Union, nurse historical memories but are foolish in seeking to guard themselves against a future danger by seeking enmity with a reinvigorated Russia.
   In Georgia’s case, it was the sheer adventurism of President Mikheil Saakashvili that gave Russia the opportunity to show its teeth. If the United States is prepared to erect a ring of hostile states around the Russian Federation, Moscow is signalling that it will not remain a helpless spectator. Indeed, Russia has assets in South Ossetia and Abkhazia it is exploiting, and Ukraine, for all the heroics of President Viktor Yushchenko, is a minefield for the West, with a Russian-entrenched Crimean peninsula and a nation deeply divided between pro-West and Russian parts.
   In effect, Russia is rejecting the American use of democracy as a battering ram to further its geopolitical interests. Moscow’s employment of realpolitik is a concept Washington well understands. But this post-Georgia era poses great dilemmas for the European Union and India. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy is playing a prominent role in dousing the Georgian flames, but the new face-off between Moscow and Washington brings to the fore the divergent interests of the US and its European allies.
   It is no secret that major continental powers such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain – Britain as America’s poodle is in a class of its own – looked upon the American missile plan as an unnecessary provocation for Russia. They agreed to it most reluctantly at the last NATO summit in exchange for shooting down the American thrust for giving Georgia and Ukraine a timeline for joining NATO. Germany also nurses a guilt feeling for going back on a solemn commitment made to the Soviet Union’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev, backed by the United States, not to move NATO east to Moscow’s disadvantage.
   India, seeking a closer strategic and military relationship with the United States through the Indo-US nuclear deal and otherwise, will find it that much more difficult to keep its important defence and political relationship with a resurgent Russia on an even keel. Unlike in the old Cold War era, New Delhi has recalibrated its relations with Washington with an eye on the latter’s ability to help it gain a place in the sun.
   The prospect is not of a return to the Cold War era but of a new three-power game involving the US, Russia and China, with the European Union on the margin. In power terms, the EU suffers from an almost fatal flaw of its newer members, formerly satellites or part of the Soviet Union, more interested in doing Russia down than in finding their place and strength in an empowered Union. There is no quick fix to this central dilemma.
   NATO has emerged as the villain of the piece because it is taking on global responsibilities, often as a substitute for the United Nations, and excludes Russia and China by its very nature. Unilateralist urges are still very much part of the American psyche and the US, whatever the nature of the future administration, still wants to run the world its way and is using NATO not only as an ancillary power structure to enforce its writ but also to retain control of Europe.
   Much will, of course, depend upon how far, if at all, Washington is prepared to accommodate legitimate Russian interests. There is a pragmatic stream in America that ultimately recognises reality, and sooner or later US policymakers must recognise that even as the most powerful military nation in history, it cannot suppress other major powers and run the world alone with satellites.
   India’s own dilemmas are acute, with a disturbed neighbourhood and an emerging post-Georgia era. If India’s non-alignment was tilted towards the Soviet Union in the Cold War era out of necessity, how far should it tilt towards the US in the present circumstances? Although New Delhi has come to the conclusion that Washington holds the key to its place in the pecking order in the world, Russia and China are important power factors that will influence world events. The future will, therefore, require a delicate balancing act.
   The present uncertainty is compounded by the transitional phase in the US presidency that has already begun. President George W Bush has altered his policies in his second term after being buffeted by the slings and arrows of Iraq and Afghanistan. But he cannot alter his mindset, determined by the beguiling neoconservative doctrine. His successor in the White House will decide how far he can alter the course of America’s ship of state to take account of half-hidden rocks. The world hopes that he will realise that baiting the Russian bear cannot lead to peace in Europe or the world.