Editorial
Press freedom a major victim
of emergency rule
BANGLADESH joins the rest of the world in observing World Press Freedom Day today, at a time when the very concept of ‘press freedom’ has been relegated to the status of an ornate word in the routine rhetoric of the rulers of the country. Ever since the interim government assumed office in January 2007, the two ‘chiefs’ – the chief adviser and the army chief – have hardly tired of propagating the incumbents’ commitment to protecting the freedom of the media – print and electronic. The media, they affirmed so eloquently, is the parliament in the absence of a national parliament. It now appears that, when they say parliament, they mean a parliament where there is no dissenting voice. The incumbents have seemingly taken the use of a security intelligence agency to gag the media to a new high, or low, however one wishes to look at it, developing a cell to exclusively deal with the media. The cell has used intimidation tactics, e.g. unsolicited phone calls, almost on a regular basis in an attempt to make the media fall into the incumbents’ line. The newspapers have been subjected to unwritten advisories as to which news item they can carry and which they cannot while the private television channels have been told, categorically, whom they can invite to their talk-shows and whom they cannot, what programmes they can air live and what programmes they cannot.
The most obvious consequence of such intimidation tactics is that most media entities, if not all, take recourse to self-censorship. However, their less obvious but more damaging impact is felt on the overall development of the nation, economic and otherwise. In the present-day development discourse, the people’s freedom – economic, cultural, political and social – is deemed to be directly correlated with a nation’s overall development. While democracy ensures protection, promotion and perpetuation of a wide range of individual rights, e.g. the right to freedom of choice, the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of thoughts and conscience, the right to freedom of association, the right to hold meetings, bring out processions and move the courts for democratic justice, development reflects the scope for exercise of such rights. Most importantly, democracy is about the people’s freedom to participate in the policy-planning exercises. The more the scope for the people to exercise these rights the higher the degree of development proves to be. In South Asia, for example, countries that have been able to maintain governance by elected representatives, despite all its limitations, have fared much better than those who have allowed the perpetuation of military or quasi-military rule.
Regrettably, Bangladesh is currently in a situation wherein the fundamental rights of the people have remained suspended for over a year under a state of emergency. Let alone be a part in the affairs of the state, they have been stripped of their rights to speak freely even. Such an absence of freedom has already started to take its toll on the nation’s health – economic, cultural, political and social. If the incumbents are true to their self-professed commitment to media freedom, which they will surely reiterate on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, they should immediately withdraw the state of emergency and restore the people’s freedom to choose who they want to be ruled by and thus resume the pace of development.
Vanishing parks and playgrounds
Unplanned urbanisation and asymmetry of development have begun to extract their toll in every way. Dhaka city with its ever-growing one crore-plus population without relation to infrastructure and the necessary amenities, most tellingly underscores this imbalance of growth and conurbation. And it is children, more than any other group perhaps, who pay the price for the irresponsibility and callousness of adults. Physical and mental growth of children seems to have been farthest from the minds of the framers of state policy who presided over the horizontal and vertical expansion of the capital city and its supposed modernisation. Despite the growing numbers of skyscrapers and shopping plazas, the fantasy parks and fountains, the basic amenities are missing and children finding no park or playground or even any open space perforce play in the streets. Development of parks and playgrounds has not matched the heady growth of the city and many of those that already existed have been usurped, often by private builders and others. And a few newly-built children’s parks that were added to the city lately were based on commercial consideration as is evident from the high rates of gate money.
A report in Thursday’s New Age presents a pathetic picture of the playgrounds being ruined due to encroachment and poor maintenance. The report mentions that during the past regimes local leaders grabbed two playgrounds and erected apartment buildings on them. A park in the area is also being used as open market sale outlet. Mohammadpur as a planned area initially possessed adequate number of parks which are now disappearing one by one. The condition in the older parts of the city can easily be imagined. All the high-rise edifices and metropolitan glitter would substantially lose their meaning if children are prevented from growing into citizens of sound body and mind.
Three weeks ago students of seven schools of Mirpur area, with the help of local people formed a human chain demanding no new facility but only protection of their existing playground from usurpers. (Portions of the playground had already been occupied). Last year students and teachers of Azampur Government Primary School in the city came out into street and formed a human chain for the same purpose – preservation of their playground. Besides grabbers, encroachers and private builders, government agencies themselves have sometimes misused parks from revenue earning motive. One example is the Dhaka City Corporation converting its Kawran Bazar park into market. The parks and playgrounds that are still left are precariously waiting to be swallowed by any one of the numerous predatory moves masquerading as ‘development projects’. As there is no central policy direction, parks and playground are inviting every kind of greed and speculation. And no successive government has called a halt to it with any degree of firmness.
Playing with energy resources
and our future
A nation can never rise and flourish unless it learns how to manage and use its natural resources. It is important to learn the lessons from the mistakes before it is too late. It is high time to reframe and restructure our attitude, commitment and vision to safeguard the nation’s interests and well-being, writes Dr Aftab Alam Khan
ENERGY resources are the backbone of a nation. The prosperity of a nation largely depends on proper exploitation and utilisation of such resources to meet the ever-growing energy demands. Our predecessors found natural resources and exploited them. They were aware that these resources had geologic limits, and they knew that some day these resources would be depleted. Depletion was a matter of concern for people, for communities, and sometimes for the entire nation. Unfortunately, our energy resource sectors are in such a devastating state that one sensible citizen with a minimum prudence has no other option rather than to be frightened.
Bangladesh is one of the smallest but most densely-populated countries in the world. It is blessed with natural resources like gas and coal. The exploration for oil and gas in Bengal region began as early as 1910 during the British colonial rule. After the Second World War, the oil exploration activities began in 1951 by such oil companies as Shell, Stanvac and British Petroleum and continued until 1971 with an eyewash partnership with the PPL and the OGDC. Most of the gas discoveries inside Bangladesh territory were made during this phase. Until this point of pre-independence phase, these gas discoveries could not draw any serious attention of the Pakistani rulers because it was in East Pakistan or even of foreign oil companies because of their interest in oil.
So, the immediate post-independence phase of Bangladesh emerged as the most virgin field where we could establish absolute control of the natural resource sectors for its promotion and development, and for economic emancipation of the nation. But, unfortunately, due to lack of political will, knowledge, honesty and a minimum love for the country, the entire gas resource has either gone into the control of the international oil companies or plundered by some vested interest groups to serve the purpose of the international oil companies. One cannot solely blame the international oil companies; after all, they are here to do business, to derive maximum benefits, legally and illegally. The misdeed of those who framed the production-sharing contracts and leased out the entire on-shore region and discovered and known gas fields to the international oil companies are largely to blame.
After independence, the Bangladesh Petroleum Act 1974 was promulgated and six oil companies such as ARCO, Union Oil, BODC (Nippon Oil), Inanaftaplin (Yougoslav State Oil), Canadian Superior Oil, and Ashland all ventured into offshore oil exploration in compliance with the production-sharing contracts formulated under the Bangladesh Petroleum Act 1974. All the companies wound up their exploration activities by 1977 simply because they could not discover oil, although Union Oil found gas in the Kutubdia well. To expedite petroleum exploration, the World Bank-assisted Petroleum Exploration Promotion Project was undertaken in 1984 and a new model production-sharing contract was formulated in 1988, obviously on the bank’s prescriptions.
Until early 1990s, for about 15 years after the international oil companies left, the government, policymakers, and professionals involved in the natural resource and energy sectors had ample time to shape and format policies and visions for exploration and exploitation of natural resources for the benefits of the people and the country. Instead, during this period, a ground was prepared where both the international oil companies and the governments could play very selfishly with the people’s natural resources. It was a phase of what could be called economic terrorism. It is difficult to find any sensible reason as to why it was necessary to lease out blocks 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15, which were already known to be gas-rich, to the international oil companies when the state-owned BAPEX continued to strike gas every three wells at a cost of about Tk 200 crore.
It was the time when BAPEX discovered the Shahbazpur field with recoverable gas worth Tk 6,500 crore. Unfortunately, no blocks were kept for BAPEX for exploration and development. The Jalalabad field with recoverable gas worth Tk 17,500 crore was leased out to Unocal for a ghost payment of about Tk 385 crore. Now, we are buying the gas that we discovered from Unocal at double the price. Also, the Feni and Chhatak gas fields were declared marginal under dubious circumstances and a shady deal was struck with Niko. The Feni and Chhatak fields never reached a status as to be declared marginal. According to Petrobangla statistics of June 2000, the Chhatak field had recoverable gas reserve of 1.113tcf, which, at present rate, would translate into about Tk 22,000 crore. Cairn Energy was also allowed to manipulate the ‘cost recovery’ amount from the Sangu field where an initial $90 million was raised to $190 million and eventually to $267 million. This has resulted in a twofold loss for us, one from cost recovery payment and other from an exorbitant estimate of gas reserve. When the gas sector is strewn with such high-profile corruption, another drama has emerged with the coal resource, apparently to be captured, controlled and destroyed. Even if the environmental and social costs are ignored, how can one ignore the financial cost? It has been estimated that the country would incur a loss of $37 billion (Tk 2,59,000 crore) if both Phulbaria and Barapukuria coalfields are given to foreign investors for open-pit mining.
The pertinent questions are how best we can face and meet the challenges of energy crisis that is likely to emerge in a very near future. We have very limited options left and those need to be considered with extreme priority. We need to launch a massive search for gas discovery largely by our own technical and financial resources, especially in the on-shore region where the international oil companies have already relinquished their blocks. Still there are very good structures, at least known, like north Sitakunda, south Nila, and St Martin’s island where BAPEX must go for drilling on priority basis. Detailed geological studies indicate good possibilities of gas strike in these structures.
A nation can never rise and flourish unless it learns how to manage and use its natural resources. It is important to learn the lessons from the mistakes before it is too late. It is high time to reframe and restructure our attitude, commitment and vision to safeguard the nation’s interests and well-being.
Dr Aftab Alam Khan is professor, Department of Geology, Dhaka University
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