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There’s a natural mystic blowing through the air;
   If you listen carefully now you will hear.
   This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last:
   Many more will have to suffer,
   Many more will have to die – don’t ask me why
   Bob Marley
   
    WE HAVE been hit by a gust of very ominous winds. On Wednesday, October 15, incidentally World White Cane Day, here in Dhaka, religious extremists ‘blinded’ by hate demolished the first-ever monument built to ‘honour’ our baul ancestors. A group whose intentions as of now remain unclear had quietly got an approval from the government to erect the structure at the Dhaka international airport roundabout and work commenced without much noise. Extremist groups who in no way represent the aspirations of the vast Muslim majority were mobilised to justify their actions by saying eerie things that we are historically familiar with. The five sculptures being erected were ‘idols’ and thus it was ‘kosher’ to demolish them. It was apparently bruising their by now well-exposed, ill-intentioned and very fragile ‘religious sentiments’.
   The above is a gist of what really happened but the mayhem borders not only on constricting the very limited liberal space some of us citizens profess to posses in urban Bangladesh but also a blatant and unprovoked attack on the widely held belief system of the masses, who have remained by some tragedy of fate, a silent majority. The incident, therefore, merits a deeper thought, for more than being a political, cultural, or religious issue – it has spiritual overtones of far-reaching consequences.
   To begin, we can cite no instance that the baul fraternity ever requested or ‘demanded’ any such monuments or sculptures to ‘honour’ our ancestors. Indeed, what is unknown to many is that our belief system does not permit us to identify ‘with any organised religion nor with caste systems, special deities, temples or sacred places.’
   Having said that and because we have a pacifist agenda, we are not opposed to anybody’s belief and even as obscure as they may seem – everybody is entitled to one as long as they do not seek violence as a mean to expound the same and their actions do not cause societal unrest. Exploitation of any kind is of course sin in our pantheons.
   As a sequel to the above incident, we have been left to the prospect of all hell breaking loose with many people up in revolt demanding overnight amends in what is probably going to turn out to be a very violent situation, and one we can ill-afford.
   Enough blood has been shed in our sacred homeland, and it is a matter of deep regret that on October 20, in Khulna, several protesting cultural activists angered at the demolition of the under-construction monument were bodily harmed by the police.
   We condemn any form of violence and abhor use of the same by the state, when it is its sacred duty to offer protection which it failed, and by the look of things have actually exacerbated the situation.
   We as a fraternity do not wish this incident to escalate any further. Violence begets violence and blood begets blood. Any further violence will no doubt lead on to bloodshed and will ultimately derail us as a nation. Civil unrest of any form is indicator of civility getting wasted and opens avenues for embracement of evilisation.
   Thus if civility be our avowed and cherished intention in seeking solutions, it is time that we own up to a sense of responsibility as irresponsible protest actions based on tokenistic ‘militancy’ is not only dangerous but also imperils the lifestyle and belief of the baul fraternity and perhaps even our very existence.
   For instance, as much as the myopic Muslim bigots, our politicians and/or their covert ‘cultural fronts’ have already jumped in and are trying to piggyback on the issue, for very narrow political expediency – the capture of state power.
   We do not subscribe to that vile mindset nor are we a party to the same, and in as much as we are opposed to interference of religion in politics, we also oppose interference of divisive politics in culture, especially those involving spirituality.
   Overall, what matters to us and is of deep concern and regret is that the messages from Fakir Lalon Shah has gone amiss in the well-intentioned protests and demonstrations and the usual ‘big noise’ unleashed since the fateful event.
   Some newspapers perhaps to provoke the situation, or maybe because they themselves are unwilling accomplices to the disquiet – have even gone as far as to say that among five sculptures being erected, one was that of our venerated sage!
   Insensitive editors who wrote fictional stories about Lalon’s ‘sculpture’ have not offered an apology in what we bauls believe was a sin committed and that they have a sacred duty to atone to their conscience.
   Newspaper headlines do not necessarily have to bleed, to convince people to read, therefore, if the fourth estate wishes to consider that they are part of the national thought process they will have to work to preserve peace.
   The irony is neither do these Muslim extremists nor our ‘activists by default’ involved in the ‘movement’ have an iota of knowledge on either baul music or really what our stand on such situations can be or should be. Thus, the ‘fog of war’ has by now spread where it torments us the most – our soul – which weeps silently yet inconsolably to the depraved insult and ignominy caused to the living soul of our Shaiji.
   To get to the core issue and where we disagree on moral grounds: there is historically no known image of Shaiji in existence anywhere in the world and a lithograph going about (and often seen in posters/T-shirts/Google images and even newspapers) is not that of our Shaiji. Indeed, if at all, it is a representation of bauls – any baul for that matter.
   Also, there is no such thing as a ‘baul sculpture’ and it comes to us as a shock, for contrary to popular misconceptions, in all his living years Shaiji stood up against any and all forms of deification and or raising ‘man’ to a pedestal for ‘worship’.
   It, therefore, seems very unusual and numbs our sensibility as to how can a creative art work or sculpture be commissioned without a ‘reference point’ to be considered as aesthetically sound, and why we as fraternity have been entrapped into a controversy that is not of our making and we are no part thereof?
   It has perhaps escaped everybody’s notice that bauls are the world’s most economically disadvantaged people, yet are holding on precipitously to a tradition which UNESCO in 2005 declared as one among ninety-four masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.
   To imagine that the ‘poorest’ in Bangladesh are custodians to mankind’s richest wealth is in itself humbling, but it also makes us wonder in our abject simplicity if this sudden and unqualified interest in the bauls is a precursor or a smokescreen to the eventual loot, plunder and destruction of all that we hold as most precious.
   Recent events and provocations leads us to believe that Shaiji has been deliberately dragged into this sinister controversy, because there is simply no other charismatic figure that we as a nation, cherish, admire and venerate more, given the immensity of his powerful messages that have stood up to all forms of Oppression over the last two centuries. We are more than certain that his messages will give a humane direction on the peaceful way forward not just for Bangladesh but indeed to all humanity in today’s deeply divided world.
   We as a fraternity aspire for peace knowing fully well that peace is one of the most difficult weapons to wield, yet is the most powerful and certainly the most effective. In today’s world of ‘instant everything’ – from instant coffee, to instant noodles – time has arrived to further a principled and peaceful mandate if we are to see light at the end of a dark tunnel, getting even darker, given our arrogance and ignorance.
   We do not aspire for an ‘instant solution’ but seek serious studies, discourses and rationale understanding of our ancestor’s grounded belief which makes us who we are – the Bengali nation.
   The easiest thing for anybody is to mobilise a hundred people around a gun, the hardest is to get five sincere people to back or support a good idea – a moral cause. We are keen on taking the harder option – because baul music is similar to reggae and as the late Bob Marley once said: ‘You cannot be in a rush to reggae.’
   On a global perspective, in Marley’s ideal we find reflection of our Shaiji’s message – in his music and lyrics a similarity of spiritual views, and in the peaceful fight, he has set aside many shining examples for us to emulate.
   A ‘peace missive’ directed at the soul of mankind is the need of the hour and we all have to collate our ideas with the limited time and resources available to do the same.
   Lastly, baul music being an intangible heritage of all humanity, the challenges and threats that we face in Bangladesh today is not directed against the aspirations of our people but indeed against all mankind.
   It must be resisted.
   Maqsoodul Haque is a Dhaka-based jazz-rock-fusion musician. His association with the bauls of Bangladesh started very early in life and by 1988 he began identifying with the belief and aspirations of the agnostic fraternity. In 2007 he published a
   compilation of English essays titled Bauliana: Worshiping the Great God in Man (available online at http://bauliana.blogspot.com)

Conservatives are at each other’s throats, and here’s what’s revealing about how divided they are: The critics of John McCain and the critics of Sarah Palin represent entirely different camps.
   Sceptical social conservatives are precisely the people McCain was trying to mollify by picking Palin as his running mate. These include the faithful of the religious right who remember McCain as their enemy in 2000, and parts of the gun crowd who always saw McCain as soft on their issues.
   That McCain felt a need to make such an outlandishly risky choice speaks to how insecure his hold was on the core Republican vote. A candidate is supposed to rally the base during the primaries and reach out to the middle at election time. McCain got it backward, and it’s hurting him.
   A Pew Research Center survey this week found that among political independents, Palin’s unfavourable rating has almost doubled since mid-September, from 27 percent to 50 percent. Whatever enthusiasm Palin inspired among conservative ideologues is more than offset by middle-of-the road defections.
   Even on the right, she hasn’t done the job. In The Washington Post tracking poll released on Thursday, Barack Obama drew 22 percent of the vote from self-described conservatives. That’s a seven-point gain on John Kerry’s 2004 conservative share.
   Yet the pro-Palin right is still impatient with McCain for not being tough enough — as if he has not run one of the most negative campaigns in recent history. This camp believes that if McCain only shouted the names ‘Bill Ayers’ and ‘Jeremiah Wright’ at the top of his lungs, the whole election would turn around.
    Then there are those conservatives who see Palin as a ‘fatal cancer to the Republican Party’ (David Brooks), as someone who ‘doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin’ (Kathleen Parker), as ‘a symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation in American politics’ (Peggy Noonan).
   These conservatives deserve credit for acknowledging how ill-suited Palin is for high office. But what we see here is a deep split between parts of the conservative elite and much of the rank and file.
   For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phoney class war against ‘liberal elitists’ and ‘leftist intellectuals.’ Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.
   The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity — and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.
   And then there is George W. Bush. Conservatives once hailed him for creating an enduring majority on behalf of their cause. Now, they cast him as the goat in their story of decline.
   The conservative critique of Bush is a familiar rant against his advocacy of big government and huge deficits—now supplemented by a horror over his embrace of actual socialism with the partial nationalization of big banks. And, yes, a fair number of conservatives were never wild about the adventure in Iraq.
   Things are so bad that the internecine warriors on the right have begun copying the rhetoric of the old left. In a Washington Times column this week upbraiding dissidents such as Brooks and Noonan, Tony Blankley, the conservative writer and activist, fell back on an old left slogan, asking them: ‘Whose side are you on, comrade?’
   This is a revelatory question. It arises when a movement has lost its sense of solidarity and purpose, when the ‘sides’ are no longer clear. There is no unified ‘right’ or ‘centre-right,’ which is why we are no longer a conservative country, if we ever were.
   Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush’s apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the ‘real America’ is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin’s speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.
   Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as ‘Joe the Plumber’ often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favour of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.
   It isn’t working anymore. No wonder conservatives are turning on each other so ferociously.
   The New Republic, October 24, 2008. EJ Dionne, Jr. is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University.

The recent financial crisis, which is likely to lead from mild to deep recession in the global economy, is making many governments and experts formulate a strategy that will help them survive the financial tsunami. While many experts and members of the cabinet of the Bangladesh government think it may not affect Bangladesh seriously or as much as it can affect industrialised nations, it is quite premature to forecast the extent of impact on Bangladesh with any certainty. There is no harm in taking precautionary measures in different areas like agriculture, domestic industries and export oriented industries. Domestic industries can be affected by cheap imports of unproductive consumer products taking the advantage of a stronger taka against Indian, Pakistani or Chinese currencies. In export areas, a strong taka and the possible tendency by other nations to lower their prices may drastically affect our export revenues.
   There is no controversy that RMG is our largest sector in terms of export revenues and employment generation. Again in RMG, knitwear enjoys higher revenue and the trend is increasing at a double digit rate compared to the woven sector which is stagnating or slowing down. While value addition is 30-35 per cent in woven sector, in the knit sector it is as high as 70-80 per cent. Competitive edge, therefore, is much brighter in knitwear and this discussion will especially concentrate on this sector in the context of the financial crisis.
   Even though we supply knitwear in the lower categories in terms of quality and price, there is no reason to think that we will be enjoying this advantage throughout the crisis. China, India, Vietnam and other countries that supply knitwear to high-end markets will eventually go for the low end markets when demand for high-end products dries up or slows down. Both China and India have huge capacities and can quickly cut production cost either by providing subsidy in case of China or further reducing bank interest, weaker currency and providing other incentives in case of India. Bangladesh acting slower, as it always does, will fall behind and before it takes any positive measures it may be too late to compete with these countries. In many seminars attended by high profile representatives from the government and business community, the most vocal demand of the business community has been to reduce interest rate and increase cash incentives to spinners or fabric manufacturers.
   While the government must be quick in taking actions, the knitwear manufacturers can take some actions that can cut cost up to 20 per cent. Most big manufacturers have composite factories where they manufacture fabrics and garments sometimes on the same premises. Some even have yarn manufacturing factories that help them add more value to their products. Unfortunately, being composite under one owner, the efficiency is much lower than if had been under different owners. Most managers and workers are indifferent to the pressing need by their sister garments factories and act slower than needed. They, in most cases, do not even maintain proper documentations that show the extent of wastage and losses in terms of material and time and the owners, due to urgency and lack of follow up, do not bother to check.
   Savings of up to 5-8 per cent on overall garment cost can be achieved in fabric production alone. In Chinese and Indian factories it is quite common to deliver one batch of fabric within 6-8 hours. It implies that they can produce three or more batches in a 24 hour cycle. In Bangladesh, with very few exceptions, the average output in a 24 hour cycle is 2-2.5 batches. The longer time-cycle increases the cost of fabric production and eventually affects the overall production cycle. Moreover, wastage can reach as high as 10 per cent in many factories compared to 3-5 per cent in factories in India and China. One of the reasons for this wastage is poor skill level of our local technicians and failure of expatriate technicians employed by many factories, in fulfilling their commitment in productivity and reluctance to train local technicians systematically. We have plenty of scope to reduce cost of fabric production by up to 8 per cent if management makes the technicians, both local and expatriates, more accountable.
   The next saving of up to 3 per cent can be achieved in selecting the right dyes and chemicals. Many owners like to use cheaper dyes and chemicals from India to use them for export oriented products that demand colour fastness, right shades etc. Use of cheap dyes and chemicals result in colour bleeding and longer time for shading and dyeing, leading to higher cost of production. If all manufacturers used better dyes and chemicals from a dependable source at a price which was even 10-15 per cent higher, eventually they would be able to save up to 3 per cent in production.
   Once the fabric is made and delivered to factories for sewing the garments, in many cases it is quite late to complete the order on time. Almost 90 per cent factories face the delayed or defective supply of fabrics at some point in the middle of the peak season when they have to complete the bulk of orders. The causes of air shipment and stock lot are mainly due to this evil cycle of supply and hastily produced but delayed and defective production. A coordinated support by the fabric suppliers can reduce garments price by another 8-10 per cent Delayed or wrong supply of accessories may also sometimes affect productivity but compared to fabrics this does not occur so frequently.
   Almost all factories make a weekly or monthly production plan and it is modified or updated daily depending on the production status and supply of raw materials. All lines are programmed for a certain order that must be completed within the specified time. Ideally production should be completed on time provided all inputs are delivered properly and the efficiency level of workers are maintained at the desired level. However, this does not happen in the garment sector and it becomes ‘everyday is a new day with new problems and crises’.
   Productivity of a Bangladeshi worker is 20-30 less less than the productivity of an identical Chinese worker. Although labour cost is apparently cheaper in Bangladesh, costs of raw materials are cheaper in China. Moreover they have a shorter lead time making their manufacturing cost lower due to low inventory level. If one calculates taking all the parameters into account, it can be found that Chinese products are at least 15-20 per cent cheaper than that of Bangladeshi products. Then why do the buyers source from Bangladesh? One reason is the duty free access under the European Generalised System of Preferences and another is Bangladesh having a good production facility with docile suppliers. The buyers, quite naturally do not want to put all their eggs in one basket. Moreover, Chinese and Indians are not too keen to do lower end cheaper products. But this situation may change if the current global economic crisis lingers. It is always preferable to survive with lower end products instead of perishing with the hope of getting orders for higher end products after a protracted crisis. Both India and China may take the course of grabbing whatever order is in sight just to survive this period and this can drastically affect Bangladesh’s garment sector.
   A buyer who purchases a piece of normal t-shirt at $2 a piece would certainly ask for a discount of say 15-20 per cent in the present situation. China and India can somehow manage to deliver but Bangladeshi suppliers who make a nominal profit at $2 a piece can hardly deliver. Only quick and right support by the government such as depreciating the taka, reducing interest rate, providing higher cash incentives to yarn or fabric manufacturers during this difficult period and proper planning and increased productivity along with less wastage by the manufacturers can keep the Bangladeshi suppliers afloat in this global crisis. The challenge is: prompt and right action by all the stakeholders or face slower growth and possible reduction in export revenue from this thriving sector.
   M Akhtaruzzaman has 15 years of experience in the industry during which he served as a director of the Youngone Group, Square Group and a deputy managing director of the Biswas Group

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