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The news of garment workers’ demonstrations and clashes with the police at Fatullah on Wednesday is only the latest of numerous others in recent months. It becomes increasingly evident both from the garment workers’ demands and the factory owners’ declaration of ration distribution that the minimum wage decided upon in 2006 is not sufficient to meet the rising costs of living as inflation continues to remain high on the back of high prices of essential food items. Given the marked rise of essentials in the last few years, particularly during the tenure of the military-controlled interim government, it is conceivable that the minimum wage of Tk 1,662.50 per month is proving to be direly inadequate — inadequate for a reasonably acceptable standard of living that is — for an individual, let alone a family. In this regard, the continual demand of the garment workers to increase their wages is not only justified but necessary just as it is necessary for the entire industry to thrive and expand.
   Towards that end the government should immediately constitute a wage commission with the representation of all parties concerned to review the prevailing wage structure. However, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions in the past, the current minimum wage, though apparently decided upon after a rigorous exercise, is not based on any benchmark as such. The figure was arrived at by way of a compromise between what the factory owners claimed they could afford to pay and what their employees demanded. That is hardly how a minimum wage, which in this context is far below a living wage, should be determined. Consequently then, the primary responsibility of the wage commission should be to ascertain a benchmark or yardstick in terms of food, shelter, clothing, medical expenses, children’s education and other necessities as the commission deems fit. We reiterate our previous position in this regard that the bundle of commodities and services as may be determined to constitute the benchmark should afford one an acceptable living standard. When translated into monetary terms, the minimum wage must be equivalent, at least, to a minimum living wage.
   As part of the government’s measures to ensure that garment workers receive living wages, the price tag of the bundle of necessities that constitute the minimum wage benchmark should be reviewed periodically, every six months or so, in order to avoid periodic outbursts of the garment workers demanding pay hikes. The entire process will undoubtedly require serious discussions between the members of the wage commission and the garment workers’ representatives on the commission should be those who are credible and genuine representatives of the workers. Towards that end, we once again reiterate our view that the relevant quarters — workers, owners as well as the government — should actively work towards instituting a meaningful collective bargaining mechanism, pending full-fledged trade unions, in the interest of the industry in particular and the economy in general.

Food for thought

THE report that junk food causes one-third of heart attacks should come as no surprise, since warnings in this regard have been sounded by experts repeatedly in recent times. A new study has only confirmed the deleterious effects of over-consumption of the newly-popularised brands of unhealthy foods known as junk food, fast food, etc. A report by an international news agency carried in Wednesday’s New Age mentions that diets heavy in fried foods, salty snacks and meat account for about 35 per cent of heart attacks globally. The study spread over four years covering 16,000 heart patients in 52 countries showed that junk food and animal fat were a factor in heart disease. Nutritionists and promoters of health food have been uneasy about junk food (the name ‘junk food’ was given by the director of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, USA, in 1972) and in some western cities the outlets of a fast food chain were even subjected to mob attack. But this giant food industry could not be banished from the market and is becoming more entrenched and internalised into the changing food habit and way of life of the people since the late 20th century. Obesity of the young population is said to have become more common in the US and is a potential health problem.
   In our country, fast food or junk food is not a problem of the poor but that does not mean we have no reason to be worried. What effect the changing food habits of the middle classes are having on collective health, as well as society and culture, is a subject worthy of research. About diabetes it can certainly be said that the incidence of this degenerative disease is increasing in Bangladesh and may soon match the rate in western countries. During discussions on World Diabetes Day and other similar occasions, experts did not fail to warn against fast food or junk food. As junk food can be mass produced, easily packaged and is convenient for delivery, it is seen as more attuned to modern living and the risks are ignored.
   Even though the public health risks of too much junk food concerns only the top social strata of our population, we should heed the warning. Not everything new or of western provenance is good. Of course, research findings in the science of nutrition are often imprecise and liable to be contradicted or altered. Research on the responses of the human body is difficult because very large numbers in experimental groups and control groups need to be monitored over a long period and variables are almost limitless. However, as dietetics and nutrition directly affects the life and wellbeing of the people, these studies should be taken seriously and unhealthy food habits altered.

TODAY, more than ever, we have become a society too cocooned in the comfort of wishful thinking, to recognise the reality we are living in. Afghanistan was not Talibanised in a day. It took years, even decades of Cold War indoctrination against the Soviet invasion, during which the culture of tolerance and diversity that characterises most rural populations by default was dismantled piece by piece. And as with Bangladesh today, throughout this process, Afghanistan’s general public had ceded what had seemed to be tiny spaces to the religious hardliners, until eventually they found themselves cornered by a cabal of depraved clerics who saw fit to slice off women’s thumbs when they painted their nails, or publicly whipped taxi drivers because a female passenger had failed to cover her face.
   There are two lessons from Afghanistan. That the radicalisation of an entire populace rarely happens overnight – and the mileposts for such radicalisation are often token concessions of public spaces which seem too insignificant to matter. And that it is not a requirement for a whole nation to believe in extreme ideology for an extreme ideology to become the dominant one. Often, as was the case with Afghanistan, the public whose collective endorsement is sought and secured for the practice of violent ideologies are also the victims of it at an individual level. In Afghanistan, as in Iran after the ‘Islamic revolution’, it was a small gang of clerics who seized the mantle of state power and morality and perpetrated the most tragic violence on the populace who were held hostage by their fear. The problem was not that a majority of the country believed in hard-line Islam, it was that a majority of the country were cowed into silence, with no leaders to stand up for rights and justice.
   The manner in which a small group of radical Islamists pulled down a baul monument at the airport roundabout last week speaks volumes about the path we are treading today. It is instructive to note that the government immediately backed away from taking a stance on the issue – continuing its policy of appeasement of the religious right. This is not surprising though, since both the major parties would have perhaps done the same, whatever rhetoric we were force-fed on the local TV networks. What is far more significant is that powerful sections of the intelligentsia, the academia, and civil society have remained silent on the issue. Some of them because party politics dictates a wait and watch policy for now, some because it will hurt their business, some because they remember what happened to Humayun Azad or Shamsur Rahman, and all of them because it is more convenient to say nothing.
   While truncheons fall hard on the backs of garments workers demanding their back pay or students demanding restoration of their fundamental rights, the religious identity of these bigots was enough to grant them a sweeping immunity. Yes, Bangladesh is country where the dominant culture is deeply secular despite the religious fault-lines triggered by the partition some sixty years ago. And in the same breath it must be said ‘no, it will not matter, unless we pit that ideology with the one that the bigots preach.’ If we allow this depraved cabal of religious clerics to corner us over and over again, be it on the state’s women’s development policy or a sculpture — any sculpture — we are ceding valuable public spaces in which we express diversity and dissent.
   In the week that has passed, a great number of people from the country’s mainstream have expressed their distress over what they see as an insult to Lalon Shah. Many say they are surprised at the ‘audacity’ of the bigots that they could attack such a potent and universal symbol of our culture and tradition. Don’t be surprised, this is the new milepost. Three years ago when the four-party alliance under Khaleda Zia banned Ahmadiyya publications after Islamist bigots demonstrated Friday after Friday in Dhaka’s Tejgaon area, that was a milepost too. Ahmadiyya mosques were ransacked in many places across the country, followers of the faith were beaten up, and the bigots wanted the government to declare them ‘non-Muslim’. At the time, many who are outraged today felt no need to defend the rights of the followers of a small Muslim sect, because the attack was on what was sacred to ‘them’ and not ‘us’.
   In May this year, when the military-controlled interim government announced a draft Development Policy for Women, religious hardliners poured onto the streets of the capital after Friday prayers at the national mosque, asking for the policy to conform to the Qur’an. Under orders from the government, the police showed incredible restraint as the mob blocked the streets and damaged public and private property, beating up a surprisingly docile police force with their own truncheons. The following Friday, the leaders of the movement announced after Friday prayers that the government had given in to their demands, amid cheers and chants. When a women’s rights group attempted a public protest, the government was suddenly all too eager to enforce the Emergency Powers Rules, and they were denied a public platform. Once again, there was a murmur of protest, but those whose call to arms to defend the constitutionally guaranteed equality of the sexes would have mattered often stayed silent – for fear and for convenience. Now, Lalon Shah is just the new milepost.
   The German poet Martin Niemöller who witnessed the Nazi Holocaust as German intellectuals remained tragically silent captured the perils of that apathy and fear in words that have now become immortalised:
   They came first for the Communists,
   and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
   Then they came for the Jews,
    and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
    Then they came for the trade unionists,
    and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
    Then they came for the Catholics,
    and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
    Then they came for me,
    and by that time no one was left to speak up.
   The reality that is emerging is that those who have a stake in power, or are beneficiaries of the existing power structure, will not take the lead in speaking up — they have too much invested to make a choice that may prove politically unpopular. There are those, however, who have spoken up. A broad spectrum of artistes and cultural activists banded together on the Dhaka University campus for much of the past week and campaigned against what they saw as an invasion of the cultural space by the religious right. The numbers of people this programme attracted was a heartening testimony to the mass appeal of the counterargument to religious radicalism and intolerance. The problem, of course, is that those sections of society that do believe in democracy and tolerance are content to exist as a counterargument — a reaction to a threat — rather than the argument itself. Over the past four decades, since former president Ziaur Rahman rehabilitated the discredited stalwarts of religion-based politics, and another military strongman HM Ershad amended the constitution to make the state religion Islam, and with the dawning political reality of both major parties courting Islamist parties, the secular fabric of our mainstream has been soiled and stamped upon by venal power politics. But just as that is the case, we must recognise that radical Islamists are singling out adversaries at their own time, on their own terms, and jostling for greater influence in the national mainstream. We are all engaged in what is essentially a political battle against intolerance and violence, but we are each of us fighting alone, as cultural activists, as writers and poets, as women, or as Ahmadiyyas. Not as citizens who are united in a belief that respect for diversity, ethnic, cultural, religious, philosophical, to name a few, together constitute the foundation for a healthy society.
   ‘Notice has been given: this is just the beginning,’ wrote Arundhati Roy in 2002, in the wake of the riots in India’s Gujarat state, when Muslim neighbourhoods were raided by armies of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, Muslim women raped, babies impaled on tridents, and men doused with petrol and set on fire. ‘Is this the Hindu rashtra that we’ve all been asked to look forward to? Once the Muslims have been “shown their place,” will milk and Coca-Cola flow across the land? Once the Ram Mandir is built, will there be a shirt on every back and a roti in every belly? Will every tear be wiped from every eye? Can we expect an anniversary celebration next year? Or will there be someone else to hate by then? Alphabetically—Adivasis, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Parsis, Sikhs? Those who wear jeans, or speak English, or those who have thick lips, or curly hair? We won’t have to wait long. It’s started already.’
   In Bangladesh too, notice has been served. The baul monument was a milepost.
   mahtabhaider@gmail.com

AS THE world lurches from one crisis to another in the hope of stemming the flood of economic woes, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy has emerged as the key to a more predictable future.
   The hyperactive politician that he is, he happens to occupy the rotating presidency of the European Union, a position he has used to win support from the grouping and to chivvy US President George W Bush to look beyond his nose.
   Even as President Sarkozy has won his US counterpart’s agreement to holding an economic summit of the developed and major developing countries, some time after the US presidential election in early November, there are important philosophical and ideological differences between the two sides. The American preference seems to be to tinker with the present system to guard against the kind of abuses that have taken place, while the French-led European view is to overhaul the post-World War II Bretton Woods institutions to bring them in tune with the 21st century.
   As a recent swing through Europe I undertook revealed, Europeans, who had by and large resigned themselves to the inevitability of adopting American methods of capitalism and diluted their social welfare systems to meet competition, have now woken up to the merits of their mixed economies. Although social welfare schemes have been cut in many European countries, there is renewed recognition that a kinder capitalism benefits their people by preserving social peace and harmony.
   Europeans are still recovering from the shock of the gross abuses indulged in by American chief executives and a system that permitted a few to feather their own nests at the cost of their shareholders and the public. Even more mortifying for Europeans is the stark fact that their renowned banking and other institutions were so tempted by easy money to be made that they skirted ingrained principles of prudence to expose their venerable institutions to economic ruin. Who could have imagined the supposedly rock solid Swiss banking institutions have had to be rescued by their government?
   Partly, of course, the scale of banking losses across the European continent and in Britain is the flip side of globalisation and the chain effects the American subprime crisis has had on institutions across the world. It shows how important American economy remains in influencing the world. But President Bush has been swearing his commitment to ‘democratic capitalism’ and unfettered free markets, despite the disaster the unrestrained conduct of its hoary banking institutions and their chief executives has brought on his country and the world.
   President Bush must cope with the immediate problems of his own and the world’s economy in the sunset days of his presidency.
   The longer term consequences of the economic meltdown will fall into the lap of his successor, but the world’s economic health is simply too important to tailor it to the presidential changeover. The coming weeks will show how much of a prisoner President Bush and his advisers are to their neoconservative ideology. There is first the domestic problem of devising foolproof regulatory systems to ensure that chief executives do not walk away with millions in golden handshakes leaving their shareholders and country in the lurch. But the more important question is the restructuring of the world’s financial institutions to cope with present and future demands.
   To an extent, the Group of Eight industrialised countries have been making largely symbolic gestures to the emerging countries to involve them in the consultation process.
   But Europeans, led by President Sarkozy, are more attuned to the need of making major emerging economies — the countries most commonly mentioned are China, India and Brazil — part of the new system of global economic management than mere adjuncts to them.
   American reluctance radically to alter the Bretton Woods institutions and the basis on which they work is understandable.
   The United States enjoys immense clout in the functioning of these institutions and often uses them as levers to pursue its foreign policy objectives. At the same time, Washington recognises that with the emergence of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the vast transfer of resources in the oil and gas-producing countries of West Asia, new actors will have to be brought into the system.
   The argument taking place in many world capitals is the extent and manner in which new nations are brought in. In other words, how radically should Bretton Woods institutions be restructured? President Sarkozy is seeking to maintain the momentum gained by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown showing the way in nationalising key faltering British banks.
   This remedy has been followed across Europe and, more reluctantly, by President Bush.
   President Sarkozy has crossed the first hurdle by persuading President Bush to convene a conference of many economies of the developed and developing world.
   But Washington is resisting the European view that there must be limits to unfettered trade and economic interactions and a strict regimen of regulations is required to curb the greed of those who seek to make money at the expense of the people and the state.
   All that the envisaged summit, expected before the end of December, can achieve is to be a curtain raiser for the hard decisions that must be taken by the next US President. The reform of institutions always lags behind changing reality, but the scale of the world economic crisis drawing parallels with the Great Depression of the 1930s has made the urgency of changing the way present institutions work self-evident.
   President Sarkozy’s term as the European Union president ends in December, but he, together with Germany, is expected to remain a key player in promoting a more rational world economic order. There are, of course, divisions in European ranks, revealed recently by the rebellion of some to meeting the ambitious global warming targets set by the EU. Even more importantly, the former Communist States look towards Washington for guidance while enjoying the economic benefits of belonging to the EU.