Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

ON NOVEMBER 19, 1990, when the political movement against the autocratic regime of HM Ershad was at its peak, three political alliances reeled out a joint declaration. Clause 2 (d) of the declaration read: ‘Mass media, including radio and television, will have to be made independent and autonomous so that they become completely neutral…’ Nineteen years later, autonomy for the state-run Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar remains as remote a reality as ever, although both the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which in the anti-Ershad movement spearheaded two of the three alliances, have had two stints at the helm of the state so far. Some progress was made in this regard during the previous tenure of the AL government. The government instituted a commission to frame rules and regulations for the autonomy of the Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar in the first year of its tenure and approved two bills in the last seeking enactment of two laws granting autonomy of the state-run electronic media. The issue seems to have been consigned to oblivion ever since, so much so that neither of these two parties dedicated a single line to it in their manifestos for the elections to the ninth Jatiya Sangsad.
   Meanwhile, the two media outlets have become the self-aggrandisement tools for the government, regardless of whichever party or alliance is in power. So blatantly bias the Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar have been to the incumbents of the day, some even in the ruling quarters have found it embarrassing. A few days back, the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on the information ministry, who is also a member of the AL presidium, lamented that ‘news presentation of state-owned television looks more like advertisement of government activities.’ However, his comments seem to have fallen on non-responsive ears, as the government is yet to give any indication that it is willing to work towards autonomy of the state-run electronic media. Hence, it is indeed welcome that the High Court has decided to force the government’s hand in this regard. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Tuesday, the court asked the government to submit by December 8 all documents of the subcommittee, formed on May 25, 1999 for the implementation of Radio-TV Autonomy Commission recommendations, regarding the functioning of the committee and progress made. The court also ordered the government to submit its reply by December 8 to the rule issued in 2000 to explain why it would not be directed to implement Radio-TV Autonomy Commission recommendations to give autonomy to state-run Bangladesh Betar and Bangladesh Television.
   As we have argued in these columns before, the inclination of the successive governments to employing the state-run electronic media as their propaganda machine has resulted not only in their loss of credibility but also in dwindling of the quality of their programmes – news, entertainment, etc. In the wake of the emergence of so many private television and radio channels and the concomitant innovations and competitions, the Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar have, for all practical purposes, become a burden for the government, both politically and commercially. Hopefully, the High Court order would prompt the government into taking effective steps towards granting these two institutions complete autonomy.

PM’s plea for equitable
food governance

THE prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, hit the nail on the head when she said on Monday that it is not enough to ensure food production and that food needs also to be made accessible to the hungry. As reported in New Age on Tuesday, she urged the global leadership for an equitable food governance system both at national and international levels to make food available and accessible to the excluded and marginalised groups that apparently constitute about a billion hungry mouths across the world. Her call at Rome in front of world leaders was all the more appropriate because, according to recent studies, 70 per cent of the world’s disparity is accounted for by the disparity between countries and the rest by the disparity within countries. Thus, any action to reduce disparity globally must begin with a global compact and consensus. However, there must also be appropriate actions within the countries, especially in those like Bangladesh where government policies need to target the excluded and marginalised groups and ensure that food is not just available but also affordable. Hasina also linked climate change with increasing food insecurity in the developing countries, especially the least developed countries as well as the vulnerable countries to climate change where millions of people are at risk of becoming displaced or of losing their livelihoods.
   Hasina’s call for an equitable food governance system was quite relevant at the food summit because although these summits harp much on the misery of humanity and how hunger and poverty still remain a scourge upon fellow beings their final decisions and the underlying motive for their declaration are guided by blatant corporate interests paving the way for more sales of genetically modified seeds, fertilisers and different technology that the developing countries would have to import from the global north. Whether those seeds or inputs are indeed needed for a sustainable development of agriculture is not quite in consideration. Furthermore, these food summits almost invariably concentrate on how to increase food production giving the impression that the main reason for food insecurity is insufficient food production. But statistics show quite clearly that the world has almost never been in shortage of food but actually food production has increased and outstripped human and animal consumption demands. One of the reasons for global food crises like the one faced a couple of years ago is that land is being diverted to the production of fuel instead of food. Thus, the global north’s insatiable appetite for energy could be said to have crowded out the demand for food in the poor countries.
   Regardless of whether or not the world leaders are inspired by her words, we would expect the government of Sheikh Hasina to translate her words into action at the national level and thus set the precedent of an equitable food governance system.

TWENTY years ago when the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Cold War ended, the mere suggestion that something was wrong with capitalism might have sounded preposterous, absurd, and almost insane. Back then we saw the collapse of the mighty Soviet Union and perceived the end of socialism when mother Russia itself dumped its trademark ideology, opting instead for free-market capitalism. Come to think of those changes, surely those were no small matters! It appeared that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 might have been the crushing victory for free-market capitalism. And yet people today are questioning the merit of capitalism, even in its own cradle.
   A new BBC World Service global poll, surveying 29,033 adult citizens (living in major urban areas) across 27 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America), conducted between June 19 and October 13 by the international polling firm GlobeScan, together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland finds that dissatisfaction with free-market capitalism is widespread, with an average of only 11 per cent saying it works well and that greater regulation is not a good idea. That is, eight in nine people believe free-market capitalism is bad; it has failed and is not working for them any more. So overwhelming is the verdict against capitalism that no statistical magic or jugglery can put a dent to the conclusion drawn from the study.
   What is rather quite discomforting and embarrassing is that even in a country like the US, the flag-bearer of capitalism, the dissatisfaction is quite high. Three in four (75%) Americans think that capitalism is not working satisfactorily in the US. Outside Pakistan (21% in favour) and the US, no other country taking the poll has a satisfactory rating above 20 per cent. That is, if you take away the US and Pakistan as outliers, the overriding view in all the other 25 countries taking the poll is that capitalism is simply not working for them. It either needs a replacement or a complete overhaul.
   The most common view, held by an average of 51 per cent among the people polled by GlobeScan/PIPA is that free-market capitalism has problems that can be addressed through regulation and reform. An average of 23 per cent feel that capitalism is fatally flawed, and a new economic system is needed – including 43 per cent in France, 38 per cent in Mexico, 35 per cent in Brazil and 31 per cent in Ukraine.
   So, why this despair against free-market capitalism that was once believed and put forth as the ‘cures all’ and ‘fits all’ economic system? The answer can be found in the collapse of the financial sector – banking and insurance institutions of the US and many of the capitalist countries in the last couple of years (or more specifically in the last 13 months). So interrelated and inter-dependent the global economy has become that once the financial institutions inside the US started collapsing the ripple effect could be felt thousands of miles away in distant continents. Even countries like Nepal and Bangladesh are not immune from what happens in the Wall Street. While hundreds of billions of dollars have been funnelled in by the Obama administration to rescue the troubled financial institutions and giant industries, the US economy is still showing little sign of recovery.
   Some Wall Street experts tell me that we may not see a full economic recovery during Obama’s first term, i.e. we may have to wait for his second term, if he is re-elected. Dissatisfaction against President Obama today is at an all-time high. Most Republicans claim that Obama has no clue as to how to solve the current economic crisis. Forgotten are the sad facts that he had little to do with the collapse of the free-market capitalism. As any Democrat would tell you it is Bush Jr ‘stupid’ who should be faulted and not Obama. The unfortunate fact for the Democrats is that the ‘intellectually disadvantaged’ predecessor is no longer occupying the White House; it is Obama today who must now find the Aladin’s magic lamp to rescue America from the ills of Bush Jr. It’s a tough job for the new president while people’s patience is running thin. Many Americans are increasingly showing telltale signs of PTSD.
   So what could be done with capitalism? Is it fixable? The BBC poll suggested some interesting results here. In 15 of the 27 countries polled, a great majority would like their government to be more active in owning or directly controlling their country’s major industries. The formula suggested is nationalisation of heavy or major industries – that is more like the old socialist model. This view is particularly widely held in countries of the former Soviet states of Russia (77%), and Ukraine (75%), but also Brazil (64%), Indonesia (65%), and France (57%). Knowing too well how some former party insiders within the collapsing Soviet system had overnight become billionaires one can sympathise and understand the rationale that the people living in those newer republics of the former Soviet Union today want more stringent government oversight. We can also understand the mindset of people within Indonesia and Brazil, where capitalism has not been as deeply rooted as it is in Western Europe and North America. But what is wrong in France, now led by Sarkozy, who is forced to talk about national identity yet unable to address his citizens as did General de Gaulle?
   Majorities of the poll takers support governments distributing wealth more evenly in 22 of the 27 countries — on average two out of three (67%) across all countries. In 17 of the 27 countries most want to see government doing more to regulate business — on average 56 per cent. As we all know, the poll takers’ desire here cannot materialise without dumping the free-market capitalism, which does not allow for a fair or even distribution of wealth.
   The poll also asked about whether the break-up of the Soviet Union was a good thing or not. An average of 54 per cent people polled said it was a good thing. This was the majority view though in only 15 of the countries polled. An average of 22 per cent said it was mainly a bad thing, while 24 per cent was neutral. Among former Warsaw Pact countries, most Russians (61%) and Ukrainians (54%) believed the break-up of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. In contrast, four in five Poles (80%) and nearly two-thirds of Czechs (63%) felt that the disintegration of the USSR was a good thing.
   The poll numbers from Russia should not come as a shock to anyone familiar with recent media news reports that confirm the nostalgia in Russia about the ‘good old’ days. Free-market capitalism, once considered an elixir, has not done anything positive for most Russians. The gap between the rich and the poor, almost invisible during the Soviet era, is too visible these days, widening exponentially every passing day. As is well-known among social scientists, when under stress, especially in difficult times, people tend to blame the present and picture a rosy picture of the past. Forgotten then are the memories of short supplies and long queues in front of stores. The generation that grew up in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s associates their youth directly with the USSR and see its once mighty empire fragmented into pieces, weak and vulnerable, having little role to play in the world today. Russia is not even part of the G7. The younger generation, born after the collapse of the empire, feels romantic about an era that it has little knowledge about outside what it hears from the elders. Its theories are moulded today by the despicable condition that it finds itself with a failed experiment with free-market capitalism. So, we can understand the poll numbers from Putin’s Russia.
   The BBC poll, while not a death-nail yet to the casket of all mighty free-market capitalism, does poke some serious concerns about its health. If America fails to resuscitate her failing economy fast, thus reviving faith in its old economic system, it won’t be too far when one day we shall hear the death bell of free market capitalism. And who knows we may even see the resurrection of old socialism, or something entirely new that is a third way – a shift of paradigms from envy (destructive socialism) and greed (destructive capitalism) to contributive, distributive, and harmonic justice, so that interest-free money based on real goods rather than on debt can build universal capital ownership into every human being.
   Dr Habib Siddiqui is a peace and human rights activist, and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bangladesh Expatriate Council, USA. He writes from Pennsylvania. saeva@aol.com