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WHEN members of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Port, a citizens’ platform, brought out a procession on Wednesday in protest at the Awami League-led government’s decision to award three offshore blocks to international oil companies, they were only exercising their democratic right to register protest, which is enshrined in the constitution of the republic. Hence, the ensuing police excesses on the protesters, which resulted in grievous injuries to nearly 50 people, including the committee’s member secretary Anu Muhammad, amounted to impingement on the protesters’ constitutional rights. Crucially still, the police excesses tend to indicate what could very well be the inherent intolerance of the ruling quarters to dissenting views. The conscious sections of the citizenry have rightly condemned the police excesses, which were not only unacceptable but also incongruent with the Sheikh Hasina government’s promise for change.
   The national committee, supported by most left-leaning political parties, staged a protest rally and brought out a procession towards the Petrobangla offices on Wednesday. Reportedly, about 1,000 protesters had gathered at Muktangan from where a procession was scheduled to march towards Petrobangla offices in Karwan Bazar and lay siege to it. The national committee, as it is often called, organised this particular event to protest against unjustifiably allowing foreign oil companies to export up to 80 per cent of the natural gas they find in the offshore blocks that have been recently awarded. This provision, according to reports, would be included in the new generic production sharing contract that is generally the primary tool of agreement between the oil companies and Petrobangla. Thus far the production sharing contracts prohibited gas exports through pipeline implying mandatory value addition, and thus potential foreign investment, employment generation and technology transfer. The contract also stipulated Bangladesh’s first right of refusal in case of gas sales.
   But it appears from reports that despite a rising demand for natural gas in the local market the Bangladesh government decided not to buy gas from the foreign companies. This would evidently allow foreign companies to sell their product abroad to third parties for a higher price than that offered by Petrobangla. In doing so the government would also have to change the provisions prohibiting direct gas exports without value addition, and thereby absolving the foreign oil companies of their obligation to make substantial investment in production of liquefied or compressed natural gas. The current provisions, as the government has decided to amend, have all the advantages for the foreign companies but there are almost no discernible benefits to the country. Thus the reason for allowing gas exports, or Petrobangla’s refusal to purchase gas from the foreign companies, thus allowing them to export, must be questioned. That is what the national committee sought to do but ended up being severely beaten for having done so.
   One of the many people who visited Anu Muhammad, admitted to a hospital with fractured legs, was Khaleda Zia, leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and former prime minister. Her gesture and condemnation should be appreciated but with a pinch of salt because, like all previous governments, her government also sought to secure individual interests at the cost of the country’s natural resources. In fact, it was during the Khaleda Zia government that these new generation production sharing contracts were drawn up and it was also during her tenure that the law enforcers also swooped on the national committee for protesting against the proposed open-pit coalmine at Phulbari. One would expect that Khaleda’s newfound concern in this regard would go beyond political mileage-taking into actual commitment to the cause the national committee espouses.
   However, it should not be left up to the opposition political parties alone to protest against and effectively resist such an anti-national move by the government. Patriotic individuals and social forces must also rally around the national committee and the cause it stands for.

An exercise in futility

THE communications ministry has sought Tk 19 lakh from the finance ministry to foot the expenses for the first 20 days of a special drive, now ongoing, in the capital Dhaka to improve the city’s traffic situation, so says a report front-paged in New Age on Thursday. The drive began on August 24 and is scheduled to run through the entire month of Ramadan, which means that, at the rate of nearly Tk 1 lakh a day, the entire operation would cost around Tk 30 lakh. The question, obviously, is: Has the drive brought about any positive changes in the city’s traffic situation in the past few days? Even the coordinator of the special drive does not believe it has. That the traffic management has not deteriorated ‘is the major achievement of the special drive despite limited resources and logistics,’ he was quoted in the New Age report as saying. It is hardly surprising.
   First of all, as we have written in these columns many times before, traffic congestion in the capital cannot be redressed with such piecemeal measures as launching special drives against unfit and unauthorised vehicles or making certain roads off-limits to rickshaws. The policymakers should know better than anyone else that certain infrastructural inadequacies need to be effectively addressed if the city is to overcome the crippling traffic congestion. For example, there are far too many vehicles in Dhaka than its road network can cope with; alarmingly still, more and more motorised vehicles roll out of the showroom on to the roads every day. So, even if we had an efficient traffic management system, which we don’t have, and even if the drivers of all motorised and non-motorised vehicles, and also the pedestrians, had gone by the traffic rules and regulations, which many, if not most, of them don’t, it might not have given us a congestion-free city, simply because there is simply too much traffic on the road.
   Hence, while sporadic attempts at improving the traffic situation, such as the one undertaken during the month of Ramadan, may be undertaken, the ultimate objective of the policymakers needs to be formulation of a comprehensive urban transport plan.

TRAFFIC snarl-up in Dhaka city is no longer one of those metropolitan irritants one must learn to live with; with its present shape of disorder, it is throwing life and economy in the capital city off gear. In an effort to quantify the losses it has been found by some research groups that the traffic snarl-up in the capital costs 45 crore workdays and Tk 5,000 crore a year. Assuming the population of Dhaka to be one crore, every city dweller wastes 45 workdays in a year. And there is the further question of wastage of fuel during the tailbacks. This cannot go on without exposing the economy to long-term harm.
   We may blame the authorities for not finding a solution but then there are too many authorities here – the traffic department of the police, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, the district administration, the Dhaka City Corporation, the planning authorities and also, to a lesser extent perhaps, road users. And blaming will be pointless when there is no solution in sight. The problem represents an imbalance in urban growth that is structural and not easy to correct. As Dhaka is the capital of a unitary state, its population goes on swelling. Almost every major activity is Dhaka-centred. Five thousand new people are arriving in the city as permanent dwellers every day. Stagnation in rural economy forces the marginalised rural people to migrate to Dhaka in search of a living. Hope for a better living often proves illusory but migration continues. To an extent the solution of Dhaka’s overcrowding and road jam lies in villages.
   Finding no solution the authorities periodically take it out on the poorest segment of the city’s population – the rickshaw pullers, roadside vendors, tea boys, pavement dwellers – thus confusing the symptom with the disease. The footpaths should not remain occupied but the city which today boasts an array of glittering shopping malls should also provide space for small traders, self-employed vendors and the needs and interests of these groups should have been integrated into the city’s development. When that has not happened the city is having to witness the cycle of eviction and temporary occupation and endless human suffering. At any rate, the part-occupants of the pavements are not a major factor in road jam. Rickshaws have long ago been withdrawn from the city’s important roads (without any thought of providing alternative transport or rehabilitating rickshaw pullers) but that hardly eased the traffic jam. And now a decision has reportedly been taken to withdraw from the roads 60,000 to 70,000 vehicles. It is learnt that all commercially operated vehicles of twenty years’ vintage shall be withdrawn from the streets of Dhaka. These are drastic moves which may not help to bring the solution any the nearer. And some quarters are proposing that people should be dissuaded from owning and riding cars and more buses should take the place of cars.
   The solutions that have occasionally been sounded by the high-ups have a futurist air. Tuberail, skyrail, elevated expressway. Let all or any of these arrive and become the defining features of this city but something is to be done in the immediate perspective and on a more practical level. More double-decker buses should be inducted. This is necessary to economise use of road space. Buses should stop only at designated stops instead of dropping and lifting passengers all the way as at present. This is just a matter of strict enforcement of rules and costs nothing. Roads are not only few, they do not directly connect the biggest population centres due to which the feeder roads are crowded causing a spill-over on the main roads. The city has only 3,000 kilometres of roads of which only 462 kilometres are fit for the plying of heavy vehicles. Almost all the roads run north to south and road connection between east and west remains unsatisfactory. Road communication between old and new city should be developed further. Meanwhile the flyovers already planned should be immediately completed. It is learnt that the 7.5-kilometre long Gulistan-Jatrabari flyover project is being revived. The past military-backed interim government had shelved the project without any rhyme or reason. The circular waterway project should also be implemented. This will not divert any big load of traffic off the roads but it can contribute to lighten the traffic jam.
   There was one more way available to relieve pressure on the roads. Since the colonial days of the British government the infrastructure of suburban railway existed. No attention had been given to it and the assets were neglected. Tongi is an industrial area, so is Tejgaon, Kamlapur is close to Motijheel, the business centre, and further on Fatullah and Narayanganj, all commercially important. A suburban train can leave Tongi every half hour and go to Narayanganj connecting all these industrial and commercial centres. New stations have since been built at Uttara and Banani but these are underutilised because the train service itself is underutilised. If suburban train service is developed a resident of Uttara can come to his workplace in Motijheel very conveniently by train. A small investment and development will be necessary. Parallel tracks will have to be laid for the suburban service in order that trains can run at the interval of a few minutes without disturbing the existing train services. Also to avoid causing inconvenience and delay at the level crossings, tunnels will have been dug. Many South Asian cities like Kolkata and Mumbai have put suburban railway to good purpose. But something ails the railway which is another cause for overburdening the roads of the city.

AFTER the Democratic Party of Japan’s landslide victory, everyone in the country and much of the world is asking the question, what next? The Liberal Democratic Party has ruled Japan almost uninterrupted for more than half-a-century and the task before the new rulers is nothing short of reinventing Japan.
   The LDP has much to be proud of. It gave the country the economic miracle after its defeat in World War II, becoming the second economic power in the world. But its warts began to show in the early 1990s when the economic bubble burst. By then the LDP had become a party of hereditary successions in cosy relationships with corporations and a powerful bureaucracy that made policy and feathered its own nest.
   Junichiro Koizumi came as a breath of fresh air because he challenged his party’s cosy arrangements and appealed to the wider electorate. Frustrated, he called a snap election on the issue of privatising the postal service, a traditional milch cow for LDP, to win a landslide in 2005. But he was to leave office two years later and he and his ostensibly rejuvenated party never fulfilled their promise.
   Meanwhile, the world economic crisis set off by the US sub-prime regime was hollowing out the LDP, led by a succession of pedigreed politicians beset by scandals, and the DPJ, itself the victim of a mini-scandal, was riding high. Sunday’s result was essentially a vote against the LDP, rather than an enthusiastic endorsement of the DPJ and its policies. It was a vote for change.
   The real point is how much change the DPJ can bring about. It has promised to turn the focus away from corporations to the citizen, promising a better social security net, and child allowances to encourage couples to have babies in a shrinking and aging country. It says it will take control of policymaking from the hands of bureaucrats. While retaining the important military links with the United States, it wants a ‘more equal’ relationship and promises to review American military bases. It wants a closer relationship with Asian countries. But it has already modified its more radical stances as it moved closer to power.
   It is estimated that a quarter of Japan will be 65 years or older in 2015. There is even a Happiness Realisation Party that wants to double the country’s population by 2030. Indeed, the increasingly greying population will have serious consequences for its pension scheme and competitiveness. Japanese have traditionally shunned large-scale immigration because of the homogeneous nature of their country.
   What the DPJ is able to achieve remains to be seen, but an entire era in post-war Japan is over. Unlike in the past, inequalities have grown. Globalisation has also ended the treasured lifetime jobs offered by the country’s corporations, with unemployment having reached the highest figure since the war although still modest by world standards. And, most importantly, the young have changed, with the ideal of backbreaking school and university education leading to a blue-collar job in the bureaucracy no longer the attractive model it was.
   The era of the LDP’s pork-barrel rural works to support its main base is over but it is not quite clear what will replace it. For one thing, how will the DPJ raise funds for its generous promises to help young families and the common man? It says it will find money by enforcing administrative efficiency and through cost cuts, promises that are easier to make than to fulfil. And how much credibility will the DPJ have in getting rid of the entrenched system of hereditary politicians when its leader, Yukio Hatoyama, is himself the grandson of a prime minister?
   The DPJ is a rather new party formed in 1998 by defectors from the LDP, socialists and younger conservatives and will need to reconcile its own differences. An earlier attempt by the opposition to run a government in Japan lasted barely 11 months. The party is in better shape now and the size of the mandate it has received is both a challenge and an opportunity.
   Mr Yukio will face a few crucial tests soon. Japan’s relationship with China has always been a major element in its worldview. It has been traditionally troubled by the wartime record and Chinese manipulation of that past for its own political ends. The explosive growth of Sino-Japanese trade and economic relations has not deterred clouds to form in the relationship, symbolised most often by prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni shrine containing the remains of the war dead, including those of the Japanese condemned by the victors of the war. For the Chinese, such visits, defiantly conducted by Mr Junichiro among others, are signs of militaristic trends.
   The DPJ’s approach to China will be softer and friendlier, but that will not preclude tensions and irritations in the future. For one thing, China is set to overtake Japan as the world’s second-largest economy next year. Besides, China’s growing economic and military power has set alarm bells ringing in Tokyo and new efforts are aimed at ensuring Japan’s relevance to Asia and the world. Curiously, Mr Yukio has illustrated his preference for an East Asia grouping by going back to an Austrian nobleman with part-Japanese ancestry.
   Mr Yukio has promised to end the Afghanistan refuelling mission of Japanese naval ships in the Indian Ocean. While his predecessors were toying with the idea of amending the American-imposed constitution to have greater freedom in sending troops abroad, the DPJ’s focus will be more on widening the ambit of Japanese influence in Asia. In any event, the party’s control of both Houses will enable it speedily to push through reforms.
   For the moment Japan is revelling in the change, celebrating the end of the old era. The average Japanese does not have great expectations of the DPJ, which will serve as a shock absorber for the inevitable disappointments with the new rulers that lie in the future.