Of ACC, NHRC, and Padma Bridge

The World Bank's decision to withdraw funding for the Padma Bridge is not as much an indictment of the Awami League government as it is of a system of fool's gold. The same would have happened in a BNP administration. We may have fine sounding organisations like the ACC and the NHRC, but the fact remains that those are little more, in practice, than toothless advisory panels made of tired ex-bureaucrats too scared to say a peep about government ministers and ruling party functionaries of the day. Until the day that an ACC prosecutes a cabinet member of the incumbent political administration or the NHRC hauls into court human rights violators belonging to the affiliated bodies of a ruling party, the only people who will believe these to be credible organisations will be the professional attendees of the numerous seminars in the various posh hotels in Dhaka who have been talking for forty years and will do so for forty more.