Planned changes in budget must result in more targeted, impactful interventions
Troubling development involving fine exemptions comes to light
RHD must keep up inspections, ensure accountability for shoddy work.
Let's try to imagine a horrific scene -- throat of a boy as young as eight years of age being slit by his abductor and the helpless boy desperately trying to save himself any way possible. Well, it's not a scene from a gory, mindless movie, but a real incident that has taken place in Dhaka last week. And the brave boy named Rajibul Islam lived to tell the story. His courage, his will to live, his bravery have sown us that a slight quick thinking in such dire circumstances can save us. It's simply amazing to know that Rajibul could still strike a plan in his mind sustaining severe pain in his half-slit throat to outwit his abductor by feigning death! Even the grown ups fail to think straight while facing imminent death. And here an eight-year old summoned up enough courage to think of...
The Anti-corruption Commission, formed last November, and hitherto ensnared by internal dissension and governmental indifference, has started showing positive dynamism at last. On Thursday and Wednesday in the preceding week, a delegation from the ACC led by its commissioner Prof Maniruzzaman visited the police headquarters and the National Board of Revenue (NBR), the nerve centres of organisations known for a high degree of corruption in the public perception. The ACC representatives met with the police and NBR chiefs, exchanged ideas with them and hunkered down to a minimum programme of action to combat corruption and improve the services....
Intensive and bloody fighting has started once again in Afghanistan over the last few weeks. We have had reports of militants from fundamentalist Islamic groups attacking district headquarters in Helmand province, 560km south of Kabul. An attempt to kill US Ambassador Khalilzad was also foiled. This has been followed by Afghan and US troops, backed by the air force, attacking Taliban guerillas north of Mian Nishin, a district capital in the northern part of the Kandahar province. This escalation in violence, in the run-up to the September 18 parliamentary elections, confirms once again that trouble continues to brew outside the safer precincts of Kabul....
The Palestine problem at one time provided the maximum grief for Muslims to be bitter about against the west. This bitterness, evoked by both real and/or perceived oppression against Muslims, became more universal after the Afghan Jihad. War veterans of non-Afghan origin returning to their home countries reacted against local oppression, and persecution by the world in general. Islamic "Wannabees" like Osama Bin Laden grabbed this golden opportunity of riding the Muslim angst. He shifted from localised tactics to the big time in launching a world strategy of combatting "universal oppression" against Muslims. In a judo-play the strength of the liberties common in democracies became weaknesses to be exploited. If prior to 9/11 the US had adopted stringent precautions (and the...
I find it almost unbelievable that a country's foreign minister would rebuke foreign diplomats for proposing a likely seminar on election matters (most likely academic in nature) to be held in December not even knowing, by his own admission, the subject matter of the seminar. The FM said, "I don't know about the 'Tuesday Group' and its terms of reference, and I don't know about the contents of their discussion. I've seen in newspapers that they are planning a seminar here." If such comments were to come from the foreign minister of a country, one may wonder, what country that would be other than Bangladesh....
Let's commend the decision arrived at a high level meeting of the communications ministry to send a proposal to the Cabinet for providing the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) with a special police force to assist it to curb mismanagement and irregularities in the transport sector. Deeper down, however, this is a reflection -- rather an indictment -- on how BRTA has been functioning....
It has been reported in the daily Prothom Alo that at least 13 ministers, state ministers, deputy ministers and advisers to the government have no specific job to perform. The oversized cabinet is virtually immobilised under its own weight....
Two recent developments in Asia need to be kept in sharp focus to better understand the changing equations in Asia. The first is the growth and growth of intense affair between the US and India. They have signed two major agreements in recent weeks. One of them is the framework for defence cooperation in which the Americans have offered maximum military cooperation. This includes India's buying of military equipment, training in the US of Indian military personnel, more joint operations by the Navies of the two countries, co-production of F-16s and F-18s and of course inclusion of India in naval operations to interdict suspected nuclear material being carried in Indian Ocean. The other agreement between them is over civilian nuclear reactors. India is required to sharply divide its...
The good news is that the nation is now focused on the need for reform of the electoral process. The Election Commission has recently invited all political parties to a dialogue to share their views (admittedly with indifferent results) and in the past few months there have been any number of round-tables discussions and seminars and conferences held on the subject....
Whenever there is a spate of terrorist bombings around the world, this sparks a renewed flurry of activity on the part of political leaders, academics and international civil servants to devise ways and means to grapple with the phenomenon. It is, therefore, not surprising, given the rise of incidents of terrorist activities, particularly after the so-called war on terror, to see the UN Secretary General not only implore the heads of states due to meet shortly at the UN to arrive at an acceptable definition of the phenomenon, he has also gone so far as to call for formulating a "good definition of terrorism."...
