On 5 July, 17 people under the banner of an organisation called Lamppost gathered in front of the Indian High Commission to protest the Tipaimukh dam. Evidently, a scuffle with the police ensued, and two people were arrested.
Let’s see how our media covered the news. At least one of the reports below is outright false. Maybe all of them are. The truth doesn’t seem to be something that exists in today’s Bangladesh.
(This post contains reference to drug use, parental guidance recommended).
Earlier this week, Moonlanding anniversary was everywhere. Now, I was born many years after the event that made Ray Bradbury suggest be the beginning of a new global calendar. So I have nothing to say when old people talk about ‘oh I remember….’ But I do remember 1 April 2003, when I first watched the Dark Side of the Moon — not the Pink Floyd album, but the French mockumentary.
In a 2007 survey of how Bangladesh was viewed by the American foreign policy establishment, fellow Drishtipat Writer Tazreena Sajjad described a failed state thus.
In layman’s terms, they are generally categorised by what they do not, or cannot, do. Failing and failed states do not control their territory or their borders, creating the scope for groups to move in and out without hindrance. Such states also do not control many areas, which can be under control of rebels and warlords, and do not provide basic services (health, nutrition, infrastructure, public services). Finally, they cannot fulfill international treaty obligations, and agreements of international concern. The most extreme examples are, of course, places like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Haiti and, increasingly, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Every year, the US based Foreign Policy magazine publishes an index of failed or failing states — details here. The index is a sum of 12 specific factors. A country can receive up to 10 points for each factor, with a higher score meaning a worse (ie failing) outcome. There may be serious methodological issues with trying to quantify something that is essentially qualitative. And one has to be very cautious about using an index that consistently ranks North Korea as a less failing state than Pakistan when we won’t find many Pakistanis willing to have Kim Il Jong running their country (this point is explained better here).
These methodological issues notwithstanding, the index is relevant for two reasons. Firstly, it is a high profile index that US foreign policy apparatchiks pay attention to. And when all is said and done, we still live in a world where if the American establishment is concerned that a particular country is ‘trouble’, it is likely that the country will find itself in trouble eventually. And second, we should still go through the index to see whether the findings reflect our ground realities.
For example, in 2008, Bangladesh scored higher than Haiti — a country used by Ms Sajjad as an ‘extreme example’ of a failed state. That is, after 18 months under an experiment that was supposed to improve our republic, Bangladesh was more of a failed state than Haiti — this unfortunate result didn’t come as a surprise to those of us who rejected that experiment from a very early stage.
On 7 June, six officers of the Bangladesh Army were summarily dismissed. According to the media reports, these officers — Lt Cols Shamsul Islam, Mahdi Nasrullah Shahir and Md Shafiul Haque Chowdury, Major Mahsinul Karim, and Captains AKM Annur Hossain and Habiba Islam. Then, on 23 June, Brig Gen Abdullahil Azmi was summarily dismissed. A fellow blogger wrote to me thus: … as observers and analysts of political power, I think we need to follow these things closely and track them on a continuing basis.
Here is my take on the dismissals.
A week ago, in my first post on Tipaimukh, I made two points. First, as a downstream country, the dam will affect Bangladesh. Second, India has clear obligations to Bangladesh — legal, political, and moral obligations — on this issue that it is not meeting. I concluded that post with this:
India itself is downstream from rivers originating in China, and is vulnerable to the same practice that it is inflicting on us. India can be reminded of this politely, but firmly. And if the bilateral effort doesn’t go far, this must be raised at multilateral fora.
In this post I make two more points.
In a political adda recently, a friend (and a fellow blogger) said: all this is true bhai, but who would have thought on 23 Feb what would happen in the following 72 hours? True, political prediction is a mug’s game. Forget about the truly ‘black swan’ events like Pilkhana. It is hard to predict what issues might dominate a few month’s hence in normal political circumstances.
Take Tipaimukh for example. Where was this issue during the election campaign? And yet, it is perhaps the single biggest issue dominating Dhaka’s chattering circuit these days. Indeed, this blogger has been asked by some readers: why radio silence over this issue?
The most important reason for not writing about it is because I didn’t know much about it. And frankly, I am not all that wiser now. But I do have some thoughts. I’ll note two here. Two more will be in a sequel post.
Detail over the flap. A discussion is welcome.
