The PM’s UN speech

There are 192 countries in the United Nations.  Many of their leaders attend the General Assemby every September.  This year has been noted for the first UNGA speech by President Obama.  The Bangladeshi Prime Minister also gave a speech.  As has been noted, Bangladeshi media chose to focus on the speech being in Bangla, even though that’s routine for the country’s heads of government.  This post focuses on what she actually said. 

About 20 para, of which only about half that the world is interested in, of which only one that actually made a strong argument.  Madam Prime Minister, next time do better.

On Tipaimukh 2

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.

• Our political parties, on balance, are doing well on this issue.
• As concerned citizens, there is a lot we can do.

On Tipaimukh 1

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.

• While it’s not really clear what the environmental impact will be,  as a downstream country, we will be affected. 
• India isn’t being a good neighbour, and won’t be a good neighbour unless we act. 

Detail over the flap.  A discussion is welcome.