The recession and Bangladesh

The IMF publishes forecasts for the world economy twice a year. After its April release, I wrote a piece for Daily Star Forum asking ‘How will the global economic slowdown affect Bangladesh?’ — here is the piece.  The October forecasts have recently been published, and this post revisits the question.  Outlooks for the world economy has been revised downward sharply in the past 6 months.  These are detailed first. 

Then we turn to the outlook for Bangladesh.  While the IMF has revised its 2008 forecast upward, 2009 is now expected to be weaker than thought earlier.  Unfortunately, they don’t actually discuss their numbers, but the ADB does.  The ADB’s latest forecasts for Bangladesh are actually quite optimistic for the financial year 2008-09.  After summarising the ADB’s analysis, I finish with some comments – inflation is expected to remain stubbornly high – and note potential risks to the outlook.  It seems to me that the IMF numbers are more likely to come true.

The cartoon controversy one year on

A butterfly flaps its wing somewhere in Borneo, setting off a perturbation in the weather system that eventually leads to a depression in the Bay of Bengal, and millions in the coastal Bangladesh fear the worst.  This is a popular characterisation of chaos theory – a branch of mathematics that says that small changes in the initial condition has big impacts in the final outcome.  I don’t know whether Arifur Rahman read about chaos theory or not, but when one of his cartoons was published by the Daily Prothom Alo last Sep, what happened was pretty close to chaos. 

This was a time of fraying nerves.  Tazreena Sajjad describes the zeitgeist of the time here.  It was within weeks of the Dhaka University riots.  For a while, there were rumours of Prothom Alo being shut down.  In the event, things calmed down after Prothom Alo editor, a one-time communist, apologised to the Imam of the national mosque in the presence of the information minister of the military-backed regime.  

After a year, we can think about the controversy with a calmer mind.  That’s what this post attempts.  First it notes the role played by a new generation of activists – online and in the ‘real’ world – during the crisis.  Then it notes that this wasn’t the first incidence of its kind.  Finally, it discusses where and how we might draw the line between freedoms of speech and faith.

(More at UV)

Free Arif

Arifur Rahman, a 23-year old cartoonist, was jailed by the de facto military regime in Bangladesh. His crime? Offending religious sensitivites. Rumi gives the background. Dhaka gives more details. Here is a history of the Islamist assault on freedom of thought in Bangladesh.

Originally posted at A-A-A.

Foreign Adviser’s talk at ANU

Earlier tonight I attended a talk by Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, the Foreign Adviser in the current Bangladeshi government. The talk, titled ‘Evolving Challenges for Bangladesh in South Asia’, was held at the Australian National University, Dr Chowdhury’s alma mater. The audience included academics, Australian government officials and members of the local Bangladeshi community.

More at UV.

On democracy

In this post, I argue the case for democracy, starting with some abstract ideas and then relating them to today’s Bangladesh. Nothing here is original, but reading some comments over the past few days, I feel that it is worth reiterating various arguments for democracy.

More at UV.