The economy has grown 5-6% over the past few years despite inefficient state-owned enterprises, delays in exploiting natural gas resources, insufficient power supplies, and slow implementation of economic reforms. Bangladesh remains a poor, overpopulated, and inefficiently-governed nation. Although more than half of GDP is generated through the service sector, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single-most-important product. Garment exports and remittances from Bangladeshis working overseas, mainly in the Middle East and East Asia, fuel economic growth.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Two fallacies: Why not catch them ALL? Are YOU good enough to catch?

Two fallacies: Why not catch them ALL? Are YOU good enough to catch?
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
By GM Solaiman

Two fallacies:
1. Why not catch them ALL?
2. Are YOU good enough to catch?

Some people are not happy about current crack down of corruption in Bangladesh aka war-on-corruption. They “see” lot of problems with it. Most of the folks tell me about two problems.

First one is that why pick and choose? They say that if you arrest and punish them for this or that violation of law, then how come you are not punishing others? They laugh (showing there 32 teeth or 36?) about punishing some of our dons on tax violation? They are like, well, every body defy tax laws in BD. If you can not punish ALL of them, you should not punish ANY.

Second complain I hear is that, WHO are these folks to punish? They are doing the same mistake. They are violating this and that law themselves, they will give some examples. Folks get some how angry at this point, and say CG is not dhowa-tulshi-pata themselves either. They all are same, so no one should punish our corrupt leaders. Let them be free!

Say an officer stop you in the road and give you a speeding ticket. Does it mean that every one that have crossed speed limit also have to get a ticket. Hmm…. May be I will use this excuse next time. Tell the judge that, since law is equal to every one and you have not fined every one who speeds, you can not punish me. Interesting, huh? This is a fallacy I see many of my fellow Bangladeshi for some reason believe. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea.

Here is another fallacy. Think about the officer that gave you the ticket. Is he a perfect man/woman? Didn’t he ever violate any law? How come then HE give me the ticket? What if he get arrested the next day for some sin that he did? Will that make ME any less guilty? I don’t know how this fallacy comes into us either. It’s not between YOU and the OFFICER. It’s between YOU and the STATE. It is between YOU and the LAW.

On a second thought, may be I do have a hypothesis on why we have these fallacies. May be it’s because we have been ruled by our masters for centuries. Masters are not like us in any way (by the skin). And of course masters don’t have any fault, what they DO is the LAW. Problems start to pile on when we are in the arena of self-govern. Now, why the hell you deserve to punish me or judge me, huh? You are almost just like me. The masters were different at least by the skin, you are not. So YOU must have to be some kind of angel to deserve to judge me.

Yeah, I know. May be, there is very weak logic behind this hypothesis. Well, do you have a better one?

posted by x86 @ 4:24 PM 0 comments

Saturday, September 1, 2007

“Bangladesh Army”, total leadership and a basket full of rotten apples

“Bangladesh Army”, total leadership and a basket full of rotten apples
By GM Solaiman
September 01, 2007

I see some people some how love to hate “Bangladesh Army”. They laugh with showing their 32 teeth to see its humiliation. That’s interesting.

If you are still carrying a Bangladesh passport, you must love “Bangladesh Army”. That’s a must do for a citizen of an independent nation. If for some reason, you can not do that, dissolve the army or toss your passport.

Shocked?? Let me explain.

When some of us jumping up and down and saying “Houston, we have a problem” and “we need to fix it, NOW”, we meant the collapse of total leadership in Bangladesh. The state itself is NOT failed (even though some of us are very excited to label it so, where are the inspiration, well, we can understand), but its TOTAL LEADERSHIP has definitely failed. We need to turn it around.

If you are long enough in free air, you probably realized it by now that leadership of a country is not just few ex-PM (aka don makers) and their chamcha ministers (aka dons). The leaders in the business organization, the leaders in the professional organization, the leaders in the arm forces, the leaders in the intellectual community etc are all part of this TOTAL LEADERSHIP of the country. And guess what? They all have failed. They ALL have brought us in this mess of today while we are trying so hard to get out of.

For an example, look at our leaders in shikkok samiti. Yeah, I am talking about those god-makers who some how fall in love with loud speakers. I mean, hey, teachers and loud speakers? Asking students to hold on to the fort and fight like a ……. well, god. That’s just too much, isn’t it? But on a second thought, they are no teachers. They may be in the class room (I am not sure what they were up to in the class room, textbooks or propaganda; I will give them benefit of doubt) they are teachers. But they are actually leaders of a professional organization (teachers association in this case). They are part of total leadership of the country that I was talking about. And just look at them, how pathetic they are. No wonder we are in this mess.

If you just become little less lazy and look around, then you will see that the same pathetic scene in every branch of leadership. If you are with me up to this, we can draw two very important points and I will give my take on these. You probably won’t agree with me, but that’s okay.

First point: If it is the failure of total leadership, why then we (well, some of us) are so mad with our don-makers and their dons? Why them? Good question. My take on this is that I believe very firmly on a saying “first rule of leadership, every thing is YOUR fault”. Who do you think put these clowns in the leading position of teachers association? Who mastermind the choice leaders of bankers? Who mastermind the choice of leaders in FBCC? Who mastermind the choice of leaders in armed force? Who mastermind the choice of leaders in …….well, say ……. beggars union? You got the idea. It all points to our don-makers, isn’t it? So yes, everything is in deed their fault.

Second point: You say, okay okay I got the point. But wait, what about those khaki dictators? I say, what about them? You mean they are BAD. Of course they are! But why are you blaming “Bangladesh Army” for that? Just because they are part of army, is it? Well, please think hard. They are not just member of Bangladesh army. They are the “leader” of army. Just like our loud speaker teacher, they are leader of armed force. They are in deed just few more rotten apples from the basket of TOTAL LEADERSHIP. Of course they are very pathetic too, like the leaders aka rotten apples of other branch of TOTAL LEADERSHIP. No wonder we are in this mess. Just like we should not hate our teachers just because of few rotten apples (leaders) in teacher community, we should not feel negative toward our brave sons in “Bangladesh Army” just because of some rotten apple (leaders) in it.

Bonus point: You say, wait a minute. If I have taken your previous two points, then these saviors of 1/11 are rotten apples too. Why would we support them? What good that will do? I will tell you a secret; don’t tell any one ….shhhhh….. I KNOW. But if one fine morning, few rotten apples from the basket of rotten apple jump up and say enough is enough. Let’s do some clean up. I am smart enough to shut up my mouth. I hope you would be too. This is a game we can’t loose, talking about win-win situation. Because even if they fails in total make over, we will have less rotten apple in the basket to worry about in the day out than in the day in. It’s not the very best, but it’s better at least. If they do succeed, then voila! I can see your fear though. What if these dudes stick around like a pain in the neck like other appear to be good fellow that we have seen. That is a legitimate fear, I don’t disagree. But you see, as long as they keep doing what they are doing i.e cleaning up, I am okay to take that risk. We will have less and less rotten apple in our basket, the TOTAL LEADERSHIP basket will change its label from a basket full of rotten apple to a basket full of fresh apple with FEW remaining rotten apple. Eventually these FEW remaining rotten apples will definitely be over run by all the fresh apples. Right now, what we have is full basket of rotten apple. We just simply can’t accept that. No way.

posted by x86 @ 4:30 PM 0 comments

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