The other side of the wall (1)

It was not a quiet dawn there. I woke in the midst of chirping of birds. Of course, my sleep was interrupted several times by the growling of foxes. I cannot remember when was the last time I enjoyed the Hukka-hua of the wise. I woke up from my bed, opened the window with a desire to see them from close. As lucky as I could be, some of them were within yards from my room.
It was my first night here. I left Dhaka at about 1 pm day before. As the traffic was very bad due to Eid, it took more than 4 hours to get to Tangail. I spent the night in there and took the bus to Jamalpur in the next morning. It took almost another 4 hours to arrive at Dhanbari. The resort was within less than 100 yards from the main road. The resort was a 100 acres compound. As Eid was only two days away, the management did not expect any guest and were preparing to go home. To say the least, I was not very welcomed by them. They called the Dhaka office to confirm whether I made prior contact with them and felt helpless to find out that I followed their rules and regulations.
This resort used to be the house of Nawab Hassan Ali. It was originally built by a Hindu Zamindar named Dhan Singh or Chandra. The upzilla Dhanbari was named after him. I took a single room. It was big but does not have any furniture apart from the bed. But I did not find it uncomfortable at all. By evening 15 out of 16 staffs left the resort. It was only me and Veem, a gardener, only stay in that big compound for next couple of days.
There is a bazaar on the main road. I had my dinner in a restaurant dinner. A tall wall separates the resort from the bazaar. It seemed two different worlds on two sides of this wall. One side is full of actions and sounds; the other is serene and quiet. After taking my dinner, I ran to take comfort in the other side of the wall.

New cabinet of Bangladesh

Year 2009 started with a huge change in Bangladesh. AL got a landslide victor in the last election defeating its main and old political foe BNP and Jammat alliance. The victory was solid and resounding people’s hatred against the war criminals who are now teamed up with BNP. Sheikh Hasina, who is now under a constant watch of the political critiques and the ordinary voters as well, has done well so far. She began with an impressive cabinet consisting of 23 honest people, express her commitment for a digital Bangladesh, reassured people that she would do everything required to ensure economic relief in people’s life.

I talked to many people from all across to see what people think about this government. They have been betrayed so much in the past by our politicians. AL is not the first one to accomplish such a solid victory. BNP and Jammat got two-third majority in the last election. But they got involved in so much corruption, nepotism and terrorism that people handed them only ten percent of the total seats. From 70 percent to 10 percent! This is worse than handing a red card in a football match. This time people are not so exuberant and they do not expect much from the new government. Even then, seeing the new cabinet, many of them are becoming hopeful that it will be different this time. All old faces are gone. Hasina selected a new group of people to run the government. She herself also seems to be very sincere and keen in bringing real change.

In my judgment, this is the best cabinet Bangladesh ever got. Most of them have no track record of corruption. They are young and seem to be committed. Many of them, being new and inexperienced, need guidance. Hasina has to be lead sailor, at least in the initial phase, if she wants to bring any real change.

A day of learning

I spent the last weekend in my village where I met a group of people in a tea stall. Most of them are farmer and my known ones. As planting of Aman crop is over, they have nothing much to do at the moment. Besides, it was a Friday and the persistent raining due to the depression created in the Bay of Bengal made laidback hang-around the best snack of the day.

My entrance in the stall was a momentary distraction for them. Soon appreciating that perceived distance between me and them ostensibly due to my job in the World Bank and stay in the west for about 7 years is not real, they opened up to me. First they wanted to know from me about how politics of the country is shaping up recently. I, of course, pretended of knowing nothing about it to zip my own thoughts for obvious reason. That did not prevent them from expressing their views. But what I was enthralled with was their view on agriculture.

Mr. Siddiqur Rahman started, “Government has increased the price of fertilizer, and as a result many farmers cannot buy them which means total demand has decreased. Still there is a supply shortage. It does not make any sense.” Siddiquur Rahman is a surplus farmer. He continued, “I worked so hard to make some money by cultivating vegetables every year. I cannot do it this year because there is no fertilizer available. I am willing to pay the high price for it, but still I cannot buy it.”

Harun Mia, a rich farmer, took the floor, “you know vatija (vitaja means nephew), government has assigned the task of selling fertilizer to a specific area to a designated dealer. It gives him the monopoly power to create an artificial crisis.” I don’t know if he is factually correct or not, but I was amazed by his knowledge of economics.

Suja Mia now took the turn to surprise me by emphasizing the importance of having choices in our life. He asserted “In the past, we could go wherever we want to buy fertilizer. Now we don’t have that choice. We have to buy it from one shop. Our freedom is gone. This is not good policy”

Siddiqur Rahman took the floor again, “I don’t care that much about the freedom. The problem is that fertilizer is under supplied. The main fertilizers are TSP and Potash that we need for a good harvest. They are not available. The availability of Urea is ok. But this does not help much.”

Harun Mia added, “Bangla TSP (TSP produced in Bangladesh ) is best in the world. This is out of market now. Taking the advantage of this opportunity, the Indians TSP is entering into the country through the border. This TSP is not good and destroys the fertility of our land. It contains salt. Local dealers repack them with Made in Bangladesh label. Farmers use them unknowingly.”

Milon Mia became very emotional to add, “The whole fertilizer crisis is created artificially and it is a conspiracy of India ”.

Siddiqur Rahman also finds conspirators working to destroy the backbone of farmer by misguiding them. He mentions the name of Shaikh Shiraj. Shaikh Shiraj does a TV program in Channel I to promote the use of urea-ball instead of normal urea. It made him very popular among the urban people. Siddiqur Rahman continued, “first of all it is not the use of urea rather TSP that farmer should be educated on. Second, if we switch from normal urea to urea-ball, it will take up to 5 more labor days per acre of land to use fertilizer once. Being such an expert, why can’t he understand that in the end of the day use of urea-ball is costlier than normal urea because of the additional labor cost. Farmers will lose a lot.”

Humayan interrupted Siddiqur Rahman, “who tells you that Shaikh Shiraj does not understand that? He does. May be some company is paying him money to do that program so that the company can make more money by selling urea-balls.” I was thinking of our leftists in Dhaka but was sure that he did not spend any night under the same roof with them.

Siddiqur Rahman told me, “The World Bank is giving so much money to government. Tell them to force the government to ensure timely supply of fertilizer, especially the TSP. As a result we can give the government another comforting bumper harvest.”

I said nothing to Siddiqur Rahman in response. During my trip back to Dhaka I thought about Shaik Shiraj, bumper harvest, government, the World Bank and how less I know about my villagers. What a surreal world I am living in!

Bush could avoid it..

I have seen how happy and excited are the people that I know of to watch the throwing of shoes at Bush by a journalist during the press conference. Undoubtedly, it was a symbolic expression of hate and anger of Iraqi as well as the Muslim from all over the world. Mainstream media in the USA obviously tried to trivialize it and portray it as an isolated incident. But the fact of the matter is this will be used by the historians in future with due importance to explain how much people used to hate Bush for the unjustified war that he started against humanity founded on lies.

Apart from being a war monger and a cheerleader of right wing politics, Bush also provided so much laugh and fun to American people by his idiotic words and expression. Many people wondered how he became the president of a country where he does not represent the mainstream intellect at all. Even those who voted him to power identified him as the “dumb” cowboy. I was amazed to see the sharp reflection of this dumb cowboy. He was smart enough to eschew his head to save it from the shoe that was thrown at him all on a sudden. Last couple of days, I thought had he thought little bit more to reflect on the human sufferings that he caused to the innocent people all over the world including his own country, this earth would have been a better place and he would have found a better exit, not the current disgraced one that he can no way avoid now.

I just hope the future leaders will learn from this event.

Will there be our turn?

All old faces are back again, with their old comrades. We are afraid of seeing the same old things. Nothing significant happened during last two years except that our traditional politics was suspended. This itself was a great relief to us. Our daily life was better off without our 'patriotic' politicians. Our optimistic mind expected some qualitative changes but nothing happened. Army is taking off from the game. Apparently, they got accomplished that they wished for. Rumour is all over that army officeres became filthy rich during last two years. However, it is very difficult to verify that. They seem very content and promised to ga back to barrack soon.

Now and then Bangladesh experiences a clash between two power houses- the army and the politicians. Last two years was army's time, and now the politicians are will be back soon. But we, the commoners, are yet to get our turn.

Job market discrimination

I have always been a vocal person against any kind of discrimination. Especially, I have always been deadly against any kind of discrimination against women. I grew up in the rural area of a developing country. I have seen that when poverty makes it impossible to have adequate food for all, it is the female who would be the last to eat. It hurtes me a lot.

But I have seen another kind of gender discrimination at the upper segment of the society. People usually generalize the discrimination against women, which is not right. Females belonging to the top segment are actually treated favorably comapared to male. Let it be Bangladesh, or let it be USA, the gender discrimination against women is prevalent among the poor, and at the same time favoritism towards them in the tope segment is very obvious.

I have reasonable experience both in Bangladesh and USA. There is no doubt in my mind now that the employers both in academic and non-academic sectors, and both in Bangladesh and the USA favors the female knowingly or unknowingly. If X and Y are equally qualified, the final offer of the job will be determined by their gender, with a significant favor to the females. More sadly, in some cases, a tradeoff between quality and gender up to a certain limit. What it means is in many cases a slightly less qualified female will get the job depriving the better male applicant. Yes, it happens both in Bangladesh and USA.

It is sad that the poor women are the victim of gender discrimination but the premium is paid off to the women belonging to the top segment!

Nature's force

I was invited to a dinner on the 4th of July by an American family. My next door neighbor Ed talked about me to his friend Sam and Patty. Sam is a professor in the department of Physics in UW. Sam and Patty were kind enough to invite me to their home. So both Ed and I were picked up by Sam at 5:30 pm to their his home. It is a nice home. They have a nice garden and a nice view. Patty was so nice and kind to me.

It was apparently a sunny day. So they set the dinner outside. But it started raining all on a sudden with little thunder. Thunder is very uncommon in Seattle. They were excited about it. But coming from Bangladesh it was a very trivial thing to me. They were very excited to see one lighting. Ed started to count 1, 2, 3, ..... 7. He told me the rule that usually one can expect to hear the sound of thunder after seven seconds since seeing the light. I told him that once I saw the light and listened the thunder at the same time. It was in my chuildhood, possibly I was 8 or 9 years old. Thunder is very common in my country in the rainy season. In a rainy afternoon, I was playing inside the house with my brothers and cousins. All on a sudden we heard that big thunder and saw the light at the same time. The thunder fell right behind our house, in a tall coconut tree. The head of the coconut tree was completly burnt. My grandfather did not cut that burnt coconut tree. He left this headless coconut tree there for years. I asked him once when i was 12 or 13 years old why he did not cut the coconut tree. His replied, "this tallest tree reminds me how small are to nature's force". Ed was so excited to know this story.

My grad father died long ago. I remember him for so many reasons. He has significant influence in my life. Amongst all others, I hear his words "this tallest tree reminds me how small are to nature's force" in my ears. Indeed we are very small...