17-08-2022

WEDnEsDAy, AuGusT 17, 2022
4
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Waking up to the crisis
in food and agricultural
products
There is a pressing need on the part of a
country like Bangladesh which depends
to some extent on imported food grains
and a great deal on imported cooking oil,
pulses, spices and dairy products, about both
the soaring prices and scarcity of these
commodities in international market places.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
of the United Nations has issued a warning
recently that the bill for global food imports will
top $1,000 billion this year for the second time
ever putting the world dangerously close to a
new food crisis. The scenario projected in the
FAO's twice-yearly Food Outlook released last
week warned that the world should be prepared
for even higher prices for these products in the
year 2011 if domestic food productions in
importing countries do not increase
substantially. A similar food crisis was
witnessed from under production worldwide in
2007-8 when the imported food bill soared to $
1,031 billion. But ten years before that crisis,
the global food bill for imports averaged less
than $ 500 billion a year.
Prices of agricultural commodities have
surged following top producers of wheat for
exports, Russia and Ukraine, declaring a ban on
their exports. In this backdrop, the two most
populous countries, China and India, have met
setbacks in their food production. For
Bangladesh, India next door from which it
could import food grains conveniently and at
most competitive prices, this source is also
drying up. Although the Indian government
declared a relaxation of their ban on food grain
export in relation to Bangladesh, it remains to
be seen how far the offer can materialize in the
tight situation faced by India itself. Thus, there
are all the reasons for policy planners in
Bangladesh to be extremely proactive in
securing the import requirements of these
agricultural products. Not only the maximum
efficiency and timeliness must be attained in
importing food grains and other kitchen items,
the same sort of agility and competence need to
be there in importing raw cotton for the
country's textile industries because cotton
availability has also slumped from under
production worldwide.
Under the current volatile international
market conditions, government in Bangladesh
should form urgent policies and implement
them neatly to keep the supply lines of these
imported products smooth and the prices as
stable as possible. Constant contacts with the
sellers and building up of market intelligence,
plus forward buying at stable prices under
longer term contracted arrangements, could be
the answer to protect the country considerably
from the shocks of fast rising imported prices of
agricultural commodities.
Internally, the greatest stress will have to be
put on increasing overall production of food
grains. It appears that climate played a part in
reducing the last harvest of Aman rice. The
preparations are underway to raise the next
Boro crop during the coming winter months.
Every effort will have to be pushed to the
maximum with timely supply of all sorts of
inputs, including irrigation water, to farmers at
reasonable prices. Truly incentive prices will
also need to be declared to motivate farmers so
that the surplus Boro rice can be successfully
purchased from them for stocking up
adequately in government operated silos. This
would reduce the need for import and build up
greater basic food security. It is also imperative
to adopt a plan and execute it with the greatest
efficiency to much increase the cultivation of
non cereal crops such as oilseeds, spices, pulses
and cotton within the country.
highlight
Constant contacts with the sellers and
building up of market intelligence, plus
forward buying at stable prices under longer
term contracted arrangements, could be the
answer to protect the country considerably
from the shocks of fast rising imported prices of
agricultural commodities. Internally, the
greatest stress will have to be put on increasing
overall production of food grains and cotton.
Their Mojibor--their unforgettable Sheikh Shaheb
On Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman's 47th death anniversary,
you remember the larger-than-life
man he was. He inhabits our consciousness
in all his largeness of form and substance,
and not just in the figurative sense. Tall for
a Bengali, he gave us to understand that in
him were all those traits which underline
the making of a political giant. His height
mattered. So did his convictions. Think
about it, think about all the other significant
political figures who, in the course of our
modern history, have influenced our
evolution into where we happen to be
today.
Bangabandhu falls within that category.
And yet, he breaks free of all those earlier
stars and forms, within and by himself, a
world apart. Of all the historical icons we
have had cause to observe in our political
ambience, only Bangabandhu stayed
steadfast in purpose. That element you call
compromise, or a shifting of the ground,
was not part of his nature.
And that made all the difference. It was
made clear to Bangabandhu towards the
end of the 1950s that Bangalis needed to
make their way out of Pakistan. And
remember that he came of a generation
which, in the 1940s, went all the way into
making sure that the Lahore Resolution of
1940 was implemented in the interest of the
muslims of India.
That Sheikh Mujibur Rahman could
Severing Hezbollah’s grip is Lebanon’s only salvation
Two years after Beirut's port
catastrophe - which was an apt
metaphor for the wider state of
Lebanon -the port's huge grain silos
continue to disintegrate and toxic fires
feed upon their decomposing contents,
terrorizing locals and prompting fears
about stinking clouds of carcinogenic
dust visiting new afflictions upon a
capital city that has been brutally
stripped of its soul.
Beyond the 218 deaths, thousands of
injuries, $15 billion in property damage
and 300,000 made homeless, the
number of those permanently affected by
this Crime of the Century exceeds belief.
Everybody lost somebody, while so many
were permanently disfigured.
Hezbollah's demand for an "impartial
and fair investigation" illustrates how
language has been stripped of all
meaning. These criminals flaunt their lies
as another means of humiliating us,
taunting us that we know of their guilt
but can do nothing. In recent protests,
bereaved families held aloft images of
Hezbollah's leader, declaring that they
know exactly who killed their loved ones.
Hezbollah and its cronies paralyzed the
work of the first two investigating judges
and will easily neutralize the work of
anyone else appointed to uncover the
truth. Any widely demanded
international investigation would
inevitably suffer the same fate as the
Hariri tribunal - which, after years of
tireless work, identified culprits, only for
Hezbollah and its associates to brazenly
dare the world to come and arrest them.
Such travesties exceed all attempts at
satire. Hezbollah believes it enjoys
impunity for its crimes. The succession of
murdered national figures such as
Mohamad Chatah, Samir Qasir and
Luqman Slim … multibillion-dollar drugs
syndicates … the killing of thousands of
innocent Syrian citizens … breathtaking
corruption … the list goes on.
Hezbollah's leaders meanwhile spout
warmongering rhetoric over the
contested Mediterranean gas fields,
Blockchain could enhance protection of police records
Blockchain technology could help
government agencies simplify
managing, accessing, using, and
securing sensitive data. Image: AFP
At a time when data theft and
cybercrime are a serious problem,
blockchain, the digital record-keeping
technology behind Bitcoin and other
cryptocurrency networks, is a potential
game changer in the wider world.
Blockchain can significantly improve
protection protocols by enabling fast and
cost-efficient alternatives to safeguard
sensitive police records.
Last month, hackers claimed to have
stolen the records of a billion Chinese
citizens from the Shanghai police, which
tech experts say, if true, would be one of
the biggest data breaches in history.
Similarly, in 2021, hackers claimed to
have stolen the data of thousands of
police officers in Indonesia.
Even the US, one of the world's most
technologically advanced nations, was hit
last year after the Metropolitan Police
Department of Washington, DC, became
break out of the communal mould, that he
was beginning to question the very basis of
the country in whose creation he, like
millions of other young men, had once
taken immense interest, was an early hint
of the greatness he was destined for. The
path to that greatness was clearly laid out in
1966, when he overrode every other
concern to inform the ruling classes of
Pakistan that it was time to reinvent the
state through his Six Point program for
regional autonomy.
Bangabandhu was a man of huge selfesteem
and an abundance of confidence. At
the height of the Agartala conspiracy case
trial in 1968, he coolly told a western
journalist that the Pakistani authorities
would not be able to keep him incarcerated
for more than six months. Note that he was
on trial for sedition, possibly headed
towards execution or a very long term in
prison. In any case, he was free in seven
months.
believing they win either way. If Israel
makes concessions, that will be thanks to
threats of the "resistance"; if not, they
were right all along and the Zionist
enemy and its Western backers can't be
trusted, justifying future confrontations.
Hezbollah warns that nobody will be
allowed to extract gas and oil if its
demands aren't met. Drones have been
overflying Israeli gas infrastructure, with
Hezbollah threatening that gas rigs are
within easy reach of its missiles.
"Islamic resistance" propaganda
channels never tire of enumerating how
many missiles, fighters and weapons
"Hizb Al-Shaitan" possesses, but they fail
to detail the extent of retaliatory damage
Israel would inflict upon Lebanon, or the
thousands of citizens previously killed by
Israeli aggression. Finance Minister
Avigdor Lieberman scandalously
threatened to "wipe out the entire
Dahiyeh area in Beirut" if Israel's gas
infrastructure were attacked. Such
threats are all too believable. Above and
beyond this, Lebanon's only salvation lies
in its populace assertively clawing back
their autonomy and sovereignty from
Tehran.
Meanwhile, the tragic violence of recent
days in Gaza is, of course, being exploited
by Hezbollah and Iran to further
exacerbate regional tensions. Hezbollah's
Naim Qassim warned that his
organisation "wouldn't stand idly by,"
while other Iran-backed militias
throughout the region have sought to up
the pressure at Iran's behest.
In 2006, GCC states rushed to invest
billions of dollars to instantaneously
the victim of a ransomware attack on its
servers.
Apart from exposing how vulnerable
police records are, incidents where these
hackers leak sensitive information not
only result in a material loss but also
cause a loss of public trust.
Indeed, maintaining and protecting
data about citizens, organizations, assets
and activities is a critical government
function, but executing it can get
complicated.
Blockchain technology could help
government agencies simplify managing,
accessing, using, and securing sensitive
data. An encoded digital ledger stored on
multiple computers in a public or private
network, blockchain combines data
records, or "blocks," into a chain that
prevents the altering or deletion of data
by a single actor.
These blocks are verified and managed
through automation and shared
governance protocols.
By protecting data on who owns,
accesses, or uses them, blockchain can
EnAyETullAh KhAn
BARIA AlAMuDDIn
AISHA KHAN
As he prepared to fly to Rawalpindi in
February 1969, to attend the round-table
conference called by President Ayub Khan,
he quipped: "Yesterday a traitor, today a
hero." In Rawalpindi, he spurned Ayub's
offer of the prime ministership of Pakistan.
Always a man who went by the norms of
political transparency, he emphatically told
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in January 1971 that the
Bangabandhu falls within that category. And yet, he breaks free of all
those earlier stars and forms, within and by himself, a world apart. Of all
the historical icons we have had cause to observe in our political ambience,
only Bangabandhu stayed steadfast in purpose. That element you call
compromise, or a shifting of the ground, was not part of his nature.
December 1970 elections had given his
party the right to govern Pakistan.
The People's Party had its place marked
out-it was to be on the opposition benches.
Bangabandhu's principled stand in
national politics was matched by his
diplomatic convictions abroad. He took
Saudi Arabia's King Faisal to task over the
latter's negative remarks on Pakistan's
break-up in 1971. He put Yakubu Gowon in
his place when the Nigerian lamented the
weakening of Muslim Pakistan through the
rise of a secular Bangladesh. He asked
Indira Gandhi, in blunt fashion, when she
rebuild Lebanon. Yet Lebanon's
leadership has spent the past few years
severing Lebanon from its Arab identity
and culture, and gleefully burning
Lebanon's bridges with Gulf states,
despite knowing that the ayatollahs in
Tehran wouldn't lift a finger to help,
beyond replenishing the armories of its
puppets.
The question of who really controls
Lebanon was highlighted in recent days
when a Syrian ship subject to US
In 2006, GCC states rushed to invest billions of dollars to instantaneously
rebuild lebanon. yet lebanon's leadership has spent the past few years severing
lebanon from its Arab identity and culture, and gleefully burning lebanon's
bridges with Gulf states, despite knowing that the ayatollahs in Tehran wouldn't
lift a finger to help, beyond replenishing the armories of its puppets.
sanctions and laden with stolen
Ukrainian grain was impounded in the
northern Lebanese port of Tripoli. Syrian
diplomats rushed to cajole, threaten and
bribe the judiciary and officials to allow
the ship to continue on its way to Syria to
feed Hezbollah's allies in the Assad
regime. As a result, a Ukrainian vessel
bringing life-saving supplies of wheat to
Lebanon, which was supposed to arrive
on Sunday, remains at anchor off the
coast of Turkey amid threats to change its
destination in protest at Lebanon
allowing itself to be used as a hub for
stolen Ukrainian grain. This is a perfect
analogy for how Lebanese citizens have
repeatedly been left to starve as a
consequence of the criminal activities of
Hezbollah and other leaders. In Beirut,
where fights regularly break out over
loaves of bread, people had been
desperately counting on the arrival of
these grain supplies.
National infrastructure and the very
fabric of society are disintegrating before
our eyes, as schools, hospitals and
essential institutions fall apart, suffering
chronic shortages of all essential
revolutionize the security of police
records. The information-technology (IT)
departments of government security
agencies can create rules and algorithms
predefining conditions of use by a third
party trying to access a set of information
sitting in a blockchain.
In 2015, hackers broke down enormous
amounts of encrypted data comprising
the personal details, Social Security
numbers, fingerprints, employment
history, and financial information of
about 20 million American citizens who
had been subject to a background check
by the US government. Blockchain
technology could have thwarted such a
breach, thanks to features that make
tampering with data impossible.
Features like keyless signature
infrastructure (KSI) create hash values,
which uniquely represent large amounts
of data as smaller numeric values. These
hash values can be used to identify
records without allowing any tinkering
with information. The values, stored in a
blockchain, can then be distributed
on taking her soldiers back home from
Bangladesh.
Bangabandhu was our own. The mores
and social norms we have grown up with
were all exemplified in him. His smile
radiated confidence and instilled courage in
us. His sense of humour remains
unmatched. He never forgot a face and
always remembered names. His laughter
reverberated across the room and beyond.
He was always filling the room with his
presence. When he met complete strangers,
he made them feel they had known him all
their life.
When he found himself in the company
of academics, he did not forget that these
were men who deserved his unqualified
respect. Alone among the great men we
have known, he drew respect from the
intellectual classes and the more humble
citizens alike. Across this land, men of
letters speak of Bangabandhu with
reverence. Peasants and rickshaw-pullers
have always known him as their very own
"Mojibor" or as their unforgettable
"Sheikh."
In the hallowed councils of the world,
Bangabandhu was a colossus striding
across the moments that constituted the
embroidered fabric of history.
Enayetullah Khan is Editor-in-Chief,
United News of Bangladesh (UNB) &
Dhaka Courier
prerequisites for basic functioning. The
most competent staff have fled overseas.
The World Bank accuses Lebanon's
leaders of engineering a "deliberate
depression" and engaging in corrupt and
illegal schemes to monopolize the
nation's resources.
Hezbollah and its allies lost the last
parliamentary election, but they believe
they possess the ruthlessness and
political muscle to act as if they won,
thinking citizens are too engrossed in
daily struggles for survival to care about
such matters. Yet it is precisely because
citizens have reached such dire straits
that they must seize the moment to
ensure that demands for justice and
accountability are heeded, while acting
against Hassan Nasrallah and Gebran
Bassil's efforts to block government
formation. With the epic tussle over who
will be the next president on the horizon,
there is everything to play for.
Iraq has been brought to a halt by
hundreds of thousands of mostly Shiite
protesters seeking to prevent Tehran
imposing a government. Only a similar
mass popular uprising can save Lebanon,
forcing a situation in which "business as
usual" becomes impossible for thieving
factions, and this "deliberate depression"
is brought to an abrupt halt.
Above and beyond this, Lebanon's only
salvation lies in its populace assertively
clawing back their autonomy and
sovereignty from Tehran.
Our greatest hope is in the Lebanese
people's inspirational bravery and
stoicism in the face of unimaginable
adversity. A rejuvenated and
transformed Lebanon is there for the
taking, if we collectively possess the
courage to seize the moment to reach out
and grasp it.
Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning
journalist and broadcaster in the Middle
East and the UK. She is editor of the Media
Services Syndicate and has interviewed
numerous heads of state.
across a private network of government
computers, thereby keeping the data safe.
The Swedish government seems to
have found the right solution to securing
its most sensitive, high-stakes data using
blockchain. The country is digitizing its
land registry, worth 11 trillion kronor
(US$1.1 trillion), through a mobile app
whereby a blockchain can record detailed
information on a sales transaction.
Other government agencies can learn
from such efforts to create a secure
infrastructure for tracking data access,
thereby making it harder for any
unauthorized entity to get hold of or
manipulate information.
Clearly, blockchain can go a long way in
restoring trust in the police and their
ability to protect citizens' data. Police and
other government agencies should keep
up with the times and recognize the
potential for blockchain technology to
revolutionize storing records.
Aisha Khan is a London-based political
and financial analyst.