20-09-2021

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2021
4
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Monday, September 20, 2021
Bangladesh, a star economic
performer despite the pandemic
May 25 was a historic day for Bangladesh, when its
central bank approved a $200 million currency
swap facility for the nearby island economy of Sri
Lanka. Last month, Sri Lanka's foreign exchange reserves
had dropped to $4.5 billion, or about what it owes external
lenders, following a year in which the country's economy had
been ravaged by a sharp economic downturn caused by
COVID-19. Meanwhile, Bangladesh, whose economy has
weathered the pandemic surprisingly well, held foreign
exchange reserves of about $45 billion.
Bangladesh, which had been famously written off as a
"basket case" in 1971 by U.S. President Richard Nixon's
national security adviser, Henry Kissinger -- shortly after the
country's creation following a bloody war of independence
with Pakistan - has shed that label.
In the 2020-21 fiscal year, Bangladesh for the first time
ever overtook its giant neighbor India in terms of per capita
income at market prices, although Indian chagrin was
assuaged to some extent by the fact that it remained ahead in
per capita income measured at purchasing power parity.
Nevertheless, that Bangladesh has so rapidly closed the
income gap with India, without whose intervention the
country would never have come into being, represents a
significant shift of economic prowess in the region.
Bangladesh's economic rise has been powered by the
ready-made garment industry, which according to a March
2021 report from McKinsey & Co., a management
consultancy, accounts for fully 84% of the country's exports
after recording a compound annual growth rate of 7% for the
last decade.
As the report notes, the phenomenal growth of the industry
was born out of tragedy, following several well-publicized
factory tragedies in 2012 and 2013 that led to the loss of more
than a thousand lives. Facing the prospect of losing
important customers, and the loss of tariff preferences in the
U.S., the sector was forced to restructure and has since
moved from strength to strength.
After ready-made garments, remittances from the
country's diaspora are Bangladesh's second-largest source of
foreign exchange earnings. In the first 10 months of the
2020-21 fiscal year which ended in June, the country raked
in more than $20 billion in remittances, according to central
bank data, setting a new record. This helps explain the
country's large foreign exchange buffer, which permitted its
largesse to Sri Lanka. It should be noted that the spike in
remittances in recent years reflects in part a crackdown on
hundi, a traditional but informal as well as illegal, remittance
mechanism that does not show up in official statistics.
Bangladesh's success was far from preordained. The
country is subject to frequent devastating cyclones and
flooding, and it has had more than its fair share of political
instability and internecine warfare between two political
dynasties that go back to the country's founding. As a
Muslim-majority country, Bangladesh has seen a rise in
Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, and politics, as
elsewhere in the region, have recently taken an authoritarian
turn.
While politics and geography cannot explain the country's
rise, the key seems to lie in its extremely strong social and
human development indicators, crucially including for
women. Infant mortality is 26 deaths in 1,000 live births,
lower than the 28 in India. Female literacy is 72%, higher
than India's at 66%. The female rate of labor force
participation is 36%, compared to 20% for India.
Remarkably, while this important statistic has been falling
for India, it has been rising for Bangladesh. Indeed, across
the board, Bangladesh beats India on a range of human
development indicators relating to education, health and
women's empowerment.
Any comparison between Bangladesh and its gigantic
neighbor is always going to be complex. While India is vying
to become one of the world's great powers, often billed as a
counterweight to China, its small eastern neighbor, which
has largely been a footnote in geopolitical discourse about the
region, has been quietly flying below the radar and has
become in its own way a manufacturing powerhouse for
labor-intensive goods, especially garments, something India
has never managed to accomplish despite its abundance of
unskilled labor and the efforts of successive governments.
This past year has been humbling for India. Just-released
statistics show that the economy contracted by a whopping
7.3% in the 2020-21 fiscal year which ended in March, the
worst performance in decades. By contrast, Bangladesh's
economy was estimated to have expanded by 5.8% in the
same period. Thus, while India was the worst performer
among major economies during the year of COVID-19,
Bangladesh was among the best.
While COVID cases have begun to come down, India
remains in the grip of a deadly second wave of the pandemic.
On May 18, Bangladesh gifted thousands of boxes of essential
medicines and medical equipment to India. A few weeks
earlier, the country had sent 10,000 vials of remdesivir, a
drug used to treat COVID-19, to India.
In India's 2019 general election campaign, Amit Shah, then
the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and
currently India's home minister and Prime Minister
Narendra Modi's right-hand man, described illegal migrants
from Bangladesh as "termites," vowing to throw them one by
one into the Bay of Bengal.
In accepting foreign aid from Bangladesh, India's
governing party has had to eat crow. If Bangladesh continues
on its current trajectory, India and the world will have to take
note of the transformation of a country once written off as a
basket case into a rising star.
RECENTLY, the Sindh chief minister
said that his government will collect
the fire and conservancy tax through
electricity bills in Karachi. Increase in
efficiency and bolstering the finances of the
Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC)
were given as the main reasons for this. The
opposition in Sindh says that such a move is
the prerogative of an elected local
government which neither exists nor
appears to be in sight. The federal
government is siding with its allies.
The Sindh government's decision
highlights the fault lines in local and
provincial politics that are rooted in history.
During Gen Zia's regime, elected local
governments were revived. KMC got its
elected mayor in the person of Abdul Sattar
Afghani. Soon the KMC leadership and
provincial government rowed over property
and motor vehicle taxes. KMC wanted to
control these and other local taxes while the
government wanted the status quo
maintained. Mayor Afghani and his
comrades took to the streets. He was
arrested and later dismissed.
Similarly, the erstwhile City District
Government Karachi imposed an
infrastructure levy referred to as 'public
utility charges' in February 2009. It met
with strong opposition from different
quarters. It was felt that the economic
situation could not take the burden of a new
levy. Besides, people were contending with
regular power shutdowns and poor water
and sanitation services. Another financial
burden was unjustified. With no process of
Local decay
consultation and no presentation of proper
facts and maintainable arguments. the levy
was relegated to the back-burner.
The set-up in Sindh exercises total control
over LG functions.
For Sindh, the 18th Amendment is its
mainstay. But while it is quick to demand
more from the centre, it is wary about
sharing its fruits with local government
institutions. It demands a smooth electoral
process for the national and provincial
assemblies but stops short of guaranteeing
the same for local governments.
Provincial autonomy is boosted by the
18th Amendment, but the creation of local
governments is held hostage by the Sindh
administration. The provincial government
has expanded its control and jurisdiction,
and municipal functions have been placed
under provincial control. Water supply,
sewerage, solid waste management,
policing, land for housing, building control,
zoning and urban planning, health,
education, social welfare, urban public
transportation, etc are all controlled by the
provincial authorities.
DR NOMAN AHMED
STEPHEN BRYEN
The local government law and other
statutes have been remodelled so that the
provincial government exercises total
control over finances, administration and
daily local government functions. Even if
local elections are held, the tutelage of the
provincial administration will leave little
room for local government institutions to
perform. The government's financial
functioning is full of distortions. Budget
books, accounts and realities hardly seem to
be in sync. The availability of funds,
expenditure and prices vis-à-vis services
and commodities shows a complete
mismatch. At government offices, one loses
count of how many green-plated luxury cars
come in. Similarly, many government
departments have opened offices after
renting out expensive bungalows and
properties in posh localities in Karachi and
other locations. Often, actual work on
projects and programmes begins much
after the acquisition of accommodation,
vehicles, lower staff etc. There are rules of
businesses available for such procurements.
One wonders whether they have been
followed.
Similarly, it is common to see gun-toting
official guards and motorcades for even
mid-level government functionaries.
Meanwhile, costs are not transparent. The
safe city proj ect for Karachi costs around
Rs30 billion. Transparency
Inter na t ional Pakistan believes the
cost should be much less. It is not that all is
well with the KMC. Its capacity to deliver
has been severely eroded. It suffers from
overstaffing, the absence of operational and
financial discipline, an inability to set its
own working targets and safeguard and
document its land and property assets and
chalk out proper strategies for its current
and future working. Being under the
province's control, it acts more as a
department than an autonomous
organisation.
Political wheeling and dealing under the
garb of democracy has rightly been
perceived as the root cause for the financial
drain on local government institutions and
other government bodies. With no financial
discipline, the overall sustainability of such
bodies has been jeopardised. Reform is
needed for both KMC and other municipal
institutions. The public should keep
themselves informed about the state of
affairs and make rational choices when, and
if, local elections are held. The metropolitan
and municipal corporations must be
exposed to greater public scrutiny by the
media. Civil society institutions can push for
the reform process to begin.
How useful is the UN when it comes to pandemic policy?
It is a bit early to tell how far the UN
General Assembly will go as far as its
pandemic actions are concerned, but the
crux of the matter is the UN's usefulness when
it comes to issues, such as COVID-19 policy,
that affect all countries alike. Also, beyond the
words delivered by global leaders at the
Security Council, there are issues of how the
UN is performing via its various humanitarian
aid bodies. In March 2020, UN Secretary-
General Antonio Guterres described the
coronavirus outbreak as the "greatest test"
since the Second World War, adding that "it is
more than a health crisis, it is a human crisis."
This emphasis on "human" by the UN leader
is important because of the nature of the threat
to the organization's sustainability
development goals and other pre-pandemic
planning efforts to improve "the human
condition." Now, the UN needs to scrap, and
later rebuild, planning efforts while the gears
of the UN aid network sees to it that the
current COVID-19 policy is put into practice.
When Guterres released the UN's plan to
counter the pandemic, the document
emphasized the need for countries to act in
concert, and outlined ways to suppress
transmission of the virus, safeguard people's
lives and livelihoods, and learn from the crisis
to build back. This approach, despite valiant
efforts, is not universally applied in every
country and, thus, the UN approach to act "in
concert" is still scattered in various ways,
including vaccine diplomacy and market
share as well as distribution networks. The UN
also emphasized the "human" crisis perhaps
needed to take into consideration how
resistance to vaccine mandates and lockdowns
would impede human rationality. The UN
Pentagon needs to answer for Afghan drone misfire
Afamily member of Zemari Ahmadi.
Both were killed by a US-fired
Hellfire missile outside their house in
Kabul. The Pentagon has caved in and taken
responsibility for the drone strike that killed
10 innocent civilians, including Zemari
Ahmadi who was a 14 year-long employee
of the Nutrition and Education NGO. Most
of his family, including children, were killed
in the airstrike as they gathered around his
Toyota Corolla when he returned home
from work.
But the Pentagon admission lacks
credible details on why the Hellfire missile
killed the wrong people in the wrong place.
Prior to the admission on Friday,
September 17, the White House and
Pentagon had been insisting that those
killed belonged to ISIS-K and therefore they
killed the target they were after. We now
know that those claims were false and were
part of an effort to cover up what really
happened. The drone that was used in the
attack was an MQ-9 Reaper equipped with
sophisticated cameras, radars and other
equipment. The drone most likely spent
hours over Kabul trying to track alleged
ISIS-K threats the Reaper has an endurance
(fully loaded) of 14 hours.
One of the most problematic aspects of
the lethal strike is that the drone had been
following a white car, allegedly Ahmadi's
Toyota, for many hours. It is a problem
Similarly, the erstwhile City District Government Karachi imposed
an infrastructure levy referred to as 'public utility charges' in
February 2009. It met with strong opposition from different quarters.
It was felt that the economic situation could not take the
burden of a new levy. Besides, people were contending with
regular power shutdowns and poor water and sanitation services.
DR. THEODORE KARASIK
needs to take into consideration at a higher
level of policy analysis the psychological
damage from this multi-year pandemic event.
The UNGA passed two resolutions to address
the-then new COVID-19 global crisis. On April
2, 2020, "Global solidarity to fight the
coronavirus disease 2019" was really about
unifying a global purpose. This resolution
called for international cooperation and
multilateralism by emphasizing
synchronization. The UN's ability to
synchronize well even in the best of times is
subject to various forces on the ground that
can interfere in objectives.
Two weeks later, a second resolution,
"International cooperation to ensure global
access to medicines, vaccines and medical
equipment to face COVID-19," urged
international cooperation to ensure equitable
global access to medical equipment, treatment
and vaccines. We all know how that effort
panned out, with multiple vaccines and
multiple delivery systems support. Assessing
how to repair broken societies during and after
the pandemic should be a primary UN goal.
In addition, the document emphasized the
need for human rights to be respected during
because a different white Toyota, perhaps
operated by ISIS-K personnel, was also
moving around during this period.
Could they have become mixed up? There
is a possibility that happened, although only
a complete investigation would reveal the
truth.
More concerning are three pointss. The
first is that the drone operators, according to
Even Hill of the New York Times, identified
a building they claimed was an ISIS-K
operations center. In fact, it was the well
known location of the Nutrition and
Education NGO.
The second is that security camera
footage, which is inferior to the powerful
cameras on the Reaper drone, clearly shows
that the alleged "ISIS-K" explosives were
never properly identified and were, in fact,
water containers that the operators saw
being taken into Mr Ahmadi's home.
The third concern is why a drone would
the pandemic. That aspect is now part of a
brutal rhetorical and physical battle occurring
in societies around the world. This illustrates
that the UN wish goes only so far on the issues
of human rights until the wall of reality during
a global pandemic appears. Clearly, conflict,
climate extremes and economic shocks all
remain primary drivers of acute food
insecurity that is hindering pathogen
eradication.
In June 2020, the "UN Comprehensive
Response to COVID-19" was launched "to
save lives, protect societies, recover better" by
In addition, the document emphasized the need for human
rights to be respected during the pandemic. That aspect is
now part of a brutal rhetorical and physical battle occurring
in societies around the world. This illustrates that the
UN wish goes only so far on the issues of human rights
until the wall of reality during a global pandemic appears.
stepping up the UN aid system. This policy
document appeared six to seven months after
the outbreak when it was clear that a crisis was
imminent with the first initial pathogen wave.
The time gap was costly and illustrates how
the UN needs to prepare policy contingencies
of an extreme nature with updating on a
constant basis. The pathogen's perseverance
through every community, by passing some
and infecting others, is the "human cost and
burden." The UN cannot fix this aspect since
the remedy comes from the community.
Assessing how to repair broken societies
during and after the pandemic should be a
launch a missile at a target in a densely
populated neighborhood where collateral
damage was a certainty.
The Pentagon also claimed there was a
secondary explosion when the "bomb" in
the car exploded after the car was hit. There
is no evidence at all to support this claim but
the Pentagon has yet to state the claim was
false. Every examination of the scene makes
clear there was only one explosion caused by
The drone that was used in the attack was an MQ-9 Reaper
equipped with sophisticated cameras, radars and other equipment.
The drone most likely spent hours over Kabul trying to track alleged
ISIS-K threats the Reaper has an endurance (fully loaded) of 14
hours. One of the most problematic aspects of the lethal strike is that
the drone had been following a white car, allegedly Ahmadi's Toyota.
the Hellfire missile.
Even worse than these three unexplained
errors and false claims, the worst error of all
was that the drone strike happened when
Ahmadi's children surrounded the car.
There are two possibilities why this
happened. The first is that the operators
never saw the children and possibly fired
before the children ran out to greet their
father. The second is that the operators
actually did see the children, but by that
time the Hellfire missile had already been
primary UN goal. The UN is relying heavily on
the Food and Agriculture Organization, the
International Fund for Agricultural
Development, International Labor
Organization and the World Health
Organization to help the most vulnerable
during the pandemic. The work of these
organizations, while notable, is wrapped up in
politics and perhaps even ineffective.
The WHO is the most notorious for some
observers, and the most criticized for
inefficiency and favoritism. As the world faces
the third and fourth waves of the pandemic,
the UN system tied into these agencies is
perhaps illustrative of a setup in desperate
need of reform. This reform needs to come
later given current UN operations in
pandemic response. To be fair, the Security
Council is releasing reports on the
socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19. One is a
call to action for the immediate health
response required to suppress transmission of
the virus to end the pandemic, and to focus on
people - women, youth, low-wage workers,
small and medium enterprises, the informal
sector and on vulnerable groups - already at
risk. Noble, but is it enforceable? That is up to
individual country governments.
Overall, enhanced international support for
countries with limited abilities can be helped
by UN agencies, but individual countries really
need to stand up and governments must bend
to the demands of their communities. UN
policymakers need to see the world in a whole
new light, which may be one of the benefits of
the pandemic itself - long-term human
security.
Source: Arab news
launched. Hellfire is a fire and forget
weapon. That is, once a target is designated
and the Hellfire missile launched, it flies to
the target autonomously. It takes a Hellfire
missile as long as 30 seconds from launch to
target impact. In other words, for 30
seconds it is outside of any human control.
This problem bothered Israeli operators.
When Obama cut off Hellfire deliveries to
Israel (he didn't like the fact they were killing
Hamas terrorists with them), Israel adapted
its home-grown Spike missile for
helicopters (and later for drones). Spike has
one feature not found on Hellfire. The
operator controls it after launch and can
change the course of the missile (aim at a
different target or no target at all) or destroy
it in flight. Israel has gone to extreme efforts
to try and minimize civilian casualties in its
conflict with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah
in Lebanon and Syria.
Hellfire isn't the first US missile to take
out a target and unexpectedly kill civilians.
On the 20th day of Operation Allied Force in
Serbia in 1999, the US attacked a rail bridge
over the Grdelica ravine, southeast of
Belgrade. Two missiles were fired at the
bridge that appeared unoccupied.
However, after the second missile was
fired a civilian train was crossing the bridge
and it was hit.
Source: Asia times