Sunday Posts

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in Dhaka tomorrow. His is a historic opportunity, to reimagine the relationship with Bangladesh, and to unlock the prosperity cycle that can transform Eastrn India and beyond. To do this, a focus on the future will be needed. Almost all the discussions in South Asia, all the time, is about the past. This is one region caught in endless cycles of memories, revenge and retribution, as if the time never moves forward. This would be the challenge that Mr Modi must overcome. Bangladesh matters. Many Indians may think of it as a poor, weak, insignificant country, pale in significance in comparison with Pakistan or China. But with its 156 million people, it is the 8th most populous country in the world, though that fact does not seem to count much in this very crowded corner. It is a poor country, but despite a lower per capita income compared to India and Pakistan, it betters them on measures that count, higher life expectancy at birth, lower c...

In the discussions about Global Higher Education, one country is often forgotten: Bangladesh. Somehow, it will never feature as a target country for institutions trying to recruit students from abroad, or more surprisingly, for 'Transnational Education'.  This omission is more surprising when one considers the facts on the ground. Bangladesh has a population (154 million) which is bigger than Russia (143 million) and Mexico (120 million), with 61% of its population within the 15 - 64 year bracket. The country has a huge problem with Higher Education access, with 13% Gross Enrollment Ratio (reports UNESCO/ World Bank). Indeed, the Global Higher Ed market in Bangladesh seems trivial. OECD reported that it sent 30,000 students abroad in 2011 (dwarfed by China's 729,000, India's 223,000 and even Korea's 139,000). However, this is more a paradigm problem as Global Higher Ed is predominantly seen as students from Global South coming to study in OECD. Students from...

I am travelling - covering seven cities in three weeks - and this is the reason for relative silence on this blog. It is not the paucity of time, but the excitement of the real work; not the difficulty of Internet connection, but the abundance of real conversations and friendships, that made me write less and talk more in the last few days. But, the journey so far was full of discoveries, insights and indeed excitement, events and opportunities that make me question my assumptions and desires, and stoke my aspirations and encourage me to raise my activities to a wholly different level. When I was in Dubai airport, on my way to Dhaka, transiting as usual, the air-conditioners in Terminal 3 gave away. Water poured down like a huge cloudburst, closing the shops and dispersing the crowd, blocking the main lobby of the airport. I was lucky as I was sitting in a coffee shop at a distance, so the whole affair looked like a surreal rain rather than the wet mess it was for the people caught o...

The frontiers of civilization keeps shifting: Now it is in Dhaka. Unlike the American formulation, however, this is not about one kind of civilization up against another. It is a different, but known, variety of struggle - of a modern nation of aspirations against the old structures of repression and fear. The Islamists in Bangladesh, powerful as they always were, have finally come out of woodwork and trying to claim the country: In a rematch of the country's liberation war fought forty years ago, they are, in fact, more ideologically formidable, and may be more numerous. However, they are up against a modern young aspirational nation, no less determined than their forefathers a few generation ago, no less able than the military commanders of the earlier generation. This time, the battle is fought in proxies. Most powers will sit out on the fence; they ought to: This is a dangerous battle, mostly fought in ideas. While battling against the government, the reactionary forces ma...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh upheld the death sentences of the five ex-soldiers in the murder case of Sheikh Mujib, the first President of the country. Mujib was assassinated , along with most of the rest of his family, in a coup on 15 Th August 1975. The coup plotters accused Mujib of various misdeeds, including nepotism, corruption, dictatorship and selling out to India. Mujib, the enormously popular leader who played a part in starting the liberation struggle of East Pakistan, which eventually become Bangladesh, clearly lost control of his country by then: The coup plotters simply marched out of the Dhaka Cantonment, surrounded his house with tanks and armoured cars and shot him, along with his wife, sons, daughters-in-laws and nephew, dead. To start with, it was a grizzly murder and needed to be punished. It was long viewed as a political act. The subsequent governments of Bangladesh actually granted amnesty to the coup leaders, including those directly involved in ...

This one brilliant idea from the Bangladesh Government recently caught my eye, though for a very personal reason. I lived in Bangladesh before and my experience, a fairly common one for most visitors to the country, was that the officials, particularly Government officials and Ministers, were always very well dressed. Mostly in suits, that is. This was a big change for me coming from India, where one would not find a politician in suits normally and even most civil servants will usually wear half-sleeved shirts. Even businessmen in India would prefer Safari suits, with its half sleeves and more climate-friendly texture, over business suits. Bangladesh was odd, given that the tempertures will be close to 40 degree celsius in the summer and it will rain endlessly most of the time. However, I had to get used to wearing suits and as the word passed on, I remember one colleague coming over to Bangladesh with 11 pairs! Recently, it seems that Government has suggested to all Civil Servants to...

If one is to sum up the affairs of South Asia so far this year, it will read like this: (A) Pakistan resumed its civil war, after attempting to reach, and then aborting, a peace deal in the Swat valley. Currently, Pakistani Armed Forces are engaged in a civil war and they claim that the extremists are pushing back, at least from the main towns. (B) Sri Lanka claimed victory in its two decade long civil war, after the LTTE Chief, Prabhakaran's body was recovered. This victory, however, comes at a great cost - the final phase of the battle saw brutal tactics employed by both sides. Cornered LTTE used Tamil civilians as a human shield, and the Sri Lankan government, emboldened by the silence of all major powers, bombarded the civilian positions without any humanitarian considerations. Peace holds, for now, though thousands of Tamils live in refugee camps, and despite the military victory, the society remains deeply divided. (C) Bangladesh put down a bloody mutiny earlier this year, wh...

Over the last week, the shape of the new Indian administration has become clearer. It did emerge that the leadership of the Congress party is ready to do some fresh thinking, and they are fully using their mandate to take some strong decisions which were long overdue. Unlike the recent fresh faced administrations in the United States, Bangladesh or Pakistan, the new Indian administration does not start with a burden of a huge expectation. So far, they have used this to an advantage and delivered, or at least appeared to be delivering, more than what was expected, booting out the incompetent and the corrupt, reigning in undisciplined allies, projecting a national agenda over regional populism, and instilling a sense of new initiative and direction. Next few months will affirm how much of this will hold the momentum and make a difference. For the moment, however, it seems okay to enjoy a sense of new urgency. We have already seen that in Finance, where, if rumours are true, the governme...

Nations are ideas. We try to fashion them as territories. But how can a river, a mountain ridge or sometimes an imaginary line in the middle of a field can explain the wide division in the lives, thoughts and futures of the people who live on different sides? Nations are not the people too. Indeed, people build nations and become its body. But the soul of the nation is an idea: People come together on an idea to build a nation. While that's what a modern nation is - an idea - and that way exceptionalism is not an American exception, very few nations are as completely defined by an idea as Pakistan. There was hardly any political, geographic or military rationale of Pakistan other than the idea of an Islamic homeland in South Asia. [In that way, the ideological brother of Pakistan in the family of nations is Israel] This, abated by the short term political calculations of some backroom colonialists, created a modern state which must be solely sustained on that singular idea. Religi...

Pragati, India's National Interest Magazine, published an edited version of this essay in their March 2009 issue. Democracy's Comeback The overwhelming victory of the coalition led by Awami League and its leader Sheikh Hasina , in the elections in Bangladesh, has been celebrated widely in India. It is indeed good news, and the contrast to the year-end 2007, when Pakistan was tottering on the brink after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, could not be more stark. With Sri Lankan government finally winning the war against Tamil Tigers, Pakistan and Nepal settled with democratic governments, and Maldives and Bhutan successfully implementing democratic transition, it seems that democracy and peace are finally making a comeback in the South Asian region. This could only be good news for India. Gone are those days of cold war policy making, when we played zero-sum games with our neighbours. The concept of Sphere of Influence lingers on, but appears dated in ...

The mutineers have surrendered arms in Dhaka, but they have been granted a general amnesty by the government. The true horrors of the mutiny is now coming to the fore - not what happened on the street, but what happened inside the barracks. The tortured, mutilated bodies of the officers are now being taken out, and one can see that not only the officers, but their families too, have been brutally murdered. However, while the troubles have subsided in Dhaka, there is a battle going on in the border camps throughout the country. The army is advancing on the BDR to take over these camps, but, according to the reports, BDR men are resisting, and cutting down the roads and blowing up the bridges, just like in an war. These men, who are now killing their officers and fighting against their own country's army, and jeopardizing the lives of their citizens, are presumably covered by the amnesty. The question remains, however, what would be done with them, after the dust settles. As I ment...

A mutiny took place in Dhaka today. The Bangladesh Rifles ( BDR ), the paramilitary border guards, mutinied against the Army, who they say discriminate against the paramilitary forces. The statement, made by an unnamed BDR officer to BBC Bengali Service, said that the BDR has nothing against the government and they expect that the government will be humane. The latest reports indicate that the Prime Minister, along with her cabinet colleagues, met the representatives of the mutineers, and offered a general amnesty to mutineers in exchange of laying down of arms and release of the officers held hostage. Dhaka had a tense day - with visible military action on the streets, general panic and fear that this will snowball into something more sinister. Hopefully, it won't get there and normalcy will be restored soon. However, in my mind, this mutiny indicates how difficult it is to govern Bangladesh now and how urgent is the need for action to restore the faith in democracy and fair gov...

Democracy's Comeback The overwhelming victory of the coalition led by Awami League and its leader Sheikh Hasina , in the elections in Bangladesh, has been celebrated widely in India. It is indeed good news, and the contrast to the year-end 2007, when Pakistan was tottering on the brink after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, could not be more stark. The expectations are that Pakistan will now be almost irreversibly ruled by a democratic government, however weak, and that in Nepal, hostilities are over and a government, whatever its allegiance , will be firmly in control. With Sri Lankan government finally winning the war against Tamil Tigers, and Maldives and Bhutan successfully implementing democratic transition, it seems that democracy and peace are finally making a comeback in the South Asian region. This could only be good news for India. Gone are those days of cold war policy making, when we played zero-sum games with our neighbours. The concept of sphere of influence...