EDITORIAL : THE ASHARQ ALAWSAT, SAUDI ARABIA, published in LONDON

Saudi Arabia: Don't politicize the issue of women driving

The famous "scary" story has once again returned to the spotlight, namely the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia. It returns this time under different circumstances, and is being affected by media hype that is dictated by the prevailing conditions in the region, and at a time when some people are simply looking for anything related to Saudi Arabia.

The basic problem is that the debate over women's right to drive [in Saudi Arabia] has been transformed into a show of force. If women were allowed to drive, this would mean a victory for one trend over another, whilst if they are not allowed, this is evidence of the strength of one trend against the other. This is the wrong way to approach such a subject; confining the issue in this manner makes light of it.

Legally speaking, there is a group of prominent religious scholars who believe women are permitted to drive, and that there are no regulations preventing this. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz previously said that the issue of women driving was a social issue, as did Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz and Second Deputy Prime Minister Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz. This was something that was also reiterated by Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Saud Al-Faisal, so where is the problem?

Simply speaking, the problem is that the issue of women driving has become a source of psychological dread for all parties, because the issue is being symbolically portrayed as a conflict between different trends, and this is wrong. A definitive decision must be taken over this issue, and it should be viewed as being a natural thing, such as women working as doctors and so on, rather than a victory for one trend over another. However, we must also take into account an important point, namely that the issue of women driving is not something that can be resolved immediately, as if this were the lifting of the emergency law in Egypt or Syria, for example. There are logistical matters to be taken into consideration, from the Traffic Department, to other issues. The problem today is that with the media coverage of events in the region, certain terms are being used excessively or made light of.

When a Saudi woman recently drove her car in Jeddah, nobody said anything. Another women was caught driving in Al-Ras [in Al-Qassim province], and she was detained by the police for a few hours and then released. However there is another story of a female Saudi driver in the news which is quite different. She was stopped and told not to drive because there is no organization in place [to regulate female driving], but she returned the following day to drive yet again. Her actions were filmed and uploaded on "YouTube" in order to provoke people, and this approach was, of course, unwise.

Therefore, the key issue here is that women driving in Saudi Arabia is inevitable, so why turn this into a prize-fight? It would be useful to immediately announce the formation of a committee to study this issue, taking a number of suggestions into account, including: allowing the introduction of female drivers in order to reassure society, as well as allowing Saudi Arabian women, of a certain age, to drive in certain cities as part of a pilot scheme. Later the age limit can be reduced, and the experiment extended to other Saudi cities. This is in order to observe the logistical conditions, from the Traffic Department and other issues, as well as ensuring decency with regards to appearances. Before all of this, there must be a strict and firm law in place to ensure that women drivers are not subject to any forms of sexual harassment or insult.

Thus I would say that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with women driving, and this is something that can be implemented calmly. However what is most important is that this issue must not be politicized, because that is in no one's interest.

  

EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, UK

       

 

George Osborne: A lonely figure

Far from things getting better for the economy, under Osborne they are getting steadily worse

Rare is the George Osborne speech that does not begin with a roll call of groups that support his spending cuts. Sadly for the chancellor, though, supporters for his historic austerity package are themselves increasingly rare. David Cameron's star guest this week, Barack Obama, was polite but conspicuous in his disagreement with the coalition's one-track stance. "We've got to make sure that we take a balanced approach and that there's a mix of cuts, but also thinking about how do we generate revenue," said the president. Then there was the chief economist of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pier Carlo Padoan, who said there was "scope for slowing the pace" of cuts. Given how much the coalition has made of OECD approval for its policies, this is extraordinary.

The chancellor's newfound loneliness matters both economically and politically. Economically, those OECD comments followed on from its admission that prospects for the UK are getting worse. Last May the thinktank predicted that UK GDP would grow 2.5% in 2011; yesterday that forecast was cut (yet again) to 1.4%. That is higher than the prediction from the chancellor's Office for Budget Responsibility, but the OBR has also reduced its expectations for economic growth time and again. The Bank of England has had to do the same, and so have a whole host of private-sector forecasters. True, other countries have fallen subject to the same fate – but not so dramatically. The consensus is clear: far from things getting better for the economy, under Mr Osborne they are getting steadily worse.

Flick through the economic reports published this week and the same plangent theme sounds again and again. The CBI reports a "sharp" decline in trade for restaurants and other consumer-service firms over the first three months of this year. That is backed up by the detailed GDP figures this week showing a slump in household spending, to its lowest level since the height of the banking crisis. The chancellor's answer to how Britain emerges from its slump is a boom in business investment – but that collapsed 7.1% in the first part of the year. There is no good way of playing these figures – just like those big-picture forecasts, they are not going the government's way.

A canny tactician, Mr Osborne sold his austerity plans to the public as being the tough medicine prescribed by every economist going. Yet one by one, his allies – whether in the CBI, the G20 or the OECD – are distancing themselves from his policies. The chancellor may have claimed to be the consensus once; now he is out of sympathy with both the centre ground and economic reality.

In praise of … Blackburn with Darwen

With a high youth population, the towns' comprehensive children's centres helped inspire Sure Start

The wheel turns. An industrial powerhouse declines from the busiest cotton-spinning town in the world, with 2.5m spindles in 1870, to a handful of specialist, residual textile firms today. A great international name shrinks to provincial status; was it Blackburn we were talking about. Or Burnley? Or Bolton? What is the difference between them anyway? The future lies elsewhere. Such conversations no doubt still take place in bastions of ignorance away from the north, but reality is now winning out. Not only in the shape of successful engineering of aircraft, but in news about the exceptional number of young people who live in Blackburn with Darwen. One in four of the population is under 15, officially the largest proportion in the UK. Elsewhere, this might be considered a drain on resources. In Blackburn with Darwen, it is being turned to good account. The towns' comprehensive children's centres helped inspire Sure Start and, through careful budgeting and protection from cuts, continue to flourish. No local child is more than a pram push away. It has an elected "youth MP" and youngsters are involved in the governance of such regenerative centres as Blackburn College and the £8m YouthZone which opens later this year. Its online children and young people's directory is hosted at a textese web address: URBwD.com. Young people, in return, overwhelmingly want to stay and make their lives in Blackburn and Darwen. There could be no better shoulder to the wheel than that.

Ratko Mladic: An old man faces justice

Belgrade has sent a clear message that it intends to turn the page and start rebuilding the country and the region

The 16 years in which Ratko Mladic has roamed free in Serbia is not a long time in Balkan memory. It's no more than the blink of an eye. Besides, the arrest of Europe's most wanted war crimes suspect has as much to do with the present as the past. The chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal (ICTY), Serge Brammertz, was just about to deliver a damning verdict on Belgrade's reluctant pursuit of Mladic to the UN, a report which would almost certainly have doomed Serbia's bid to be declared a formal candidate for EU membership later this year. Serbia has already fallen years behind Croatia, which can reckon on becoming the 28th member in 2013. President Boris Tadic, who faces unrest on the streets and a challenge from a strengthening nationalist opposition, had to deliver – and deliver quickly. The EU, for its part, will now come under strong pressure to reciprocate. It is no exaggeration to say that the arrest of one man could open a new chapter in relations between his country and Europe.

Nothing about the stocky former general has ever been diminutive. He has, according to just two counts on the ICTY charge sheet, the blood of 17,000 victims on his hands – the massacre of 7,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 and the siege of Sarajevo, which claimed 10,000 lives. This was more than died during the German occupation. And yet the fact that he has evaded capture for so long speaks volumes about the raw memory of those terrible events. Consider the reaction yesterday of the Serbian Radical party, whose spokesman accused Serb police of treachery for arresting a Serb hero. According to one poll, 40% concur with that view, and 51% would not hand Mladic over to the tribunal. Mladic's insider knowledge of how the security services worked was surely not the only factor that kept him one step ahead of the game for 16 years. It was also the fact that he remained, to the people who began protesting in Belgrade last night, a hero worth protecting.

The cauldron of ethnic cleansing is still warm to the touch in this part of Europe, and it was only last month that Serbia agreed to hold face-to-face talks with Kosovo, whose independence it refuses to recognise. Belgrade also plays a major role in the calculations of the Bosnian Serbs, and their demands for a breakaway statelet from Bosnia-Herzegovina. If the Kosovans were allowed to break away from Serbia, why, they argue, are Bosnian Serbs to be denied the same right? The embers of this fire are still smouldering and could easily reignite. The trial of Mladic, and the painstaking unveiling of the evidence against him, will do nothing immediately to douse passions. Indeed they could fan them. The demonstrations organised by the Serbian Radical party will inevitably turn up the heat in the nine or 10 days that it will take for Mladic to be transferred to the international tribunal in the Hague. In that time, the courts and Tadic himself will both have to hold firm.

But in the long run, the state's unswerving determination to deliver Mladic to international justice is the strongest message any government in Belgrade could give to its neighbours that it intends to turn the page of history and start rebuilding the country and the region. Put to one side the carrots of EU membership. Mladic's deliverance to the Hague is the only conceivable route to establishing normal relations between all the beleaguered, and still impoverished, communities of the region. It is the only way of re-establishing Serbia's place in the Balkans, not as a pariah state but as a modern trading partner. It could also be a reminder to those manning fortress Europe of the cost of keeping the gates shut. France, Germany and the Netherlands, all suffering from enlargement fatigue, have been setting new conditions on Croatia's membership. Yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy changed tack, acknowledging that it was impossible to tell Serbia now that the door was closed. The dinar has dropped.

EDITORIAL : THE GLOBAL TIMES, CHINA

Cyber-defense strength is indispensable

China's plan to build a "cyber blue team" is a training mechanism for national Internet defense, and not a "hacker army" as interpreted by some foreign media, according to the Ministry of Defense. At a time when our daily lives and national security are increasingly linked to the Internet, China should stick to its strategy of enhancing its Internet defense capability.

In the cyber-world, China is at a disadvantage, since none of the world's Internet root servers are located in its territory and little say in domain name management. However, China' capability is often exaggerated. Without substantiated evidence, it is often depicted by overseas media as the culprit for cyber-attacks on the US and Europe. In 2008 and 2009, the Pentagon announced that its website was attacked from China, and it reportedly mulled a counterattack in the real world. The incident was cleared later as two American hackers launched the attack on the Pentagon's website from China.

To some degree, China has been keeping a low profile in developing its Internet defense capability, which leaves room for imagination as to its real purpose and to mistake a few hackers' behavior as being government-backed action. Demonizing China's Internet defense strength is probably part of the US strategy to legitimize its own military expansion. As the US is developing its cyber-attack ability unchecked, China must develop a countering deterrent. Unchecked power will be abused all the same in the Internet world.

Another similar case was the balance of terror in the Cold War era. The matching capacity of nuclear weapons between the US and the USSR helped prevent one party from challenging another's core interests at will. As in the real world, each country has to be reserved from abusing its advantages, it is required that more comprehensive international regulations to be established on the global information system.

No first strikes should be regarded as a preferred rule in the cyber-world. The US has not made the commitment of no first use of its nuclear weapons, but it can set an example in the Internet by upholding this pledge. Though also sharing mutual interest with the US in safeguarding Internet order, China needs to develop its strong cyber defense strength. Otherwise, it would remain at the mercy of others. 

EDITORIAL : THE DAILY YOMIURI, JAPAN

      

 

Rebuild Tohoku fisheries to be better than before

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Ports and facilities of Pacific Ocean fisheries in the Tohoku and Kanto regions were severely hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

The industry should not simply be restored to its former state. Instead, people and organizations concerned should take the opportunity to incorporate drastic reforms in their rebuilding efforts, creating a revitalization model for the nation's fisheries industry as a whole, which is on the decline due to a graying workforce with a lack of successors.

In areas hit by huge tsunami, about 320 fishing ports and 20,000 fishing boats were destroyed or seriously damaged. Fish markets, processing facilities and other infrastructure have been almost completely lost in many places. The damage is estimated at about 900 billion yen.

Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture and Ofunato in Iwate Prefecture hosted bonito and tuna fishing boats from all over the country. Reopening of such core ports for offshore and deep-sea commercial fishing is an urgent necessity.

The central and local governments must cooperate closely to accelerate repair work on wharfs and removal of underwater rubble and debris.

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Change in way of thinking

Reconstruction of coastal fishing is an important subject because many people work in this industry.

Coastal fishing includes oyster and scallop cultivation, as well as fixed-net fishing of mackerel and sardines, which are mostly small, family-run businesses.

These businesses were directly hit by the giant tsunami. The loss of boats, equipment and facilities has left many of them unable to operate, and many are even thinking of closing down for good.

If the coastal fishing industry is to recover, a new way of thinking is required.

To promote the entry of new individuals and companies into the coastal fishing industry, the current system that gives priority in operations to local fisheries cooperatives must be revised.

A "fishing industry reconstruction promotion special zone" initiative proposed by the Miyagi prefectural government at a meeting of the government's Reconstruction Design Council is an idea worth considering.

The Fishery Law and other relevant laws have to be revised, and special zones should be created in quake-hit areas. In the special zones, private companies that catch, process and sell fish and other marine products will be given easy access to fishing rights.

The system is designed to reconstruct coastal fisheries by introducing the vitality of those formerly outside the fishing industry and also aims to expand employment opportunities for young people.

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Revise closed nature

Opposition has been voiced against the initiative in some local fisheries cooperatives. Fearing that their rights may be infringed upon, they argue that the good points of fishing villages as communities will be lost.

However, the closed nature of such communities must change. Otherwise, the decline of coastal fisheries cannot be stopped.

They should not adhere to their vested rights but must change their way of thinking to promote the fisheries businesses in their local communities.

We hope administrators in the central and local governments and fishermen thoroughly discuss the matter and seek the best solution with an eye toward the future. What is urgently required now is the wisdom to protect Japan's fish-eating culture and give an impetus to the recovery of the fisheries industry.

In a tough job market, seek fulfilling work

The Yomiuri Shimbun

An official estimate of the employment rate for new college graduates as of April 1, the first day of fiscal 2011, has been unveiled.

The figure is 91.1 percent, matching the record low posted in 2000, the so-called employment ice age for graduating students.

As data concerning part of the Tohoku region, affected by the March 11 massive quake and tsunami, was not included in the total, the actual employment rate is surely even lower.

As many as 33,000 college students graduated this spring without any job offers, it is estimated.

Even before the massive quake occurred, the government had been asking employers to treat those who graduated from college in the last three years on a par with new graduates. We hope companies will give sufficient job opportunities to those who have already graduated.

The major reason the rate has fallen so low is that the protracted economic slowdown has kept companies reluctant to hire new workers.

Job market imbalances have also been blamed, as students with a strong desire to work for big companies have shied away from jobs offered by small and medium-sized firms.

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Disaster clouds job prospects

In the days ahead, the effects of the recent disaster will become more visible in the job market.

Most big-name firms said they would not reduce the number of new hires from among next spring's graduates just because of the recent disaster. But job-hunting will likely get harder for those to graduate in 2012.

Leading companies have postponed recruiting activities for next spring's graduates, which would normally start in April, for two to three months, so they may focus their energy on post-quake restoration efforts. This has made it even more difficult for graduating students to get unofficial job offers from companies.

The situation is particularly severe for students in disaster-affected regions.

In the three prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, as many as 106,000 people have applied for unemployment benefits following the quake and tsunami. The job market in the region as a whole has deteriorated, and it has become ever more difficult to find jobs at local companies.

Many university students also find it hard to devote themselves to job hunting as their homes and families have been hit hard by the disaster.

The central government and some local governments are offering students free accommodations to help them in their search for work. Such assistance should be expanded and continued for as long as needed.

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Is there a silver lining?

What effect will the latest disaster have on the Japanese economy in the days ahead? Students must be feeling uncertain.

But let us think positively.

Many young people may have seen people of various walks of life fulfilling their respective duties enthusiastically, especially in search and rescue operations and restoration efforts, thus becoming aware of the harshness as well as the value of working.

There will also be an increase in the number of students who, through their own volunteer activities for disaster victims, will reflect on their potential and adopt a new view toward jobs.

Although it is a tough time, the most important thing is for young people to find jobs they feel are rewarding.

We also hope that businesses will find and hire those highly motivated young people by taking such flexible steps as treating next spring's graduates and earlier graduates equally and recruiting them throughout the year.

EDITORIAL : THE DAILY MIRROR, SRILANKA

DIPLOMATIC BLUNDERS: TENSION WITH INDIA

For Sri Lanka, last week was eventful for one reason or the other. The week began with religious observances and celebrations for Vesak, with the added significance of it being the 2,600th year of the Lord Buddha’s enlightenment.

It is ironic that though the Lord Buddha is revered as the greatest son of India, Sri Lanka appears to be again having serious problems with its giant neighbour and the Southern State of Tamil Nadu. In a much delayed effort at building bridges of accommodation and understanding, External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris last week wrote to Tamil Nadu’s new Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jeyaram congratulating her on her election victory and on her sbeing sworn-in as Chief Minister of the most populous Tamil State. The message came in the wake of Ms. Jeyaram calling for a  an international probe on accountability issues during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka. Speaking on her own channel, Jaya TV, Ms. Jeyaram  said it was India's responsibility to ensure a dignified and honourable existence for the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Last week Dr. Peiris also visited New Delhi virtually on his own for crucial talks with India’s foreign policy high priests. The joint statement that came out of the meeting is seen by many political analysts as a tacit agreement committing the Rajapaksa regime to fully implement the “Made in India” 13th Amendment. This means the 13th Amendment plus which in turn means that provincial councils and especially those in the North and East will get and fully exercise police and land distribution powers.  Essentially this is what the LTTE tried to achieve militarily, but now big brother India appears to be forcing it down the Rajapaksa regime’s throat diplomatically. While on the one hand, the Sri Lankan government has been telling the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the Human rights Council that the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka is on the right track and in line with the aspirations of the Tamil people, the joint statement with India states otherwise. It announces that India and Sri Lanka have agreed that the end of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka has created a historic opportunity to address all outstanding issues in a spirit of understanding and mutual accommodation imbued with political vision to work towards genuine national reconciliation. The key word is “Genuine”. The statement means Dr. Peiris affirmed the Rajapaksa regime’s commitment to ensuring expeditious and concrete progress in the ongoing dialogue between the Sri Lankan Government and representatives of Tamil parties. Dr. Peiris also reiterated that the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission appointed by the government was looking into accountability issues and would act accordingly.  But India was non committal on its stand regarding the controversial report by the experts’ panel appointed by UN Chief Ban Ki-moon to examine and advise him on accountability issues during the last stages of the war in Sri Lanka. The experts recommended there were “credible allegations” regarding genocide or war crimes and they felt a probe by an independent international group was necessary.

A pertinent question that has to be asked is whether the external affairs ministry lacked experienced officials well versed with the politics of India and knowledgeable in subtle diplomatic nuances to accompany the minister whose visit turned out to be a flop. In recent years the government has been recruiting more political henchmen or women for important diplomatic posts and this has created a major crisis.  Opposition leaders and even some government allies like the Patriotic National Movement are saying that Dr. Peiris had betrayed this country and protests are being organised against India’s crafty interference in the internal affairs of sovereign Sri Lanka.

It’s sad to see Sri Lanka, which government leaders say is on the threshold of being the wonder of Asia now wondering around Asia not knowing what to say or what to do and struggling to get its act together especially on the UN report and the reconciliation process.

 

EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

India in Africa

The second India-Africa summit at Addis Ababa has set the stage for a comprehensive re-engagement between the world's largest democracy and an emerging continent. The Africa-India Framework for Enhanced Cooperation and the Addis Ababa Declaration adopted at the summit envisage economic and political cooperation, and also cooperation in a host of other areas including science and technology, social and infrastructure development, tourism, culture, and sports. Africa and India recognise the opportunities they bring to the table for each other; both are now better positioned to use these opportunities in ways that can give substance to the old political slogan of ‘South-South cooperation.' As a leading player in the global economy, it is natural for India to seek participation in a resource-rich continent that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as the “new economic growth story.” His announcement of a $5 billion credit line over the next three years was the eye-catcher of the summit, but clearly, African nations are interested in enhancing their own skills and capabilities. India, with its substantial technology knowledge pool, is well placed to contribute to such capacity-building. This will also help in better utilisation of Indian financial assistance — of the committed credit line, unused funds from a previous financial package comprise $3.4 billion.

Following the first summit in 2008, India initiated several such efforts, including the Pan-African e-Network Project across 43 countries, which drew appreciation from the beneficiary countries. That new proposals for capacity-building discussed at this summit cover fields as diverse as information technology, textiles, food processing, and weather forecasting underscores the needs of a continent seeking to stabilise itself economically and politically. As important, it highlights Africa's recognition of rising India's capabilities to assist other developing countries. The India-Africa relationship is not new; it draws on a long, shared history of struggle against European colonialism, and a determination to ensure equality in the post-colonial world order. Africa has played host to a large Indian diaspora, and independent India was among the first to take a firm stand against apartheid in South Africa. Reducing India's ties with Africa to a ‘rivalry' with China is to take a narrow view of history. Given the realities, it is also meaningless — China's $126 billion trade with Africa is way ahead of India's $ 46 billion. It is best for New Delhi to use the present momentum to build its relationship with Africa in ways that will be of optimal benefit to both sides.

Figuring out the textile crisis

By downing shutters for a day this week, cotton spinning mill units may not have reduced the huge glut that has built up in yarn stocks. But they have succeeded in turning the spotlight on the complex web of public policy the central government has woven in the years since Independence. Few will quarrel with the objective of securing for cotton growers a remunerative price. Where the government has gone wrong is in simultaneously taking upon itself the burden of ensuring that high cotton prices do not result in high yarn prices for handloom weavers or for power looms. In this effort at squaring the circle, it has ended up creating a tangle of quantitative and tariff controls on cotton as well as yarn interspersed with duty drawback incentives, concessional lending to units engaged in the value chain of the textiles industry, and so on — in short, a bureaucratic process of Kafkaesque proportions. Much of this was supposed to be calibrated in real time in line with changes in global and domestic demand and supply. What is clear is that this policy framework is badly in need of a reality check in many crucial respects.

For instance, the continuous capacity addition in yarn manufacture ought to have tempered official fears of yarn shortage for weavers and knitted garment manufacturers while formulating policy. That has not been the case. Similarly, it is well recognised that as an approach to cloth-making hand weaving is now more expensive than mass manufacturing. It is no surprise that the poor of the land have found cheaper alternatives in fabrics woven by machine. Another anomaly is that while the law reserves several varieties for the handloom sector, these mass consumption fabrics whose parity depends on yarn prices are actually made by power looms. Yet official policy maintains the pretence that this mandated reservation is for the benefit of millions of handloom weavers — who are the poorest members of the value chain after farmers. Indeed, so out of tune with reality is official policy that the proportion of the total output a yarn manufacturer must compulsorily wind in a coil form (hank) so as to be amenable for use by handloom weavers has remained the same despite the substantial changes in mass clothing habits. Nothing in the track record of governance witnessed over the last six decades gives room for any optimism that the government can handle this complexity and deliver on desirable policy outcomes. It is time a comprehensive nation-wide enquiry was conducted into the economics of the cotton textile sector, covering all its constituents and seeing how they have fared. Appropriate policy changes can follow.

EDITORIAL : THE DAILY STAR, BANGLADESH

          

 

Unutilised aid money

Capacity building imperative

Slow pace of project implementation and return of the unutilised fund to its source is a very familiar feature of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) every year. The scenario is not different even in the case of foreign aid. And as a result, billions of dollar worth of scarce as well as precious foreign aid has created a pipeline bulge. This is not just a sad commentary on the project implementation agency's capacity to absorb foreign aid, it does also give a rather negative image of the government.

A report in this paper has brought to the fore afresh how we have failed to put a huge sum of aid money amounting 12 billion US dollars to good use. Though the economy receives some $2 to $3 billion annually in foreign aid, this fiscal it has swelled to $6.5 billion. The Economic Relations Division (ERD) has attributed the increased aid fund to the donors' commitments for the Padma Multipurpose Bridge.

But there are still strong grounds for concern about meeting the project implementation target there. Even the finance ministry has cast doubts seeing that of the total aid commitment, only $1.29b has been disbursed over the first nine months of the current FY. It is worthwhile to note that this is less than last year's disbursement figure. The delay has been due to the fresh conditions imposed by the World Bank relating to pre-qualification of bidders for Padma Bridge project.

The donors' conditionalities apart , it cannot be gainsaid that deeply ingrained bureaucratic sloth, lack of decision-making authority of the of projects-in-charge, tardiness rooted in too many tables that a file has to shuttle between, alleged corruption and a plethora of lapses and foibles dog the entire project administration regime.

The hurdles mentioned bear down heavily on the capacity of the implementation agencies. Keeping the absorption capacity of the ministries in view, we should be more cautious and selective about accepting foreign aid. At the same time, the government must exercise its political will to rid the administration of sloth and waffling.

Post-Aila conditions

Meet environmental threat

The good news, up to a point, is that the south-western districts of the country have been recovering gradually from the effects of the Aila devastation of two years ago. The bad news is that despite such recovery, a clear environmental threat now hovers over the region, especially Satkhira, Khulna and Bagerhat. As an exhaustive report in yesterday's issue of this newspaper notes, decades of shrimp cultivation have left the land in parlous conditions. It is now quite impossible for any agricultural crops to be grown on it. Aila destroyed all the shrimp enclosures in the region, of course. But now that a large segment of farmers previously engaged in shrimp cultivation are planning to return to their original occupation as growers of rice, the salinity of the ground, caused by intensive shrimp farming, has come in the way.

How badly the environment can be affected by thoughtless planning can be seen in the south-west of Bangladesh today. Shrimp cultivation has left 1,000,000 hectares of arable land badly affected by salinity. In all, 77 per cent of agricultural land in the region was given over to shrimp production. The consequences are now out there. Where farmers could, in pre-shrimp cultivation days, grow between 12 and 15 maunds of rice on a bigha of land, they can now expect no more than two maunds. The misery is compounded by the spectacle of trees and plants withering away owing to salinity. Deep tubewells pump out saline water, which poses an additional threat to health.

Damage control measures are called for. Policies which encourage pecuniary gains without taking note of environmental consequences clearly must be rethought. The damage caused to agricultural land in the south-western districts should be an eye-opener, both for the farming community and 'experts' who have encouraged the unbridled production of shrimp. We cannot afford to lose good land to myopic policies.