The path through the fields

Bangladesh has dysfunctional politics and a stunted private sector. Yet it has been surprisingly good at improving the lives of its poor

The Economist Nov 3rd 2012

Villagers are doing it for themselves

ON THE outskirts of the village of Shibaloy, just past the brick factory, the car slows to let a cow lumber out of its way. It is a good sign. Twenty years ago there was no brick factory, or any other industry, in this village 60 kilometres west of Dhaka; there were few cows, and no cars. The road was a raised path too narrow for anything except bicycles. Continue reading “The path through the fields”

Visions for Empowerment

Dear friend,
The story of BRAC has been told and retold in countless ways ever? since it started? out as?a small relief operation in the aftermath of Bangladesh’s bloody War of Liberation.
In this,?at ?its 40th year and at the peak of recognitions as the word’s largest non-governmental?organisation, BRAC has excavated through its archives to present ?its own version of the?story visually.
Through photographs collected across four decades, and spannng three continents,?”Visions of Empowerment” is on at the Drik Gallery from October 12-20.
As the world gets ready to observe the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty,?please come share this remarkable story.
Asif Saleh
Senior Director Strategy, Communications and Capacity
BRAC and BRAC lnternational
Venue
Drik Gallery
House 58 Road 15A (New)
Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka 1209
Bangladesh
Time
Inauguration 4:30 pm
October 12. 2012

Luc Delahaye Awarded $106,000 Prix Pictet

From Photo District News
?Ambush, Ramadi, 22 July 2006,? by Luc Delahaye.

French photojournalist-turned-artist Luc Delahaye has won the fourth Prix Pictet, the organization announced in a ceremony this evening at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The theme of this year?s prize was ?Power.?
Founded by Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie in 2008, the Prix Pictet is awarded to photographers whose work engages with themes of sustainability.
180 experts from around the world nominated 673 artists for the prize. From those the jury selected 12 shortlisted artists, all of whom will be included in an exhibition opening tomorrow, October 10, at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The exhibition will also tour internationally.
Delahaye submitted a portfolio titled ?Various works: 2008-2011,? about which he wrote in his artist?s statement:
?I try to put myself in situations that I feel have a certain relevance regarding what we call a shared destiny. The reality I?m interested in is that of people who struggle to act upon it as much as they are subject to it. I sometimes work where power presents itself as a spectacle, as an event produced for or with the media, and my pictures may then take an ironic undertone. But I photograph the ordinary man more often than the leader. I usually stay at the distance where the human relationships are visible, multiple, active and where they remain problematic. I?m interested in narration and in photography?s phenomenological hold on the real.?
Among the other shortlisted photographers were Robert Adams, Rena Effendi, An-My L?, who just received a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, and Joel Sternfeld.
Pictet & Cie, the company that founded the prize, also awarded a commission to nominated photographer Simon Norfolk to travel to and photograph a region where the Bank is supporting a sustainability project.
Previous Prix Pictet winners include Mitch Epstein, Nadav Kander and Benoit Aquin.
Related: Prix Pictet Announces 12 Photographers Shortlisted for Prize

Controversy over Dr Yunus, political issues ignored

by rahnuma ahmed

I HAVE recently returned from Jhalokathi. I had gone there as part of a citizens’ group to lend support to seventeen year old Limon Hossain, shot and maimed by a RAB bullet. It was a case of mistaken identity but this simple truth is denied by the government, by the ruling party’s top-ranking leaders and high-ranking police and RAB officials, who viciously keep insisting that Limon is a ‘terrorist.’ All because the government’s elite anti-crime, anti-terror force, can do no wrong. Never, ever. A state of affairs that we, as citizens, contest.
After returning to Dhaka, I flipped through news reports of our visit. Many had characterised our group as being, one of ’eminent’ citizens. Very elitist. Others, of being composed of ‘human rights leaders and activists’, implying a total disregard for its political and ideological diversity since the group consisted of members, including I myself, keenly aware of the politics of human rights. Of, for instance, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr Yunus’ notion of credit as being a fundamental human right. Its absurdity, sharply pointed out by anthropologist Lamia Karim who asks, if credit is replaced with the word debt, how can debt, ?a relationship of power and inequality between the loan institution and the borrower? — be construed as a human right? Continue reading “Controversy over Dr Yunus, political issues ignored”

International NGOs serve imperialism; Africa needs own independent development organizations

By Nosakhare Boadi
Published Dec 2, 2011

International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are global contractors, hired to execute the foreign policies of imperialism. They largely work without questioning the existing social system.
Surely they complain about poverty and the suffering of the world’s poor, but most blindly only look to solutions within the confines of the system of imperialism and global capitalism. This is impossible.
As Jamaicans say, they “too follow fashion.” NGOs fashion themselves in the cloak of the ?left? and put on a show of resistance. But most have no vision to finance this resistance nor to accomplish their goals beyond the free surplus ?milk? of the system that sustains their very existence. This is the dialectic of ?poverty reduction.? Their enterprise is a contradiction in terms.
International NGOs believe wishfully that imperialism will finance them to orchestrate its own demise. They fail to understand that the system derives its wealth and surplus exactly because it imposes poverty on the people of the world. Continue reading

An Attack on Grameen Bank, and the Cause of Women

By?DAVID BORNSTEIN? New York Times

This month, the Grameen Bank, the organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize for extending small loans to impoverished village women, has come under renewed attack from the government of Bangladesh. Last year,?I reported?that the government was attempting to forcibly remove the bank?s founder, Muhammad Yunus, from his position as managing director on the pretense that Yunus, then 70, was beyond the official retirement age. The government prevailed.

Portrait of Professor Muhammad Yunus — Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. He initiated the Grameen (rural) Bank, the bank for the poor, which gives loans to poor people (generally women), who do not have collateral. The Grameen Foundation has also initiated innovative companies such as Grameen Phone, a commercial telecommunication company which also provides phones to rural women for setting up their businesses. 1988. Mirpur. Dhaka. Bangladesh. ??Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Now it has struck again. On Aug. 2, the cabinet of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed?approved?a proposal to amend the 29-year-old law that governs the Grameen Bank so the government can bypass the bank?s board of directors and handpick Yunus?s successor. This is a brazen step to seize control of an institution that serves 8.4 million poor villagers across Bangladesh and provides inspiration to social entrepreneurs around the world. Sadly, it is occurring in a country where the government has been consistently ranked as highly?corrupt. Just this past June, the World Bank?canceled?$1.2 billion in financing for the much-needed Padma Bridge because of corruption at a high-level within the government. Continue reading

Amartya Sen: The New Elizabethans

Amartya Sen: BBC

Listen now

DURATION: 12 MINUTES

The New Elizabethans: Amartya Sen the Nobel-winning laureate known as the Mother Theresa of economics for his work understanding and fighting the causes of poverty.
Best known for his work on the causes of famine, his book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, argued that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen also helped to create the United Nations Human Development Index which is used to rank countries by standard of living or quality of life.
Now working as Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, he began at the tender age of twenty-three by setting up a new economics department at Jadavpur University in Calcutta, but he has also held professorships at Delhi University, the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford.
When in 1998 he was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, he became the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college. In the same year he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in welfare economics.
The New Elizabethans have been chosen by a panel of leading historians, chaired by Lord (Tony) Hall, Chief Executive of London’s Royal Opera House. The panellists were Dominic Sandbrook, Bamber Gascoigne, Sally Alexander, Jonathan Agar, Maria Misra and Sir Max Hastings.
They were asked to choose: “Men and women whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and/or given the age its character, for better or worse.”

Water water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink

Wagner Magazine Summer 2012 Cover_0 — Cover Photo by Habibul Haque/Drik/Majority World

For almost 20 years, Professor Mohammad Alauddin has been working to solve the drinking water contamination problem in one of the world?s most populous and water-rich nations. What is the solution for Bangladesh ? and what can we learn from it? Insights from this year?s trip to Bangladesh through the Wagner Expanding Your Horizons program.
Story by Laura Barlament / Photos by Habibul Haque/Drik Continue reading

Padma. A bridge too far.

He did resign in the end. And the resignation was accepted. Minutes before the announcement, it was still being debated on the talk shows. Would this be another hoax? Would she accept the resignation? Had we finally gotten rid of him? Regardless, it was too little, too late. Continue reading

Fukushima: Coverup, Lies and Japan's Nuke Dictatorship

by rahnuma ahmed

I must write about Fukushima — I’ve been telling myself repeatedly for over a year.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s north-eastern coast on March 11, 2011. A tsunami followed soon after, sweeping away cars, ships and buildings, crushing coastal communities. An estimated 15,800 people died; a three thousand still missing.
The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant was affected. How badly, and what this has meant for Japan, and, for the rest of the world, is still being debated. But not in the mainstream media any longer, activists allege. Continue reading

Bangladesh has dysfunctional politics and a stunted private sector. Yet it has been surprisingly good at improving the lives of its poor

by rahnuma ahmed

By Nosakhare Boadi Published Dec 2, 2011

by rahnuma ahmed

By Nosakhare Boadi
Published Dec 2, 2011