Nuclear Power Plants in Bangladesh: Part II

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=270094
Saturday, February 23, 2013

OP-ED

Are nuclear power plants viable for Bangladesh?

Mo Chaudhury

The government of Bangladesh has reached an agreement with Russia to build the country's first ever nuclear power plant (NPP) in Rooppur, Pabna. Given the momentous nature of the venture, this commentary lays out some major issues to facilitate and inspire public debates on the matter.
First, NPP offers the prospect of environmentally clean power supply at low operating costs over the long term. The estimated $1.5 to $2 billion construction cost of the Rooppur NPP does not seem expensive for such a plant. However, more details are needed about the modernity and sophistication of the NPP technology to be installed -- the components of the construction cost that will not be covered by the cited cost figure, and the proportion of the construction cost that will be local (in Bangladesh taka). Information is needed about the contracted operating fees, servicing fees, uranium costs, used fuel and waste management cost, decommissioning cost, and the cost of supporting facilities.
Second, once the various cost components are duly factored in, it needs to be evaluated whether the Russian collaboration is the most cost effective choice for Bangladesh. Prior to 2009, China offered to build and fund the Rooppur plant; South Korea also offered financial and technical help. It is thus unclear as to what comparative evaluations led to the agreements with Russia.
Third, according to the 2011 agreements with Rosatom (Russian atomic agency), Russia will supply the enriched uranium fuel and repatriate the used fuel back to Russia, and the Russian firm Atomstroyexport will build the NPP. Given the physical distance between Russia and Bangladesh, and the transportation and navigation arteries to Rooppur, the plan for long distance ferrying of the radioactive materials needs to be known and carefully evaluated. The plan for a repository of the radioactive waste is not quite known either, although low level wastes might be concealed beneath the NPP structures. Any radioactive waste repository in Bangladesh, however, exposes the connected water and marine system to grave risks of contamination due to seepage. These issues are more pertinent in Bangladesh than in Russia or elsewhere, given Bangladesh's topography, population density, and population proximity to any corridor.
Fourth, International Nuclear Event Scale (0 to 7, each increment is roughly ten times more severe) measures the severity of NPP events. By any estimation, the hazardous effects of a higher level event on health, water and food chain, and in general on the riverine ecological system of Bangladesh will be many times greater than those the world has hitherto witnessed.
Bangladesh is a very small country and any radioactive material released into the open is likely to spread quickly to much of the country and the neighbouring regions of India, exposing possibly more than hundred million people to nuclear contamination. While the government of Bangladesh is expected to have conducted in-depth study of the potential impacts of INES higher scale events, the information needs to be more widely circulated, examined and debated.
Fifth, before constructing and operating the Rooppur or any other NPP, it is essential that not only the risks be measured/estimated, but also an efficient and well-resourced risk control and disaster management system is designed, put in place and well-rehearsed ahead of time. This is of paramount importance because NPP will be a novel venture for Bangladesh, but the country is not reputed for its governance effectiveness, safety and disaster management record and preparedness. Moreover, the infrastructure, from transportation to medical, is grossly inadequate even under normal circumstances. It is unfathomable how Bangladesh can quickly evacuate and relocate say just a few hundred thousand people from the Rooppur area, not to speak of the expected millions.
Sixth, while the Rooppur NPP may be cost competitive, how its 1,000 MW or even the projected 5,000 MW NPP capacity by 2,030 (re: World Nuclear Association) will vitally address the longer term power needs of Bangladesh calls for a careful evaluation. According to the government, the projected demand is 19,000 MW in 2021 and 34,000 MW in 2030. If the Rooppur NPP is connected to the grid by 2,021, it will meet less than 5% of the projected 2021 power need, even operating at 90% capacity. If all 5,000 MW of projected NPP capacity comes alive by 2030 and operates at 90% capacity, only 13% of the 2030 power needs will be met. Of course, if the economy and the population continue to grow, this percentage will dwindle even further beyond 2030.
Thus, unless Bangladesh becomes infested with NPPs, the nuclear choice is unlikely to make a dent in the country's growing needs for power over the longer haul. Meantime, each of the five (assuming 1,000 MW size) projected NPP additions would keep aggravating the chances of a higher INES event and its potentially colossal effects.
Seventh, the wisdom of entering at all the arena of nuclear power generation is worth debating, given that most of the long-time and economically resourceful users (e.g., US, UK, Japan, Canada) are actually winding down their NPP capacity. The few countries (like China, Russia and India) actively adding capacity are self-sufficient in the technology, have atomic weapons arsenal, and more importantly wish to either preserve their own reserves of non-renewable resources (like crude oil) and/or to curtail their dependence on such external resources for strategic reasons.
Lastly, with the Rooppur plant and the planned additions thereafter, the risk of the radioactive materials falling into the wrong hands cannot be downplayed considering the history of turbulent politics, poor and porous security apparatus and law enforcement, and widespread corruption and governance failures.
In summary, NPP offers an environmentally clean way of diversifying the power generation portfolio of Bangladesh at low operating costs over an extended period of time. However, the capital costs are large without significantly meeting the long term power needs, the risks are real and grave, disaster management appears daunting, and an array of alternative clean power technologies are indeed available. In the end, whether the risks and costs of NPP are acceptable enough is not a matter to be resolved by the science experts or economists. After all it is the ordinary people of Bangladesh who would bear the lethal consequences of potential NPP mishaps for generations. If this is not the time for fully informing and engaging the citizenship on such an overarching matter, then when?

The writer is a Professor of Practice in Finance at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. E-mail: mo.chaudhury@mcgill.ca

Nuclear Power Plants in Bangladesh: Part I

http://archive.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=268833
Tuesday, February 12, 2013

OP-ED

Pros and cons of Nuclear Power Plants

Photo: AFPMo Chaudhury

Bangladesh may soon be building a nuclear power plant (NPP) to meet its energy needs. This article gives an outline of how NPPs work and the dangers associated with them.
Hydro, coal, gas and nuclear plants use different means of spinning large turbines that cause an electro-magnet inside coils of wire in a generator to spin, putting electrons in motion inside the wires and thereby creating electricity. Thermal plants use coal or gas for the heating process that spins the turbines while NPP uses uranium in a nuclear reactor. At a typical NPP, the nuclear reactor core -- rods of uranium arranged in bundles -- is immersed in a pressurised water tank called the vessel. As the nuclear reaction is spurred, neutrons strike and split the uranium atoms, which release energy and more neutrons that go on to split other uranium atoms. The energy in turn heats up the water that is channelled to a steam generator. To avoid overheating, the cooling process places control rods made of neutron absorbing material into the reactor. To prevent radiation, the vessel is encased in a thick concrete shield.
Environmental impact: The most prominent advantage of NPP is that it avoids the environmentally adverse greenhouse gas emission (GHG) of coal or gas based thermal plants. This consideration has been a key factor in driving the growth of NPP in developed countries from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Recent NPP trends: At least three parallel trends about NPP can be observed in the world. First, according to the IAEA 2012 Report, worldwide there is a clear downward trend in the number of construction starts since 1979 (highest: 42) and connections to the grid since 1986 (highest: 33). Second, recent rise in construction starts is in the high growth economies (China, Russia, India and South Korea). Third, despite greater efficiency and safety of NPP technology, most of the important and long-time users (like USA, Japan, UK, Germany, and Canada) seem to be phasing out their previously built NPP capacity. For example, out of the 435 reactors in operation worldwide in 2011, 104 were in the USA, but the country has only one plant under construction and has not commissioned any new NPP in the new millennium. Japan, UK, Germany and Canada have none under construction. In recent decades, the global momentum seems to have shifted to alternative technologies such as wind and solar along with clean coal (reduced emission).
NPP risks: Spread/slippage of radioactivity from the vessel area of NPP and from the uranium fuel or the waste (from NPP production) into the open can cause severe health and environmental hazards. This may occur, for example, due to faults in the NPP design and construction, human errors in operating and servicing the NPP, natural forces/disasters damaging the NPP or the waste repositories, accidents during transportation of the fuel and the waste, and access to and malicious use by terrorists and other rogue users. According to The Guardian, there were 33 known accidents at NPPs worldwide between 1952 and 2011.
The most damaging incident at the highest International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), (0 to 7, each increment is roughly ten times more severe) level of 7 took place in 1986 at the Chernobyl NPP in Ukraine (then part of USSR) when a reactor exploded, and according to the IAEA, released into the atmosphere 400 times the radioactive contamination of the Hiroshima bomb. While the long-term effects are still being studied, the immediate human fatalities were limited since only 116,000 people lived in the 30 kilometers radius around the Chernobyl plant, who were relocated after the accident. Radioactivity, however, is believed to have spread to a far greater area of 28,000 square kilometers with 830,000 residents.
Since 2000, there were six incidents (INES rating between 2 to 5), with the latest incident (INES of 5) taking place at the Fukushima NPP in Japan in 2011 when the Sandai earthquake and tsunami led to failure of the emergency cooling system.
Some important observations from the history of the NPP incidents are as follows. First, despite extensive control measures, hazardous incidents do happen. Second, even with experience and sophisticated technologies, the frequency of hazardous incidents did not decline much over time. Third, even the most experienced, technologically advanced and rich countries experience such events and have enormous difficulty in managing a higher INES scale event, most amply illustrated by the 2011 Fukushima experience. Fourth, the potential health and ecological hazard of any higher INES event is expected to be more devastating if the NPP site is located in a region of high population density and the surrounding ecological system features connected water bodies, plantation and cropping areas. Fifth, the disaster could spread further in the absence of a well-planned, resourced (human, financial and physical) and rehearsed system of event and disaster management in place.
Economics of NPP: Generally speaking, the initial construction cost of a NPP is higher than that of coal, gas, wind or solar installation. NPP also involves significant costs for managing radioactive used fuel and waste and ultimate decommissioning (9% to 15% of capital cost). However, NPPs have long physical life and low fuel and operating costs. The main construction cost component is the overnight engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) cost of the power system, followed by owner's cost, roughly 20% of EPC cost representing ancillary facilities including land. The overnight EPC cost is principally affected by the sophistication of the technology, local proportion of construction, and the labour and materials cost levels. As such, the overnight construction cost can vary widely across the globe, generally in the range of $2 billion to $8 billion, for a 1,000 MW NPP. Even with high end estimate of the construction cost as in the USA, it seems that NPP can be cost competitive.
In summary, NPP offers clean electricity at a relatively low fuel and operating cost. However, deadly NPP accidents do happen and can have severe health and ecological effects, especially in densely populated and agrarian countries. Many long-term NPP using countries are also shifting toward alternative clean technologies.

The writer is a Professor of Practice in Finance at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. E-mail: mo.chaudhury@mcgill.ca

A Tribute to The 2/13: Shahbag Moar and the Red-Green-Yellow spirit

A tribute to "The 2/13".

http://opinion.bdnews24.com/2013/02/10/shahbagh-moar-and-the-red-green-yellow-spirit/

Mo Chaudhury

Shahbagh Moar and the Red-Green-Yellow spirit

February 10, 2013

Photo courtesy: Arif Hafiz

In case it slipped our mind, it is the month of February, and there is resolute chanting of streams of young Bangladeshis in Shahbagh. Around the corner, the thunderous voice of a by-gone time still vibrates in the ethers of the Suhrawardy Uddyan to be heard again, and the mighty wavelets from the long-ago unfurling of a Red-Green-Yellow (RGY) flag still ripple in the corridors of a historic campus to palpitate a beleaguered nation, lost for a direction, mired in contradictions and confusions. It was then a war of liberation from the oppressive intruders; it is now a jihad of emancipation from dilapidated politics and governance.
Back in 1971, the nation had a crystal clear purpose etched in blood dating back to 1952, namely, sanctity of life and liberty (in all senses of the term, linguistic, cultural, political, economic, religious, etc.) for the 75 million people and their future generations. It was to be a country with unfettered freedom of expression, exalted human rights, thriving representative democracy, symphonious communal discourse and equitable economic opportunities for all. It was to be the Shonar Bangla, the melodious abode on earth, all Bangalis will be proud to claim as their domicile and/or emotional home. It was this dream home that the RGY flag of 1971 embodied, the freedom fighters made the ultimate sacrifice for, and the untold millions saluted with “Joy Bangla” greeting the hail of bullets, the blade of bayonet, the pain of diabolic mutilation, the agony of uncouth violation and the darkness of captivity. Alas, over the next 40 plus years, the red of the RGY flag became littered with the blood of the country’s once cherished leaders, decorated war heroes and countless ordinary citizens, caught in vicious wrangles of governance power, escalating turf wars, and ever increasing crime and violence against ordinary citizens across the land, despicably including children, women and minority members. Even the shine of the miraculous economic achievements failed to claim the glow of the dream home, the boisterous land full of life and liberty blooming in all their dimensions was never to be. While the RGY flag was changed to the current Red and Green only flag in 1972 for purely pragmatic reason (the map of the country in yellow was not easy to copy truthfully), the departed glow of the life and liberty of 1972 would never return over the next 40 years.
Compared to 1971/72, the country is richer, more literate and healthier, more connected internally and to the external world, amenities abound, basic physical needs are no more an issue, and yes, the Bangladesh Tigers have become a world class cricket team. Why is the country then in a worse state than in 1971/72 in most other dimensions? Unlike the experience of our neighbor and ancestor India, and other Asian and western democratic states, why the rising physical standards in Bangladesh are not accompanied by improving human rights and freedom of expression, lesser violence (political and general) and more pervasive rule of law, unbiased, expedient and efficient delivery of justice for all, maturity in political and parliamentary discourse, non-corrupt, accountable and transparent governance for all of citizenship (not just for party followers), and marginalization of ultra-extremist (religious, socio-economic) political forces? While myriads of explanations may and do exist, the single most consequential reason is moral bankruptcy of the major political parties. It is this slippery slope that led to the total loss of trust and confidence of the mass in the words and actions of the parties, in position or in opposition.
People are gathering en masse at the Shahbagh Moar believing that the Quader Mollah verdict is unjust. Given that the war crime activities of the indicted war criminals were so widely known (like common knowledge), there are three probable reasons for the verdict to be unjust: (a) failure of the government prosecution to provide sufficiently convincing evidence, (b) pitfalls in the special amendment under which the crimes are being prosecuted, and (c) the trials (amendment and prosecution) and the verdicts are rigged/manipulated. Note that in any case, the unjust verdict reflects the failure of the ruling regime to deliver long-awaited justice for the victims of 1971. If the reasons are (a) and/or (b), the injustice might be unintended, although it still borders an incredulous scenario of government inefficiency. The reason (c), on the other hand, means that the efforts of the government are less than genuine in obtaining befitting punishment for the heinous crimes. The fact that this is happening under the watch of the historic party that led the Liberation War is rather troubling, justice denied now will perhaps never be served again, and this is what finally enraged the ordinary citizens enough to congregate at the Shahbag Moar.
To understand the culminating outrage, it is worthwhile to cite a few instances that represent years of contradictions, confusions, deceptions and betrayals by the major political parties. The historic party that led the Liberation War once formed political alliance with many of the same collaborators that it is now prosecuting. The party that was established by a legendary freedom fighter is now allied with the same very organizations whose political aspirations could not be farther from the ideals of the Liberation War. Time and again, the parties promised to make judiciary independent of the executive branch of the government, but have consistently reneged once in power. Worse, law enforcement and judiciary have been used by whichever party is in power as an extended arm of the party itself, vigorously harassing and punishing the opposition and non-political critiques including the media and the civil society. Repeatedly, the leading parties have supported the transitional caretaker Government system for conducting elections, but only to vehemently oppose the same system when in power.
With the leading parties in power alternatively, Bangladesh has become a country that proudly proclaims to be secular and to disavow extreme religious fundamentalism, but continues to retain the majority religion as the official religion in the constitution, and continues to rely on huge amounts of grant, finance (to oil its economic machine) and wage remittance from some of the most fundamentalist countries on earth. It has become a country that risks dismantling vital economic relationship with long-term development partners on the basis of a differential interpretation of what constitutes a graft crime, that cannot build a $3 billion vital infrastructure (Padma Bridge) but signs a $1 billion arms deal and a $2 billion nuclear plant deal with a country with the most disastrous nuclear incident. Bangladesh has become a country that tries to displace its only Nobel laureate from a Nobel winning institution using little used rules, that continues to allow the creation of more private banks, and yet it connives for more government control of the most acclaimed banking institution when governance failures at its large nationalized banks have permitted massive banking frauds.
Under the leadership of the leading political parties, Bangladesh has become a country where convicted murderers are pardoned and convicted criminals are escorted from jail. At the same time, the murderers of ordinary citizens like Sagar-Runi, and countless others remain untraced long after the brutal crimes, many citizens disappear without a trace, many innocent girls are raped without severe penalty for the perpetrators, and minority victims like those in Ramu keep waiting for the real culprits to be indicted. Bangladesh is a country where violent political activists roam the streets with impunity and even when there is decisive evidence, as in the case of Biswajit murder, the authorities routinely dare to deflect party association and responsibility that unpardonably slows down the wheels of justice for the hapless families of the non-descript victims. Last, but not the least, it is paradoxical of the highest order that the War Crimes Tribunal has handed out capital punishment to a defendant, Abul Kalam Azad, who is absent (it is unfathomable how this defendant escaped from Bangladesh to Pakistan, reportedly) and life sentence to a defendant, Quader Mollah, who is in custody.
In summary, the people of Bangladesh have every reason to be skeptical about anything their ruling and opposition parties say or do. In pursuit of petty political expediency and convenience, the leading political parties and their alliance partners have lost their credibility all together to speak on behalf of the people. Unlike 1971/72, the interests and aspirations of the political parties have drifted fatally apart from those of the people. The instruments of blame game, threats of unspecified conspiracies, and the mechanics of rotating governance through contradiction, confusion and deception, all of it needs to end, and could be nearing the end if the Shahbagh Protest is not hijacked by the political machineries like all the other times before. The protests cannot, however, afford to veer off or be politicized into the agenda of the political parties that wish to eliminate legitimate freedom of expression and political association for citizens who believe in an active role of religion in state governance. Not only that is unconstitutional, it also defeats the 1971 ideals of the promised land of liberty, in all senses of the term, for all Bangladeshis. The widely shared and cherished end of keeping away religion based governance from the seats of power must not be achieved by the fascist means of banning religion-based political organizations. After all, if these parties are to be banned because of the violence committed by their activists, then by the same argument, the major parties and their student organizations should have been banned a long time ago. For the Shahbagh Moar cause to remain viable as the cause of justice for the victims of 1971, it is imperative that the foundation and the greater cause remain the ideals of the Liberation War.
To conclude, the Shahbagh Rise of February, 2013, ‘The 2/13’ is easy to be interpreted as a spontaneous emotional protest against a single verdict and/or a single group (the religious right). But deep down, it is the struggle of an effectively disenfranchised people to regain its long-lost franchise and to reclaim the spirit of the RGY flag and eventually the promised land of 1971. At least, that is the earnest hope of this author and perhaps many others.
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Mo Chaudhury is a Professor of Practice in Finance at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Some reflections on peace versus happiness

http://opinion.bdnews24.com/2013/01/24/peace-versus-happiness/

Mo Chaudhury

Peace versus happiness

January 24, 2013

Photo: Hassan Bipul

The state of our life at any given point in time is defined in two spaces, the multidimensional state of physicality we are in and the multidimensional state of our mental being. The chances of a good state in the latter space is generally enhanced by a good state in the physical space, such as good health, clean environment, nice home, negligible incidence of crime, and seamless physical mobility, etc.  However, a good physical state is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good mental state. For example, various surveys indicate that the people of Bangladesh rank high globally in terms of happiness despite living in a low ranking state of physicality. We even see many people face their imminent expiration with an astounding state of inner peace. The intriguing question is then what are the key dimensions of our mental being, and how do we rank and manage these dimensions.
While dimensions of our mental being are numerous, two key dimensions seem to dominate in defining our mental state, namely, peace and happiness/joy. Clearly, most of us prefer a state with more of both peace and happiness to one with less of each. What is not clear is how the state of greater peace with lesser happiness compares to lesser peace with greater happiness. If we have to trade-off one for the other, peace vs. happiness, which one we would rather have more of for a better state of our mental being?
An example should facilitate visualizing the peace vs. happiness trade-off. Consider a Bangladeshi couple from Dhaka with two school going children, husband and wife are both established mid-level professionals, the family lives in their decent small apartment (60% mortgage financed) and use their small car for daily mobility needs. The family recently learnt that their application for immigration into Canada has been successful and is currently pondering whether to avail the opportunity to move to Toronto, Canada. The couple is aware that in terms of physical (lesser crime), financial (better social safety net), and medical security (free, advanced and dependable medical care, albeit longer wait time), and educational opportunity (low cost, high quality, cutting edge) for the children, moving to Canada will provide them with great peace of mind that they never had living in Dhaka. On the other hand, they will dearly miss their very lively social life amidst family, long time friends and colleagues, the sumptuous feasts and festivities, the discriminating array of Dhaka cuisine and of course their very enjoyable and successful careers in Dhaka (professionally they have to struggle all new in Canada). In other words, the couple evaluates that they have to give up a great deal of happiness/joy leaving Dhaka for Toronto. The couple is thus tormented facing the choice of physicality of their life, Dhaka versus Toronto, they themselves have created, and its implication for their mental being, jagged happiness in Dhaka versus vanilla peace in Toronto.
The trade-off above starts tilting toward Toronto, once the prospects over time are factored in. In time Toronto life may not be as insipid after all. There is a large Bangladeshi expatriate community in Toronto with ever growing amenities (including eateries, fashion aisles, salons, cultural outlets, etc.) of Dhaka life, the rich multicultural mosaic of Toronto offers the exhilarating and diverse experience of living in a global village, you can actually enjoy driving around in Toronto, numerous neighbourhood parks and vast and panoramic outdoors can give immigrants a new meaning of family fun, and of course it is a matter of some years only to experience the consummate bliss of seeing the children graduating from world class universities to launch their professional careers practically anywhere in the world. Further, the happiness/joy of Dhaka life need not be lost altogether if occasional trips back home is within means.
If revealed preferences are any guide, it seems that a great many Bangladeshi families do in the end favour the immediate peace (and longer term happiness prospects) of Toronto over the peppy and effervescent life of Dhaka. In fact, such peace versus happiness choices are quite commonplace everywhere in many different spheres of life. Examples influenced by the multidimensional state of physicality include suburban versus downtown life, metropolitan versus small town life, urban versus rural life, etc. The meta-physical examples involve our workplace associates, neighbours, friends, etc. Typically we find peace and harmony in dealing with some colleagues, neighbours and friends while others are more fun, and occasionally but rarely we get lucky to encounter both aspects in the same person.
In the examples so far, a better peace versus happiness outcome is attainable by changing the physicality. But what if changing physicality is not feasible? For example, most Bangladeshis do not have the option of a Toronto life, employment circumstances may only permit living in a metropolitan area, a farmer needs to live in a rural area, a government employee may be assigned to a remote location, etc. Even more restrictive are the meta-physical bindings of the nearest and dearest ones like the parents, siblings, spouse and children.
For illustrative purpose, consider first a mid-age couple (with two school going children) working as mid-level employees of a private business enterprise operating out of Dhaka only, as such the physicality of Dhaka life is inescapable for this couple. This means that their happiness along the savoury social, cultural and culinary dimensions is conflicted with their dwindling peace due to trepidation about physical, financial and medical security, clogged up education systems for their children, compromised food chain, frenzied pace of life, etc. Between peace and happiness, it seems that, for this couple, there is relatively more room for greater peace than for happiness.
This brings us to the question of managing peace, given the multidimensional state of physicality. Oddly enough, it is our mind that we human beings have the most control over, and as such we ourselves are in a powerful position of managing our own peace, essentially by refracting the negative vibes into neutrality or possibly even into positivity. Lacking a magic wand, the process of refraction could simply start with the hackneyed and still useful phrase, the glass is half full, not half empty. For the Dhaka couple, for example, the security situation could have been worse. Second, the couple could recognize that they are not alone, most others around them face the same challenging physicality of security and in fact many others have it worse. Third, being perturbed about things would not make them go away. Fourth, while the society at large needs a sense of inspired citizenship to mend the circumstances, that collective process is often painfully slow. Except for the politically charged and the exceptionally gifted, the ordinary citizens are perhaps better off resisting the prophetic and restive urge to rectify things that are beyond immediate and fast repair. Lastly, those who believe in divinity, may find peace by being fatalistic about the physicality, believing it to be ordained so.
Managing the peace and happiness impact of the constricted meta-physical reality of relations with the nearest ones is, however, daunting.  This is, because, here peace and happiness are profusely tangled. For conjugal relationship, based on general experience, it appears that a couple can be at peace without being happy in the sense that there is no bitterness between the two and each is quite at comfort with the other, but one or both may feel that their relationship is not sweet enough or animated enough. However, it seems implausible that conjugal happiness is attainable without peace. In other words, peace is a necessary condition for conjugal happiness, making peace a higher priority in this context, especially considering the welfare of the children. In managing conjugal peace, in addition to the recommendations mentioned earlier, it might be useful to avoid a blame game, to allow sufficient time and space for any burst of bitterness to die down, and to avoid projecting a sense of mistrust. Essentially, patience and forgiveness are together the elixir vitae of conjugal peace.
Given peace, the vaccine for happiness is managing expectation since happiness is dictated by the expected thresholds or benchmarks. In this context, a common and controversial yardstick of conjugal happiness adopted by many couples is the fun time the two spend together, more such time often taken to mean greater happiness. The pitfalls here include underestimating the importance of the quality of time spent together and disregard for happiness beyond the conjugal sphere. There are times and things (e.g., eating out, shopping, going to movies or sports events, travelling, attending festivities, etc.) we enjoy sharing with friends, family and children, all separately, and some just by our individual self (like reading, contemplating, praying, ..). Thus, setting lower thresholds for each other and importantly respecting the happiness of the spouse in other legitimate spheres may go a long away to boost happiness for both.
When it comes to parents, and siblings and children (especially when they are married), peace clearly dominates over happiness as a priority. Frictions and irritations with them can easily disrupt our peace, and hence our happiness as well. Once again the earlier principles of advancing peace largely apply. Additionally, the concept of "too close for comfort" perhaps applies more so in managing peace here than in other relationships. With respect to children, too often we ignore their individuality and privacy, and overly protrude ourselves into their life, albeit with the best of intentions, only to see peace and happiness destroyed at both ends. It might indeed pay to be minimalist in terms of setting thresholds of happiness here. After all, children are the greatest blessings in our life, and even when we might not be the happiest with their behaviour and performance, every morning we wake up just to know that they are alive, healthy and secure, it should be another beautiful day in our life with incomparable peace and happiness, and also to be thankful (if we believe in a Creator).
Ultimately, the greatest peace and happiness medicine is perhaps the realization that life is beautiful (re: Italian film, La vita e bella) the way it is in its totality. The next time we feel annoyed or unhappy about our nearest and dearest ones, let us think of what it would be like for us or them to return from a near death experience. In this author's opinion, almost surely even the deepest of disappointments would then appear hare-brained. The next time we feel wasted stuck in an insane traffic jam, just look out at the canopy of the sky or a tree waving its leaves or a structure/street hawker that has hitherto escaped our notice. Even these nondescript symbols may suddenly appear meaningful and beautiful since they essentially define the physicality of our life that is too brittle to extend into the next moment.
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Mo Chaudhury is a Professor of Practice in Finance at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Prioritization of Key Issues by Government

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=264241

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

OP-ED

Priorities at hand

Mo Chaudhury

The governance of a country requires setting priorities and implementing a plan to advance the prioritised goals. The purpose of this commentary is to explore key dimensions of this process.
Priorities matter since they are to guide the operational dispositions of or governance by the government, in legislations, policies, development plans, budgets, and various projects, initiatives and campaigns during the current and expected future mandates. They should simultaneously reflect the ruling party's comprehensive vision and its deliverables to the people.
The defining characteristic of a set of priorities is its rank ordering of the issues, from the highest to the lowest.
As a matter of practice, however, only a short list of key priorities is often identified by a government, without any ordering. Once the key government priorities are determined, they should then be reflected as such in the actual workings of the government. Without this essential consistency, the country could very well wander into precipitous circumstances.
Bangladesh examples of grave inconsistency or lack of priority include the Padma Bridge financing, the banking scandals and the RMG factory fires.
Of course, the priorities themselves need to be consistent with each other. Absurd disregard for this consistency is illustrated by the recent government's approval of a host of new private banks while forcibly acquiring greater control of the member-borrower owned Grameen Bank.
Similarly, the government continues to rely heavily on the state owned commercial banks for its own finances and then defy greater regulatory power of the central bank over these banks; despite their chronic poor performance and massive banking scandals.
Setting key priorities and acting upon them involves tradeoffs that can be costly and unpalatable. An important area of priority tradeoff in Bangladesh is clean governance, the lack of which has been a constant enigma and a severe impediment towards harnessing the development potential of the country.
As influence peddling by the members of the ruling regime is the most dominant and prominent source of governance failures, a ruling party may find it extremely unpalatable and even unacceptable for the long-term survival of the party to seriously arrest and punish influence peddling by its own members.
Instead, strategically, it dawns as an attractive tactic to ceaselessly persecute the current opposition for their alleged misdeeds when in power previously. One potential way of resolving this dilemma has been discussed elsewhere [M. Chaudhury, How to establish clean governance, Financial Express, September 08, 2012].
A very challenging aspect of prioritisation is that the priorities may vary over time depending on the needs and aspirations of citizens, evolution of the philosophies of political parties, and the ever shifting global developments.
For Bangladesh, political self-determination and cultural liberty followed by economic fairness in the spirit of socialism were the overarching priorities during and immediately after the liberation war in 1971. But in 2013, the prioritisation process needs to start with the priorities of the post-liberation generations of Bangladeshis in the new millennium.
The need for this crucial transition is best understood by noting that the remarkable economic and socio-cultural achievements of Bangladesh since liberation are at odds with and at risk due to chronic and severe political turbulence, governance failures coupled with rampant corruption, alarming deterioration in the sanctity and security of life for ordinary citizens especially in the urban areas, fatally compromised consumer food chain, daily life and businesses paralysed by sharply reduced mobility and vastly inadequate power supply, and an ever shrinking stock of cultivable land and other non-renewable resources including below and above ground waters.
Lastly, the key priorities need to be designated as immediate, medium-term (five to ten years) and long-term. Some priority issues such as transportation, health and education infrastructures can be addressed over a medium-term while others, such as power and water supply, can only be satisfactorily addressed over an extended period of time.
Nonetheless it is important that the work starts today as the first phase of a planned capacity that should prove to be excess capacity for a long time since adding or reconstructing such capacities is usually expensive and time consuming, and may even be nearly impossible (e.g., reconstructing Dhaka city with high rises and wide boulevards). The London tube and the New York City bridges and subway system are worth noting examples in this regard.
Arguably the greatest risks to the well-being of future generations of Bangladeshis are the lack of adequate power supply and physical mobility network.
Almost surely, the immediate priorities need to include:
Redeployment of the law enforcement forces (and possibly the BGB and the armed forces) from managing political activities and protecting corrupt ministers and government officials to improve the sanctity of life and security for ordinary citizens and safety of the food chain;
Ensuring compliance with the governance demands of the international financiers so that the Padma Bridge and numerous other development initiatives may progress;
Improving safety measures at the all-important RMG factories; and
Privatisation of the state owned commercial banks or failing that allowing the Bangladesh Bank to exercise stringent regulatory oversight over them.
Additionally, the prosecution of the war criminals of 1971 should be fast tracked to serve the long-awaited justice once for all so that the country can stop fighting the old battles and instead engage, without distraction, in the challenges of the new millennium.
To conclude, it is time that the political and governance dialogue in Bangladesh shift from litigation of the record of prior regimes and constant mud slinging to articulating visions of managing the present and the future, preferably through a set of mutually consistent key priorities (immediate, medium and long-term) and action plans.
Eyes glued to the rear view mirror may not be a smart way to drive a nation forward.
The writer is a Professor of Practice in Finance at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
Email: mo.chaudhury@mcgill.ca, mochaudhury@gmail.com.

স্বাধীনতার ফলাফল, ২০১২ সাল

স্বাধীনতার  ফলাফল, ২০১২ সাল

"স্বাধীনতা তুমি পাপনের ঝরে পড়া ক্রিকেটের স্বপ্ন
অলোহীন কুঠুরীতে কিশোর নইমুরের রুদ্ধ শ্বাস প্রয়াণ
স্বাধীনতা তুমি শিশু অনীকের বুলেট বিদ্ধ কোমল বুক
খেটে খাওয়া যুবক বিশ্বজিতের রক্তে জ্বলে উঠা সকাল
স্বাধীনতা তুমি কি জানতে, তুমি হবে আশুলিয়া থেকে গোশ্বাপারায় বিস্তীর্ণ আহাজারী"

Young cricketer Papon was killed by muggers for his cellphone at the outskirts of Dhaka. Naimur, 13, from Bogra was kidnapped and then killed by the kidnappers. Anik, a child, was kidnapped from around Dhaka, and then killed as his parents could not pay the ransom. Biswajit, from Gosshapara of Fardidpur Area, on his way to work in old Dhaka, was brutally murdered by student activists. More than one hundred garment workers perished in the deadly fire at a factory in Ashulia near Dhaka, the exits were locked and the owners were known to be grossly negligent in terms of safety measures.

Mindset that generates intolerance

http://opinion.bdnews24.com/2012/12/29/binary-mindset-and-intolerance/

Mo Chaudhury

Binary mindset and intolerance

December 29, 2012

Photo: Reuters

What is the common defining element of extremism, polarization, either or, anything but, and my way or high way? The answer is that they are all binary or digital (zero/one) in nature since they define things in terms of two disjoint and inherently adversarial alternatives. This is what I refer to as the binary mindset. My thesis is that the binary mindset is the boson (God Particle) of intolerance.

Intolerance is much like the corner solution of economic theory where, for example, a consumer chooses either to buy as much food as she can afford or rent the biggest possible residence, meaning that either she does not have a place to live or she goes hungry. Intriguingly, such extreme consumption choices are optimal when the consumer is obsessed with a commodity and never gets tired of consuming more and more of it. In real life, rarely we observe such extreme consumption preference and behavior. Instead we find interior solutions to be prevalent meaning that most consumers spend their income on food as well as housing. The powerful message is that amalgams, mixtures, combinations, unions, and diversity represent moderate and balanced outcomes, and very importantly they result from mindsets that are not binary, and are tolerant or inclusive of alternatives.

Let us consider the thorniest and most divisive matter in the known history of mankind, namely religion. By definition, each religion/faith starts with the blind belief that only their version of the Creator and Creation is the "truth". By implication or divine instruction then, the followers of a given religion are to view all other religions as wrong and their followers as being misguided. This binary mindset of a believer irreconcilably bifurcates the humanity into fellow believers of the same "true" faith and the astray or the believers of other faiths and the people of no faith. This is precisely where religious intolerance is rooted and the process of blinding vision starts. This is because it is nearly impossible to accept or even see any merit in the view of another person believing that person to be absolutely wrong at the core. Importantly, it is not belief in the Creator, it is rather the imputed claim of exclusivity of a specific faith being the truth that procreates blinding vision and breeds intolerance.

Everyday thousands of children are born worldwide into families practicing numerous religions. And this has been going on for millions of years now. Clearly, to a believer, it is solely the Creator's decision as to what parental religion, if there is any, a child is born into. Then, it does not seem reasonable for the compassionate Creator to make truth seeking more burdensome for the newborns born into supposedly misguided parents. Stepping out of the binary mindset, however, leads to a more tenable and clearly harmonious premise that the divine messages to all religions at all times are, have always been and will always remain the same. The self-inculcated binary mindset of those believers who are "religious" about their religion prevents them from seeing this necessary logical commonality in all divine messages. What else could explain as to why the more "religious" people become about their faith, the more they litigate the untruth about others?

Arguably, the binary mindset with respect to religion has proven to be one of the most controversial influences in the governance of modern nation states. While a blanketing influence of religion is observed in some states, e.g., Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel (de facto), the role of religion in state governance is primarily reflected in the ideological lenience of the political parties in most democracies. While occasionally parties with strong religious ideology do come to power (e.g., most recently in Egypt), the governance ideologies of mainstream parties in most democracies effectively differ in terms of the extent of secularism.

In practical terms, secularism as a state principle (enshrined in constitution or not) avoids legislating, implementing or adjudicating state policies that seek rationalization from or promote a specific religion or belief system including atheism. It is interesting to note that the ultra-secular people and parties (that subscribe to the highest degree of secularism) share an important characteristic with the religious right at the opposite end of the spectrum, namely a binary mindset. The binary mindset of the ultra-seculars views any accommodation of religion in public domain as an undesirable infiltration, meaning that religious guidance for governance can only be bad for the society. While the intolerant views of the religious right are overt, it is seldom recognized that often the ultra-seculars are quite intolerant of expression of religion in public sphere. For example, in USA and Canada, the ultra-seculars vigorously protest and sometimes litigate even the exhibition of religious replicas (like a Cross) or greetings (like Merry Christmas) in government buildings and venues. The intolerance of the ultra-seculars can and did (historically) reach extremes. Turkey once banned the wearing of hijab, and Egypt's religious right party, the Muslim Brotherhood, was banned as a political party for many years. In Bangladesh, even very recently, the ultra-seculars demanded banning of the parties with religious ideologies. In other words, while the religious right is "religious" about religion, the ultra-seculars are "religious" about non-religion, both being intolerant of each other.

The truth of the matter is that religion is an integral part of the life and values of many citizens, practicing or not. Hence a democratic society cannot afford to totally de-legitimize religion (of the majority) as a source of guidance for laws and public policies for too long without creating alienation, a sense of reverse discrimination and ultimately a backlash that might set back the secular progress over many decades. Similarly, it cannot also afford to govern its citizens into believing and practicing the divine codes of the majority without weakening the belief itself. This is because belief is a very personal voyage of our mind to explore divinity, ungoverned by human codes and unencumbered even by our own physique. Further, since belief is not observable and verifiable, enforcing the observable practices by way of governance risks increasing the incidence of fake observance that can degenerate into loss of belief altogether. Therefore, the key to simultaneously preserving the apparently competing but inherently congruous religious belief systems and the secular democratic societies that permit maximum attainable and most tolerant freedom of choice is to motivate the religious right and the ultra-seculars to break out of their binary mindsets. It is hoped that the above discussion is a small step toward convincing them that their respective corner solutions are too intolerant to be long term tenable and would ultimately sentence them to politically desolate corners.

While the impact of binary mindset is illustrated here using religion and secularism, the intolerance effect of a binary mindset arises in numerous other circumstances and dimensions of our lives. The more "religious" we are about anything, the more blinded and intolerant we become of competing views. Gradually but surely we, as individuals or as a collection, enter a phase of endless conflict with the "not-me" and "not-us" compartments of our fellow human beings. Life being a collection of countably finite moments, isn't it worthwhile to use those precious ticks to seek union instead?

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Mo Chaudhury is a Professor of Practice in Finance at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.