La Semaine Dernière A Mes Yeux

(05 novembre --- 11 novembre)

Cliquez pour voir/cacher

Ma Semaine Gastronomique

Date	Petit déjeuner	Déjeuner	Dîner	Snacks,Sucreries,Boissons et Fritures
05	Pain tchapati,Omelette	Riz,Soupe aux letilles,Ruhi,Gourde calebasse,Poivre Jolokia	Pain tchapati,Œuf poché,Gourde calebasse	Lait
06	Pain tchapati,Gourde pointue-Papaye-Haricot vert,Lait	Riz,Bombili,Papaye-Citrouilles	Pain tchapati,Papaye-Citrouilles	---
07	Pain tchapati(fait par moi),Œuf poché,Papaye-Citrouilles	Riz,Soupe aux letilles,Papaye-Citrouilles,Omelette,Poivre Jolokia	Pain tchapati(fait par moi),Purée de pomme de terre	Riz gonflé,Tchanatchur,Oignon, Poivre,Huile à moutarde
08	Eau de citron,Paratha(fait par moi),Omelette	Riz pilaf,Ruhi,Papaye-Choufleur	Pain tchapati(fait par moi),Ruhi	---
09	Pain tchapati(fait par moi),Ruhi	Riz,Ruhi,Papaye-Citrouilles-Pomme de terre-Aubergine	Riz,Omelette,Ruhi,Papaye-Citrouilles-Pomme de terre-Aubergine	---
10	Pain tchapari,Œuf poché,Papaye-Citrouilles-Pomme de terre-Aubergine	Riz,Soupe aux lentilles, Épinards malabar,Choufleur-Pomme de terre	Pain tchapati(fait par moi),Épinard malabar,Œuf poché	---
11	Pain tchapati,Omelette	Riz,Ruhi,Citrouilles	Pain tchapati(fait par moi),RuhiP-Pomme de terre-Haricot	---

La Semaine Dernière A Mes Yeux

(03 décembre --- 10 décembre)

Selon un reportage, une cour bangladaise a condamné 20 étudiants de BUET à mort et 5 autres à réclusion à perpétuité en lien de tuerie d’un autre étudiant.

Selon un reportage, un ministre- adjoint a démissionné après il avait insulté des politologues et vedettes de film.

Selon un reportage, un policier a été accusé d’avoir violé une femme à Khulna.

Selon un reportage, cyclone «Jawad» a causé assez dégâts aux champs de riz à Borishal,Cumilla,Faridpur et Manikganj.

Motorbike Accident:It's Time To Ponder

Surge in bike accident,
Leaves casualties with no precedent.
Cyclist-police and social credit score,
Work better than just spending crore.

Motorbike accidents have increased by 63.60% in the first ten months of this year. Road Safety Foundation has revealed it in a press conference. 1758 persons died in 1653 accidents in this time period. What is worrying 75% of the dead belonged to 14-45 years old age group.¹

Not only motorbike accidents, there has been a spike in road accidents in Bangladesh. Back in February last year,I penned a piece titled “Unruly Road,Unsafe Lives”. Sharing part of it again:

As the number of vehicle plying over the road increases, so does the number of accident. Addition of new car and bus will not stop. Similarly, new asphalt roads are also being stretched out. But how can we reduce the incidence of growing number of accidents? Reducing the number of vehicle is not a pragmatic solution. Better traffic management and responsible driving could be the possible solution.

I recently delved into Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Pocket Book 2018, BBS pocket book 2016, BBS pocket book 2012, Bangladesh Economic Review 2018 and some leading dailies to gather data on casualty and registered vehicles between 2009 and 2018. Data on casualty from 2015 to 2018 gleaned mostly from leading dailies. Maybe that is the number of casualty is unusually high in this period. Meanwhile, data prior to 2015 and registered vehicles were collected from BBS pocket book , BER and Accident Research Institute,BUET. Unofficial figures may vary from official ones.

(Source: BBS Pocket Book 2012,2016,2018;BER 2018;BUET & leading dailies)

Despite the official-unofficial difference, there is no gainsaying that there has been a surge in accident between 2015 and 2018. This post does not intend to probe underlying reasons for the sudden rise in accidents. Rather it tries to underscore the gravity of the problem.

I transformed the two into natural log variables and then ran a regression between ln_casualty and ln_registered_vehicle. Since the data is time series in nature, I checked for serial correlation in the disturbance term. Luckily Durbin-Watson statistic reported no autocorrelation. (d=1.8382 prior to log natural transformation and d= 1.3638 after regression; for 10 observations and 1 explanatory variable.)

Having finished for diagnostic check, I went for analyzing the result. F-test was found to be significant(F=7.207, p= 0.027, df=1,8).Coefficient for ln_registered_vehicle turned out to be statistically significant(b2=1.37, t=2.68, p=0.027). However, the intercept was found to be statistically insignificant (b1=-10.948, t=-1.468, p=1.800).

From the given data, it appears that a 1% increase in registered vehicle contributes to a 1.37% increase in casualty number.

Certainly, I am not saying increasing number of vehicle provokes accident. The point is reckless driving and lack of enforcement of law aggravate the road accident problem. An array of posts could be churned out on what the traffic laws say. Since the objective is to capture the gravity of the problem, I am not treading that path and restrict my discussion on how worse it has become.²

Reckless driving by the bikers has been identified one of the reasons for death in roads by Road Safety Foundation report. As I regularly stroll on the streets of Dhaka, I know that every bit of that word is true. Many bikers run their bikes on footpath in a bid to reach their destination as soon as possible. In addition, empty streets often become a test ground for maneuvering their skills. Blowing horn every now and then is another sign of utter disregard for the surroundings and people. Often innocent pedestrians, napping housewives and toddlers,senior citizens bear full brunt of unwanted troubles.

Enforcing laws against biker-breacher could improve the situation. Like Thailand, Bangladesh could introduce bicycle-police in their 20’s to identify minor transgressors and oblige them to follow traffic rules. Social credit score could be another alternative. Bikers with poor social credit score may see their licenses suspended temporarily.

As we embrace the new normal on unruly roads--- unending traffic jam, agonizing working hours lost in roads, misfit drivers and vehicles, undocumented money whitening project, no respect for law---the truth is becoming clear that educating the driver , people is as relevant as enforcing the law. At the same time, all the corrupt practices, including the black money whitening project, should be put to an end without further ado.

Notes And References:

1 “ Motorbike Accidents Left 1758 Deads In 10 Months”,Bangladesh News,November 18,2021 Link here

2 “Unruly Roads, Unsafe Lives”,Rezaul Hoque,https://hoquestake.blogspot.com/, February 08,2020Link here

Unruly Roads, Unsafe Lives

Progress ties in wheel,
That's supposed to be real.
Things have changed in this part,
It's no longer the horse before the cart.
People get stuck in the sea of cars
Have this weird feeling of behind the bars.
Here the wheel moves not to serve you sir,
But to whiten the black money in their coffer.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to move around Dhaka. Traffic jam slowly kills a vibrant city. City of lights and city of green gradually gives in to a long anaconda of standstill traffic at key roundabouts and key roads most of the day. Nowadays people fret over it less. They are getting used to this new normal. I am no exception. But last week, an hour-long traffic jam in less-than-half-a-kilometer-long road whipped up the anger inside me. Lots of people blame ongoing metro-work for Dhaka's traffic jam.  Frankly speaking, metro-work is causing less jam in Dhaka. Rather, its alternate passages better manage the vehicular movement. Lack of policing is to blame. Most of the traffic jams I got stuck were caused by events or bad police handling. Recent awful experience was no different. Hardly any police was there in those agonizing 60 minutes in that stretch of Agargaon-Farmgate road. Well, it was the final day of the trade fair but that did not mean less police on the spot.

I looked around in that sardin-packed bus and watched how people got stuck in a sea of vehicles around me.No one would believe that a bus-ride from Agargaon to Farmgate took 1-hour. I was befuddled to notice that other side of the road leading to Farmgate at Bangabandhu Conference Center crossing was completely empty and there was no police at the crossing.

Like traffic jams, Dhaka roads also witness frequent accidents. Reckless driving coupled with lack of policing make Dhaka roads hell for commuters.

Last year I had witnessed one such accident that I narrowly escaped. My bus was boarding passengers while an empty bus intentionally hit the rear side of the bus. That was where I sat. In the blink of an eye, it smashed the back of the bus. It took few seconds to befuddled passengers to understand what was going on. I got off and took few snaps of the assailant bus on my mobile phone. Two days later I went to the police station where seized bus was parked outside.

I filed a general diary and tried to know the identity of the owner. To my surprise, I came to learn that there were many owners of that bus company. Maybe 400 or 500. Even a single bus is owned by several people, as disclosed by the claimed owner of the bus. The transport businesses is all about to mainstream or whiten the undocumented money. The accident took place the very next day of the brutal murder of a BUET student. Two-month after I had lodged the diary, the bus was no longer before the police station. Maybe they released the bus.

As the number of vehicle plying over the road increases, so does the number of accident. Addition of new car and bus will not stop. Similarly, new asphalt roads are also being stretched out. But how can we reduce the incidence of growing number of accidents? Reducing the number of vehicle is not a pragmatic solution. Better traffic management and responsible driving could be the possible solution.

Source:BBS pocket book 2018,2016,2012, BER2018,BUET, leading dailies

I recently delved into Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Pocket Book 2018, BBS pocket book 2016, BBS pocket book 2012, Bangladesh Economic Review 2018 and some leading dailies to gather data on casualty and registered vehicles between 2009 and 2018. Data on casualty from 2015 to 2018 gleaned mostly from leading dailies. Maybe that is the number of casualty is unusually high in this period. Meanwhile, data prior to 2015 and registered vehicles were collected from BBS pocket book , BER and Accident Research Institute,BUET. Unofficial figures may vary from official ones.

Despite the official-unofficial difference, there is no gainsaying that there has been a surge in accident between 2015 and 2018. This post does not intend to probe underlying reasons for the sudden rise in accidents. Rather it tries to underscore the gravity of the problem.

I transformed the two into natural log variables and then ran a regression between ln_casualty and ln_registered_vehicle. Since the data is time series in nature, I checked for serial correlation in the disturbance term. Luckily Durbin-Watson statistic reported no autocorrelation. (d=1.8382 prior to log natural transformation and d= 1.3638 after regression; for 10 observations and 1 explanatory variable.)

Having finished for diagnostic check, I went for analyzing the result. F-test was found to be significant(F=7.207, p= 0.027, df=1,8).Coefficient for ln_registered_vehicle turned out to be statistically significant(b₂=1.37, t=2.68, p=0.027). However, the intercept was found to be statistically insignificant (b₁=-10.948, t=-1.468, p=1.800).

From the given data, it appears that a 1% increase in registered vehicle contributes to a 1.37% increase in casualty number.

Certainly, I am not saying increasing number of vehicle provokes accident. The point is reckless driving and lack of enforcement of law aggravate the road accident problem. An array of posts could be churned out on what the traffic laws say. Since the objective is to capture the gravity of the problem, I am not treading that path and restrict my discussion on how worse it has become.

As we embrace the new normal on unruly roads--- unending traffic jam, agonizing working hours lost in roads, misfit drivers and vehicles, undocumented money whitening project, no respect for law---the truth is becoming clear that educating the driver , people is as relevant as enforcing the law. At the same time, all the corrupt practices, including the black money whitening project, should be put to an end without further ado.

Should It Be Stopped?

The brutal killing of Abrar Fahad, a BUET student, brought to forth an age old issue: should student politics at public university be banned?

The unsettled issue has already divided the society into two broad groups: those who advocate student politics at highest learning centers and those who voice strong opposition against such politics.

Another group emerged slightly moderate by holding a middle ground and sticking to the point that no student wing of political parties will be allowed at the campus but students' representatives should be at the campus to speak for the grievances and woes of the students.

Student politics shares a glorious part of creation of Bangladesh. Often this glorious part is presented in such a way that any criticism towards the anarchic behavior is brushed aside as attempt to silence freedom of expression at universities.

Many veteran politicians also feel certain apprehension of rise of fundamentalism at universities in absence of student politics.

Student politics took a virulent form immediately after the independence of Bangladesh. I am not going to touch the details what led to such a violent student movement that ultimately contributed to the brutal assassination of Bangbandhu, contaminating neutral political atmosphere of the cantonment.

As soon as the politics of ruling elite took a U-turn after 1975, student politics turned violent. Islamists were let loose on the lefts at key public universities. Instead of encouraging debate at universities, students were indoctrinated with regimental belief and course of action. They later never learnt to appreciate different views and engage in any constructive debate. And the picture is more or less apparent at the national level: there is no reconciliation among the feuding parties, even over petty issues.

From the very beginning, students have never been in charge of student politics. It is steered and controlled by a certain quarter outside of the campus. Intervention is always there. Students are being used as pawns to protect regimented interests.

Many of these behind-the-curtain string pullers prefer to hide their pug marks. Sustaining this anarchic form of student politics yields tangible benefits to them: winning contracts of building infrastructure, roads etc, keeping a firm grip over extortion revenue generated by this kind of politics, maintaining businesses and office spaces at business centers and university adjacent areas with the assistance of party cadres.

Student politics and universities earned a bad name while many of these string pullers went scot free. However, many of them do not dare to introduce student politics at private universities. Why? Is there a collateral damage? Many members of board of directors and trustees are former and current politicians, who rose to prominence through practicing anarchic form of student politics. Or their party cadres turned academic hold important positions at these universities. Public universities are run by public funds whereas private universities hinge on students to run their expenses. Many view setting up private university a lucrative business. By introducing student politics into private universities, they do not want to put their business interests at risk or draw the ire of elites.

On the other hand, deteriorating learning environment at the public universities compelled parents to send their students to private universities.

Most of the sons and daughters of our former student leaders and politicians are never admitted at public universities. In fact, they go to abroad to pursue higher education. They lost the moral high ground to put argument in favor of current trend of student politics at public universities and colleges, where sons and daughters of ordinary citizens face full brunt of it.

I am appalled to see many of the former student leaders, who brought the academic activity to a complete halt by locking into fratricidal and rival clashes, managed to settle abroad. Many amassed huge wealth and started new life there. It is true for leaders irrespective of their political creeds.

In independent Bangladesh, student politics gave rise to another form of colonialism, where troublemakers of the campuses are the rent collectors of a foreign lord. Unabated anarchy in the pretext of student politics produced a breed of graduates who forget to pose questions to authority, to offer solutions to social and personal problems, and to elevate the society to a higher ground in terms of intellectual advancement, innovation and entrepreneurship. During their formative years, they have been coerced in such a way that they have become docile instruments at the hands of the ruling class who influences and shapes their future.

This status quo tremendously helped the quarter who does not want to see democracy flourishes, corruption dissipates and people get empowered. "Hold your ground", "Do not cede an inch", "Do not compromise with the enemy" are found in the lexicon of regimented groups. They could be a political party or an organized group like men-in-fatigue. A student who is being mentored at a learning center should know the difference between "competitor" and "enemy".

Often in the name of student politics,party cadres are tasked with "campus policing". They possess fire arms and beat black and blue students who do not comply with their rules. This should be stopped. Only police will do policing and in a sensitive place like university special police units can be formed. Harvard, MIT, Princeton all the universities have their own campus police. Since we are concerned about freedom of expression at the learning centers citing examples of first world, we should take cue from them to allow campus police at the tertiary learning centers. In this regard existing laws have to be amended or new laws have to be introduced.

Many of the anarchist leaders, who somehow got empowered and absorbed into the society, eulogized their anarchist conducts in their memoirs, anecdotes and interviews accorded to the press. This kind of conduct should not be encouraged and sold as part and parcel of a healthy student politics. A shameful conduct, acted upon an individual whom one did not like, should not be replicated as a reprisal.

While other nations are sending robots and satellites to the moon and Mars , we do not tolerate debate or dissident voices in the campus,which is our beacon of hope.

It is a pity that parties, rigid in belief and ideology, take full advantage of student politics and freedom of expression at the campus. Will they allow such practices when they form government? Look at the communist and theocratic countries.

Student politics needs to evolve. Laws should be amended to bar parties raising student wing at the universities, laws should be introduced to bar former and current politicians, student leaders, teachers taking part in bidding process of development projects at universities, a grievance redress system should be installed, harsher measures should be introduced against law enforcement agency / personnel who tries to stir trouble at the campus in connivance with student wings or anarchists. Moreover, foreign teachers should be allowed at the highest learning centers. It will improve the learning environment there. Laws should be amended to make this happen and UGC can maintain a roster of foreign teachers who are willing to work in Bangladeshi universities.

There is no doubt that most of our graduates are not on  par with graduates churned out by other South Asian universities. The education-industry ecosystem developed over the years due to anarchic student politics is turning our employers to recruit foreign workers to ward off future troubles. While saboteurs of a new kind of colonialism act with impunity at the campus, our highest learning centers are becoming lawless jungles. Our inertia to ongoing trend of student politics is only accelerating that process.

La Semaine Dernière A Mes Yeux

(04 octobre --- 11 octobre)

Selon un reportage, des fidèles du parti en exercice ont battu à mort un étudiant de l'Université de technologie ,BUET. La tuerie a bouleversé le pays. Police a appréhendé 11 coupables. La tuerie a aussi causé condemnation internationale. Le chef de l'ONU a été appelé chez ministère des Affaires étrangères et a été demandé explication.

Selon un reportage, une personne indigène a été tuée par balles à Rangamati. Il n'est pas appartenu aux groupes rebelles.


Selon un reportage, un garçon a été tué par un coup d'arme blanche à Narsinghdi. C'était le dernier jour de la fête de déesse Durga.


Selon un reportage, la société japonaise Zerra a acheté 22% des actions de Summit Power.


Selon un reportage, une raide par police afin de couper les câbles d'électricité à campe de Mohammapur s'est soldé par une escarmouche entre police et des Biharis, laissant 50 personnes blessées.


Selon un reportage, une cour de travail a ordonné un mandat d'arrêt conte Prof Muhammad Yunus, fondateur de Grameen Bank. Deux salariés licenciés ont déposé plainte contre lui dans cette cour.


Selon un reportage, un conseiller de Mohammadpur a été appréhendé depuis Brahmanbaria. Il recueillait frais électricité et locations depuis les marchés clandestins de Mohammadpur. Deux CasinoMoghols
étaient ses fidèles. Un journaliste en exil dans son compte de Facebook s'est dit que le frère de ce conseiller avait été tué par un frère de chef de l'armée de la terre.


C'était une mauvaise semaine pour moi. J'ai eu un accident le 7 octobre. Un bus de Transsilva,où je montait, a été percuté par un autre bus de Baishakhi Paribahan (Dhaka Metro Ba- 13 04 60) devant House & Building Research Institute à midi, laissant moi légèrement blessé aux pieds et une personne gravement à la tête. Le bus assaillant était complètement vide. Le conducteur et son adjoint ont fuit la place et il n'y avait pas de passager dans le bus de Baishakhi. Il se peut que le bus ait de mauvaise intention. Le bus coupable a foncé à la derrière de Transsilva. Je m'assoyais avant de la dernière place de Transsilva. J'ai déposé une plainte à ce propos dans la gendarmerie qui avait saisi le bus de Baishakhi.