Farhad Mazhar’s Knowledge of Padma River

SALEEM SAMAD

Padma Bridge possibly received the highest media attention, as well as millions of citizens, mostly proletariat and working class were enthusiasts of the landmark communication in this century. Of course zeal of the leaders, members and sympathisers of the Awami League fervour was at a different height.

The bridge’s pre and post-inauguration obviously received media hype and the issue was a priority on the prime-time talk shows, special newspaper columns and of course the first-page stories and photo features.

In one such talkshow hosted by a New York-based exiled journalist, Kanak Sarwar, the show sought the feelings and reactions about Padma Bridge from an acclaimed poet, writer and philosopher Farhad Mazhar. Well, I heard the entire discussion and understand the discussion fairly well.

Farhad Mazhar is a trained pharmacist and played a crucial role in the establishment of Gonoshasthaya Pharmaceuticals Ltd. We often met him (Farhad) in Savar while researching with Nadira Majumder writing for Shaptahik Robbar on ‘drug imperialism’ which resulted in the announcement of a landmark drug policy in 1982.

Farhad has huge followers and fans for his outspoken philosophical debate on society, religion and politics. His poetry books are best-sellers in the Ekushey Book Fair.

He advocates Sufism and ‘Naya Krishi’ or the organic agriculture movement. His love and hate for the present regime are very well understood. In his recent interview with BBC Bangla radio, he could not defend many of his deeds, actions and statements in the last decade.

In the BBC Bangla video interview, he failed to satisfy the audience regarding his undaunted commitment to the Sunni Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh (Defenders of Islam), a staunch advocate for Sharia Laws.

Among the hosts of tainted speakers (including leaders from BNP and other reactionary elements in the society), he also joined the bandwagon of Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh’s showdown in Motijheel in 2013. He was shown live on private TV Channels from Motijheel Shapla Square expressing his alliance with the Islamist movement.

The downtown Motijheel, a financial district in the capital Dhaka was blocked for two days. The Islamist and rightist elements had plans to cripple the financial activities and force the secular government of Sheikh Hasina to bow down.

The show of political strength ended in chaos and fiasco after riot police with armoured personal carriers(APC) and volleys of stun grenades in a pre-dawn operation literally scared the Mullahs.

Farhad defends the shut-down of the Dhaka metropolis by tens of thousands of Islamists and argues that the shadowy outfit is a “democratic” organisation.

His feminist wife Farida Akter, in an article in a popular Bangla daily, defended the misogynist Hefazat’s opposition to the women’s empowerment goals.

Many were shocked to read Farida’s illogical argument against the proposed Women’s Development Policy, 2011. She continues to oppose the policy singing to the tune of Islamists and says the policy is influenced by multinationals, corporates and a donor-driven women’s development policy.

Unfortunately, despite the nation having a woman-headed government, it has failed to implement the women’s policy for fear of Islamist antagonism.

Meanwhile, the learned Farhad Mazhar has told Kanak Sarwar’s audience that the newly build Padma Bridge was in fact the third bridge over the mighty river the Padma.

The first was Hardinge Railway Bridge (1912) and the second was Lalon Shah Road Bridge (May 2004) connecting Pakshey, Pabna and Bherapara, Kushtia, he said.

He lost in a myriad of hydrological data on the location and position of Padma River and mixed it up with the lower Ganges (Ganga in Bangla) river.

In fact, hydrological experts had determined that the Padma River is 120 km in length and begins from Goalondo to Chandpur. While the Ganges basin originates in north India from the Himalayan Mountains. It reaches the Farakka Barrage and continues on the bank of Chapai Nawabganj and flows through Hardinge Bridge and Lalon Shah Bridge.

The Ganges merged with the yawning Jamuna River at the confluence of Goalundo (once a vibrant railway and steamer ghat). From here Padma River begins its journey ending the flow of the Jamuna River.

Thus Padma Bridge is the first and until now the only longest road and rail communication bridge, beside Bangabandhu Bridge (also popularly known as Jamuna Bridge).

The all-knowing poet and philosopher have interpreted the river under Hardinge and Lalon Shah bridges as Padma River based on a myth.

The myth says that the Ganges River becomes the Padma River from Chapai Nawabganj bordering India and Bangladesh, which has been challenged by hydrological experts and river morphologists.

To continue with the debate, the massive irrigation project is Ganges-Kobadak Irrigation Project (or GK Project). The project is not a ‘Padma-Kobadak Project’. The largest surface irrigation system serves the southwestern region of Bangladesh – covering Kushtia, Chuadanga, Magura and Jhenaidah districts.

Similarly, the Ganges Barrage Project was proposed to hold back rainwater during the monsoon season because of the periodic drying up of the Ganges River in Bangladesh due to the withdrawal of the flow at Farakka Barrage. However, the Ganges Barrage Project was formally cancelled in 2017.

Hope these few pieces of information will enlighten Farhad Mazhar’s knowledge of the location and geo-position of the Padma River and also adopt the scientific knowledge of hydrologists and river morphologists and shun the myths from his mind and heart.

First published in The News Times, Dhaka, 5 July 2022

Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

The World Bank battles corruption in Bangladesh

DAVID BOSCO

For months now, the World Bank and the government of Bangladesh have been sparring over a planned Bank loan to help construct a bridge over the Padma River. The Bank backed out of the project in June, insisting that it had uncovered evidence of high-level corruption. Specifically, the Bank alleged that representatives of a major Canadian engineering firm bribed Bangladeshi officials (Canadian authorities are reportedly investigating two firm executives). The Bank's move produced outrage in Bangladesh, which insisted that it would find other financing.

More quietly, however, conversations about how to address the Bank's concerns proceeded. The Bank presented a stiff list of conditions: Bangladesh would  have to suspend all officials suspected of corruption, initiate a special investigation domestically, and give an international expert panel access to all relevant information. Last week, the international lender reported that the Bangladeshi authorities had begun fulfilling these terms:

The Government of Bangladesh has now begun to address the evidence of corruption the Bank identified. The World Bank understands that all government employees and officials alleged to have been involved in corrupt acts in connection with the project have been put on leave from Government service until an investigation is completed, and that a full and fair investigation is now underway.

But even that apparent bridging of differences has now run into trouble. Speaking in New York earlier this week, Bangladesh's prime minister insisted that the Bank had no credible evidence of corruption and suggested that the project was resuming because the Bank had accused Bangladesh prematurely. Other officials in Dhaka have said much the same. Yesterday, the Bank tried to correct the record:

The Bank remains concerned about corruption in Bangladesh in general and in the Padma bridge project in particular. It is for this reason that we have also made it clear that to engage anew in the project will require new implementation arrangements that give much greater oversight of project procurement processes to the Bank and co-financiers.

It is only after satisfactory implementation of all these measures as well as a positive report from the external panel of internationally recognized experts that the World Bank will go ahead with the financing of the project.

The people of Bangladesh deserve a clean bridge. If we are to move ahead, we are insisting that a credible investigation is undertaken and any project implementation be done in a manner that ensures transparency and enhanced oversight.

The episode has become one of the most sustained and direct clashes between the Bank and a national government over corruption. And Bangladesh is not just any World Bank client; it has consistently been one of the largest borrowers in the Bank's program for the poorest countries. The controversy is a notable reminder of how prominent anti-corruption efforts have become at the Bank, which for much of its history avoided the subject altogether. This campaign is popular with the Bank's largest shareholders, but it complicates lending to the poorest and weakest states, where corruption is often significant.

The bridge project is also an interesting test for new Bank president Jim Kim. The initial decision to cancel funding was taken at the end of Robert Zoellick's tenure. Shortly after taking office, Kim publicly backed that move, insisting that Bangladesh had been given multiple opportunities to address the problems. Both the Bank's funders and borrowers will be watching carefully as the story plays out. 

First published in Foreign Policy magazine, September 27, 2012

David Bosco is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and the author of Five to Rule Them All: the UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World, a history of the world's most elite club. He is an assistant professor at American University's School of International Service and was a senior editor at FP from 2004-2006

Bangladesh: Troubled waters

A foreign-funded bridge is hostage to murky local politics

THE BIGGEST infrastructure project in South Asia to be paid for by foreign donors is a $3 billion bridge in Bangladesh intended to span the Padma river, which is what the main branch of the Ganges is called as it flows through its delta to the Bay of Bengal, receiving the flow from the vast Brahmaputra river for good measure.

The bridge is the stuff of donors’ dreams. Its point is to end the isolation of Bangladesh’s poor south-west, home to 30m people who are cut off by these vast waters from the capital, Dhaka, and the rest of the country. The region’s isolation is compounded, to the south-west, by a high-security fence along the border with the Indian state of West Bengal; and, to the south, by the tidal Sundarbans, where dense mangrove forests are home to tigers. The proposed 6 km (3.8-mile) bridge could be a gateway to India, tying Dhaka to the great metropolis of Kolkata. It is also a crucial piece of an even more ambitious dream of connecting South Asia with South-East Asia, via Bangladesh and Myanmar. Official estimates say the bridge could raise Bangladesh’s annual growth rate by 1.2 percentage points.

The planned bridge, some 40km south-west of the capital, is designed to carry four lanes for traffic, as well as a freight railway and a gas pipeline. Complex works to channel the Padma’s flow are planned. Alas, it is easier to train the 5km-wide river than Bangladesh’s politicians to keep their hands out of the till. In June the World Bank cancelled a $1.2 billion loan, citing alleged corruption by Bangladeshi public servants. The World Bank has identified various officials as being unable to leave the money for the bridge alone. Sacking crooked-seeming officials has, for the World Bank, become a precondition for resuming lending. Bangladeshi newspapers have said that the prime minister’s chief economic adviser, Mashiur Rahman, is in the Bank’s sights. He says he has done nothing wrong and will only resign if the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, tells him to. Regardless of Mr Rahman’s case, Bangladesh has a culture of impunity. Only one senior politician has ever gone to jail under an elected government for corruption, and that was a former dictator.

The Asian Development Bank is more ready than the World Bank to be a cheerleader for the Bangladeshi government and is keen to resuscitate the project. Like the Japan International Co-operation Agency, another backer, it has kept the door open. However, more Bangladeshi officials will have to step down before the World Bank is prepared to return. Probably the government will come back to the table, but not without hectoring its perceived enemies first. Sheikh Hasina has accused Mohammad Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance and a Nobel peace laureate, of putting the World Bank up to walking off.

The Padma bridge project has been in the works for over a decade. Western governments do not want to see it snapped up by a state-backed Chinese company (in return, perhaps, for an equity stake and for economic influence, as has happened with ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan). India, with which Bangladesh has usually had good relations, would do its best to block a high-profile Chinese involvement in its neighbour’s economy.

Sheikh Hasina says Bangladesh will “not beg” from the World Bank. A sense of injured national pride has given rise to the unworkable notion that the bridge must now be built with Bangladesh’s “own resources”. The government is mulling a levy to help finance the bridge.

The only politician openly to reject Sheikh Hasina’s obsession with self-reliance is A.M.A. Muhith, the finance minister and a former World Bank official himself. Mr Muhith is too venerable to be required to call the prime minister “elder sister”. He knows that Bangladesh needs the multilateral agencies: only earlier this year the IMF helped out with a $1 billion loan. Bangladesh relies heavily on Western aid for a vast array of projects that otherwise would not exist. Without the Bank, there can be no bridge.

Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League is livid enough that it will be unable to keep its election promise of building the bridge before the end of 2013. Yet it would be even more appalled if the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by Sheikh Hasina’s arch-rival, Khaleda Zia, took office at the next election, bagging credit for the bridge. (That prospect is real: no elected government has won a second term.) And so, in the end, Sheikh Hasina has no strong incentive, other than the country’s best interests, to mollify the World Bank.

First published in The Economist, Sep 8th 2012