Who owns Bangladesh?

Photo: AFP

Women and property rights

AN IMPORTANT reason for Bangladesh’s remarkable progress in recent years has been investment in education of health and education, especially for women. Pick any of the standard measures of development—maternal health, female literacy and life expectancy—and you find that Bangladesh is beating India.

It is young women who stitch garments worth $20 billion in exports, women who own Grameen Bank, an embattled but Nobel-winning micro-lender, and women who have ruled the country as prime ministers since 1991—longer than men have managed, which might make Bangladesh unique in the history of the world’s republics.

Yet look at distribution of land by gender and you might be surprised. There is a very short answer to the question “Who owns Bangladesh?” Men do.

No one knows exactly how unequal the distribution of property is (the government does not disaggregate its statistics by gender). But there is agreement that the share held by women is absolutely tiny. In 1993, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimated that women in Bangladesh owned just 3.5% of the country’s agricultural land. Twenty years on, this share has almost certainly shrunk further, to perhaps as little as 2%.

Bangladesh’s legal system is secular on paper, but the areas of marriage, divorce, alimony and property inheritance are based on what is called personal law, which varies according to an individual’s or family’s religion. Muslim women are allowed to buy or be gifted property or access to khas land (fallow plots owned by the government), but the main route through which they acquire it is inheritance. (Following Hindu custom, Hindu and Buddhist women inherit nothing). The Islamic laws of inheritance are based on the local school of sharia, wherein a daughter is bequeathed only half what her brother inherits. Even a single generation of marriages and deaths does its bit to distribute land away from women. A widow receives one-eighth of her husband’s property if they have children and one-fourth if they do not.

But to concentrate on the unfairness of the inheritance laws would be to ignore the broad majority of women (and men)—approximately two-thirds of Bangladesh’s 160m people are landless. Imagine if seats on a public bus of the standard size were distributed in the same way that Bangladesh’s productive land is. The conductor would have reserved only a single seat for all the women who might board. But he would be holding no tickets at all for two additional busloads of people, left waiting at the kerb.

Often women do not claim any of their inheritance, leaving it in their brothers’ possession. Activists in Bangladesh call it the “good-sister syndrome”: hoping that the brother will look after his sister’s rights. In their experience, more often than not “the good brother does not reciprocate in the way the good sister anticipated”.

In a study titled “Women, land and power in Bangladesh" Jenneke Arens, a Dutch researcher, finds that sons and husbands are often at fault.

“Khadija, rich peasant widow, called me into her house. She was clearly upset: 'I inherited nine bigha (three acres) of land from my mama (uncle) who brought me up, but my sons have registered my land in their names, they took my fingerprint.”

The injustice has not gone unnoticed. There was a move towards a uniform family law in the early 1980s, one that would respect the rights of women and men equally, or at least less unequally. The Awami League (AL) of Sheikh Hasina pushed for it when it was in government in the late 1990s and between 2007 and 2008 an army-backed government drafted legislation to give women equal access, use and control of land.

Indeed in its 2008 election manifesto the AL, which holds office once again, had vowed to rectify “discriminatory laws [that are] against the interest of women”. But that item remained on the “to-do-list” of the same AL government that came to power after winning a landslide victory in late 2008. (It has however made some progress in other areas, such as protecting women from sexual harassment and violence.)

Various plans to change the inheritance laws have been met with violent protest by the Islamic right. It appears that even the AL government cannot afford to enforce the constitution in this matter; it calls for women to be recognised as having equal rights in every sphere of life. (The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is strategically aligned with the conservative right, does not bother in the first place.) “Politicians are afraid to touch religion because they are afraid of losing votes, says Khushi Kabir of Nijera Kori (“We do it ourselves”), an NGO that fights for the rights of landless people. The formation in 2011 of a fundamentalist group called Hefazat-e-Islam (“Protectors of Islam”) was a direct response to a plan for legislation which would ensure that all descendents inherit equal portions of an estate. And so the AL’s three-fourths majority has made little difference.

The prospects for change look gloomy. But, as Ms Kabir says, “with the exception of inheritance laws, we are much better off than Pakistan.” She points to some of Bangladesh’s relatively progressive policies, including some that favour augmenting women’s access to public land, as well as a judiciary that is much more sympathetic to women’s rights than Pakistan’s.

The government has also set in motion a project to digitise all of Bangladesh’s land records (the European Commission has chipped in €10m, or $13.3m). This will be very good, Ms Kabir thinks, because making the public records transparent would make women’s claim official. A small step towards making those greedy brothers behave better, but perhaps an important one.

First published in The Economist, August 20, 2013

What's next for Islamist party after higher court barred to participate in election?

Islamist protest critics of Islam, Koran and Muhammad in London

Bangladesh's main Islamist party ponders its future after a High Court ruling that deemed its charter unconstitutional

K.R. CHOWDHURY

Now that Jamaat-e-Islami has been disqualified from contesting in future elections, analysts are asking whether Bangladesh's leading Islamist party can regroup as a political force without resorting to further violence.

On August 1st, a three-member panel of the High Court declared Jamaat's registration as a political party illegal, because some sections of its charter go against the constitution and the 1972 Representation of the People Order (RPO).

Jamaat lawyers immediately appealed to the Supreme Court to stay the verdict, but the appeal was rejected on August 5th.

The relevant Jamaat charter passages stipulate that only Allah is sovereign, and the rules of Allah are the ultimate law. The constitution of Bangladesh, on the other hand, states that the people are sovereign, and the RPO bars registration of any party that may pose a threat to communal harmony.

Jamaat – believed to command around 10% of the popular vote – registered as a political party under newly-revised Election Commission (EC) guidelines in November 2008. Two months later, a leading Sufi group filed public interest litigation seeking to scrap Jamaat's registration.

Jamaat leaders and workers took to the streets and vandalised vehicles throughout Dhaka to protest the August 1st ruling, and called for yet another general strike on August 13th and 14th.

Critics of the ban say it is important that Islamists in Bangladesh have a stake in the democratic process. Marginalising them, they argue, will foster resentment and possible radicalisation.

"Scrapping the registration through judiciary is a wrong approach," Mahbubur Rahman, a member of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party's (BNP) highest policy-making committee, told Khabar South Asia. "If they are stripped of their political rights, they are almost certain to resort to the path of violence for existence."

"Violence will not help them"

Yet there are avenues open for the group to re-enter politics, without resorting to violence, experts say.

The EC has hinted Jamaat could regain registration by making its party charter consistent with the constitution and the RPO, political analyst Nazim Kamran Chowdhury told Khabar.

Jamaat members could also join up with their major political ally, BNP, and attempt to re-register under a potential future BNP administration.

"In case of its failure to restore the registration as a political party under the present election commission, they are likely to contest under the BNP's banner in the next polls.

Then they would get registration afresh after installation of a reconstituted election commission," said Chowdhury.

"Violence will not help them," he added.

Syed Abdullah Md Taher, Jamaat's central executive committee member and secretary for foreign affairs, told Khabar the cancellation of its registration as a political party was aimed at blocking the party from contesting the next national elections, expected in January 2014.

"Keeping Jamaat away from the polls will, of course, create some 'imbalance' in politics," he said, without elaborating. He, however, insisted that Jamaat 'certainly' wanted to be in the political process, and does not believe in violence.

Taher declined to comment on whether his party launched attacks on law enforcers while protesting recent war crimes court verdicts against its party leaders.

Asked if Jamaat will re-register with the election commission, he said, "we will consider it".

Syed Ashraful Islam, general secretary of the ruling Awami League, told reporters his party has no intention of banning Jamaat's political activities. The registration issue, he said, would be settled by the court and the election commission – two independent bodies free from government influence, he said.

He agreed, however, that Jamaat's party charter had some provisions contradicting the country's founding principles. "They must amend their party charter in line with the constitution for getting registration as a political party," Islam added.

First published in Khabar South Asia, August 15, 2013

Bangladesh: Will Good Corporate Deeds Go Unpunished?

Garments workers, union activists protest unsafe workplace in front of garments owners association in Bangladesh capital

RICHARD LEVICK

In the aftermath of horrific tragedy, you’d think any efforts to lessen the chance of recurrence would be welcome, especially efforts fueled by significant corporate resources.

No doubt the U.S.-based retailers,  including Walmart, Target, and Sears, that signed on to the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety were realistic enough to expect some criticism of  their binding, five-year undertaking to improve labor conditions after April’s Rana Plaza building collapse in which 1,100 people died. (A fire in another factory killed 112 Bangladeshis in November.)

What they may not have expected, or even currently understand, is that by signing on, these companies have provided their adversaries, spearheaded by organized labor, with a potent weapon to advance a multifaceted anti-corporate strategy of which the situation in Bangladesh is just one part.

Indeed, labor groups like the UNI Global Union went on immediate counterattack, excoriating the agreement as essentially toothless and, for want of third-party monitoring, a “sham.” Meanwhile, in early July, 80 retail companies (only three of them American) signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh to fund substantial safety improvements. The refusal of American companies to join the Accord was likewise excoriated, when, for instance, UNI spokespeople claimed that the provisions would only add two or three pennies to the cost of a tee-shirt.

I am persuaded that both labor and management share a heartfelt concern for the victims at Rana Plaza, and that both sides sincerely hope for effective remediation of the unsafe conditions that led to the tragedy. But that is where the comity ends. Labor seeks a united front to attack virtually all human rights issues across the board and around the world. By their lights, that purpose is disserved when Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs reassure the world that global corporations can be powerful agents of humane systemic change.

Post Rana Plaza, unions like UNI – a global federation launched in 2000 with more than 900 affiliated unions and 20 million members in 140 countries – have already achieved two fundamental strategic advantages. First, they have gotten the companies to compete in labor’s ballpark, to acknowledge responsibility, to play defense.

But second, they’ve set up the game so that CSR can be used against the corporations themselves. The signatories to the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety would do well to reread Saul Alinsky, who wrote the book on how to make corporations choke on their own good intentions. As Alinsky says in Rules for Radicals, “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

By this code, no specific CSR provision will be good enough because the implicit strategy is to define CSR programs as self-serving, and as mere band aids. At the same time, if corporations do not join initiatives like the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, it only proves their indifference.

Either way a company like Walmart loses as the balance of power continues to shift. Walmart, for one, has already felt some pain as a result of the unions’ focus on CSR, at least enough to encourage the opposition that they’re on the right track.

In July, two large European pension funds, PGGM and Mn Services, announced they’re no longer investing in Walmart because the company does not adhere to international labor conventions. The operative word is “international.” That’s how Walmart is growing and that’s how unions are growing.

It’s instructive that the funds were reportedly rebuffed by Walmart in their efforts to get the company to adopt International Labour Organizationconventions. Walmart may have left a communications void that union messaging ably filled. Of course global conventions are written for countries, not companies. One pension fund readily acknowledged that fact, but so what? “We only want to invest in companies with those standards,” said the firm’s head of responsible investment.

It’s hard to imagine these pullouts occurring without the union campaigns to create an environment in which companies like Walmart are constantly vulnerable. A May 2013 document by UNI’s Commerce Sector that’s come into our possession sheds further light on the strategic motives driving the Walmart campaign. It underscores Walmart’s plans “to increase its workforce to 3 million over the next five years, which represents a 36 percent increase from the current figure of 2.2 million workers.

The opportunities these numbers suggest are not lost on a labor movement that for years read about nothing except its own attrition. But it is not a kneejerk reaction to just one corporate spreadsheet. Globalization is organized labor’s strategic driver simply because that’s where the headcounts are.

From a historical standpoint, the targeting of Walmart feeds into a five-year plan formalized at UNI’s 2010 World Congress in Nagasaki. This time frame coincides tellingly with the accelerated controversy surrounding Walmart’s labor practices as well as the series of workplace tragedies of which Rana Plaza will sadly not be the last.

The anti-Walmart activities typify how the Nagasaki principles are being carried out in action. Among the interminable highlights in the UNI Commerce document: the 2012 launch of the UNI Walmart Global Union Alliance; the first-ever cross-union strike in Brazil; extremely aggressive use of “Twinning” via phone and skype for Walmart employees to communicate around the world; and a concerted use of social media with new communities like the Walmart Alliance Facebook Page.

Beyond tactics, the UNI Commerce document provides three crucial strategic takeaways for any company that is or will be intensively targeted.

First, the unions aren’t fighting guerilla war. They’re waging sustainable combat. If corporations want to fight back, they too must think long-term even while extinguishing whatever brush fires flare up on a daily basis. What, for example, is the long-term viability of a CSR plan? How do companies advance and build on the plan even as they fully anticipate that the unions will use whatever they do against them?

Second, the campaigns go well beyond specific labor issues. CSR is an open invitation to be judged by multiple tribunals focused on everything under the sun from antitrust to environmental. If a company wants to subsidize green construction projects, the union might want to know where it stands on Ecuadorian rainforests.

Accordingly, the UNI Commerce actions points include, for example, research into corruption. (Earlier this year, the union held a public hearing in El Salvador on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, specifically to encourage whistleblowers to come forward.) Everything is at play. In a document for a campaign targeting the leading global hotel chains, the union even wants to know revenue figures on in-room pay-per-view pornography.

Third, the unions have taken the fight inside the corporation. Their strategy plays out at shareholder meetings in the now-familiar form of investor activism. No wonder the UNI Commerce document specifically calls for “international delegations to attend annual shareholder meetings.”

An earlier (2004) UNI planning document that also came into our possession discloses the breadth of the campaign to influence both corporate governance and CSR at public companies. According to this document, the corporate governance “crisis takes unions closer into corporate power issues than ever before. It also sharpens ongoing CSR opportunities…. It makes possible…influential linkages between shareholders and other stakeholders – primarily workers and their unions. It widens “the agenda of workers’ participation in management…taking the unions’ public voice on environmental and broad social issues closer to the doors of corporate power” [both emphases added].

Rainforests, corruption, pornography – we’re a long way from Bangladesh and worker safety. Yet it’s been the genius of the labor movement to gather its diverse allies and spin just such a comprehensively interwoven net in which every knot is a potential focal point. They had to, in order to survive as an organized antagonist in the ongoing war of labor and management – a survival they see as essential for both humanitarian and business reasons.

In turn, corporations must be equally holistic, looking around and beyond every corner to identify issues that will shadow their brands and reputations in the years ahead. They cannot just build a fortress on the labor/employment front. In this global confrontation, not a single social, political, or legal issue is unimportant.

Their intent of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh is noble, and the efforts they make will likely directly benefit those for whom they’re intended. If so, there is all the more reason for these corporations to carefully think through the unintended consequences – and the real possibility that every conversation about social problems will turn into a shouting match only the enemy can win.

First appeared in Forbes, August 12, 2013

Richard Levick, Esq., Chairman and CEO of LEVICK, provides public relations and communications counsel to corporations and countries on multiple labor and human rights issues. Mr. Levick was honored for the past four years on NACD Directorship’s list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the Boardroom,” and has been named to multiple professional Halls of Fame for lifetime achievement. He is the co-author of three books, including The Communicators: Leadership in the Age of Crisis, and is a regular commentator on television, in print, and on the most widely read business blogs.

Activists Attempting to Push Abortion Drugs Into Pro-Life Bangladesh

Family Planning bare-foot health workers explain birth control pills

REBECCA OAS

A researcher dedicated to bringing risky medical abortion to developing countries has set her sights on Bangladesh. Her new study demonstrates a plan to expand access to abortion pills by using misleading language and an unusual set of laws.

The study proposes redefining “menstrual regulation” to include medical as well as surgical methods.

Since the 1970s, “menstrual regulation” took advantage of a legal loophole in Bangladesh, which outlaws most abortions. After missing her period, a woman could undergo a uterine evacuation, ostensibly to induce her menstrual cycle. While the procedure was technically identical to an early-term abortion using a manual vacuum aspirator, it was not legally classified as an abortion unless a test confirmed the pregnancy first.

“Abortion remains a very sensitive topic in Bangladesh,” wrote Julie DaVanzo and Mizanur Rahman in an article on Matlab, a region that has been the focus of several studies on abortion and family planning. “In fact, many of the restrictions for MR [menstrual regulation], particularly its availability only before pregnancy is clinically confirmed, are to reinforce the perception of MR as something other than abortion.”

The new study reaffirms that any such perception is merely semantic. The method being tested is identical to the procedure for medical abortion, and the authors compare their results to those obtained using “this regimen in other settings.” In the other settings, no euphemisms for abortion were used.

Study coauthor Dr. Beverly Winikoff is a longtime champion of medical abortion. Her organization Gynuity led the effort to convince the World Health Organization to classify drugs that can be used for abortion as “essential medicines.”

Collaborating with Winikoff on the project were researchers from the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh. In addition to studying diarrheal disease, the group focuses heavily on reproductive health. According to its website, “One of the greatest challenges in Bangladesh is population control,” and their efforts to reduce births range from the distribution of “behavioral change materials” to this recent study aimed at increasing the acceptability of medical abortion by another name.

While the study concluded that medical abortions would be feasible in Bangladesh, health care providers in focus groups raised concerns about drug quality and medical oversight given the lack of regulation of pharmacies and the widespread availability of drugs without prescription. They also noted that the trial did not look at rural areas.

A doctor who reviewed the study points out that of 651 study participants, 22 were lost to follow-up after being given the drugs. “Are they dead?” asked Dr. Donna Harrison. “Who knows?”

Today, “menstrual regulation” remains largely unique to Bangladesh, a product of the majority-Muslim nation’s willingness to turn a blind eye to early abortion while appearing to enact tough restrictions on it overall. Abortion promoters in the early 1970s saw its potential for gaining unwitting acceptance of abortion methods. Gynecologist Geoffrey Davis posited in 1972 that the euphemism could have a worldwide impact.

“Perhaps one of the greatest contributions that somebody could make to this is a new term that would do for abortion what “family planning” did for “birth control,” Davis wrote.  “If we could call this something more acceptable than abortion, we could get the public’s attitude changed a little faster.”

First appeared in LifeNews.com, August 12, 2013

LifeNews Note: Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute

Bangladesh’s volatile politics: The battling begums

The pendulum swings away from Sheikh Hasina and her government

AHEAD of the festival of Eid-al-Fitr on August 9th-11th, the two quarrelling heads of Bangladesh’s political dynasties exchanged greetings cards. But the outward signs of peace between the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League, and the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), mean little. A European diplomat says he has just sent two cables to his capital. The first discusses the growing chances of the League’s defeat in elections due by next January. The second is about the dynastic succession plans of the battling begums.

One political party is likely to be missing at the coming election. On August 1st the High Court ruled that the country’s biggest religious party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, is unfit to contest national polls because its charter puts God above democratic process. The court has cancelled Jamaat’s registration. A few months ago this might have sealed victory for the League, for Jamaat has been a crucial vote-winning ally for BNP.

Yet growing numbers now doubt whether the League can win a second consecutive term, and not only because no elected government has ever done so in Bangladesh. In early 2013 judgments by a flawed but popular court, investigating crimes committed by current Jamaat members during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, seemed to boost the nominally secular League, which revived the tribunal. Nearly all the leaders of Jamaat are likely to be sentenced, probably to death, by election day.

In response, the opposition framed the trials as a struggle between anti-Islamist forces and the pious. That paved the way for marches on Dhaka, the capital, by Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamic splinter group with fundamentalist demands. The second time they marched, security forces killed up to 50 of them. The message young men took back to their villages was that thousands had been slaughtered. Across the country, the effect on the government’s popularity has been devastating.

Ever since, the BNP has been in the ascendant. It thrashed the League in mayoral elections in June and July, notably in Gazipur in the industrial belt, hitherto one of the League’s safest constituencies.

In an attempt to reverse its fortunes, the government plans to raise wages for 4m garment workers, who are angry at its failure to make factories safe and to compensate relatives of more than 1,100 killed in a ghastly factory collapse in May. A wage rise could sway many voters, but factory bosses are likely to resist a deal. A push against party corruption would also boost Sheikh Hasina’s popularity. A good third of her MPs dare not visit their fiefs for fear of being lynched for treating their constituencies as cash tills. Yet no precedent exists for firing miscreants, and appointing credible candidates would probably split the party. As a last resort, Sheikh Hasina’s son and heir apparent, Sajeeb Wazed, was handed around for three weeks in July before flying back to the United States. At this point, he looks like a non-starter.

His dynastic counterpart, Tarique Rahman, Mrs Zia’s son, is wilier. He would jump on a plane from London tomorrow. His mother is in poor health and keen to pass power to her first-born. But he faces charges of corruption and money laundering in Bangladesh: Mr Rahman was instrumental in ensuring that the BNP’s last stint in power was a glorious plunder. He would go straight to jail unless the League agrees in the coming weeks to pass control of the country’s institutions to a caretaker government for the elections, a sticking-point that could trigger a constitutional crisis.

The League will fight bitterly. But if it loses an election, the BNP would rehabilitate its disgraced heir and its Jamaat allies (at least, those not executed by then). Once a party is in power in Bangladesh it is the unalterable tradition to declare nearly everything decreed by your opponents to be null and void.

First published in Asia print edition The Economist, August 10th 2013

Bangladesh 'most trusted' by Indians

SUBIR BHAUMIK

Guess the country Indians trust the most - surely not where they prefer to travel for higher education or health care or with whom they trade most.

A recent survey on foreign policy issues indicates most Indians trust neighbour Bangladesh the most. And not unexpectedly, Pakistan the least.

The CNN-IBN-The Hindu Election Tracker Survey, conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, has revealed that while 37 per cent of India's voters feel that relations with neighbours have improved under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's UPA coalition government, only 19 per cent disagreed with the proposition.

When asked which countries should India either trust a 'great deal' or 'somewhat', 48 per cent chose Bangladesh while 46 percent picked Russia.

This is somewhat surprising considering that leading Indian parties like the biggest Opposition BJP have run a persistent campaign about illegal migration from Bangladesh and previous governments in that country have been accused of sheltering insurgents and religious radicals who attacked targets in India.

Even now the BJP and some regional parties like Asom Gana Parishad and Trinamool Congress are opposing a bill to be placed in the Parliament by the UPA government to formalise the land boundary agreement with Bangladesh.

Not to speak of the anti-Bangladesh tirade that often surfaces in Assam and other northeastern states on the issue of illegal migration and leads to considerable violence against settlers of East Bengali origin.

India's former ambassador in Bangladesh Deb Mukherjee feels this has much to do what the Hasina government has done for India in the last five years.

"I think this has much to do with the way Bangladesh has addressed India's security concerns very comprehensively in the last five years. Unlike during previous regimes, when insurgents from northeast India found sanctuary in Bangladesh," Mukherjee told the Hindu.

He said public attitudes are often shaped by recent memory rather than by history, which may explain why so many Indians feel Bangladesh can be trusted.

Mukherjee also felt many Indians may be suffering from a 'sense of guilt '.

"I am speculating that this could also be a result of a sense of guilt because India has not delivered what India should have delivered on and reciprocated, be it on Teesta waters or the land boundary agreement," Mukherjee said.

There is also a growing recognition that Bangladesh has performed well on social indicators and even its economy is doing rather well.

While India's rupee has fallen from 47-48 to 59-60 for a dollar, Bangladesh's Taka has appreciated from 84 to a dollar to 77 a dollar in a year's time.

For the first time in its independent history, Bangladesh has a current account surplus of $2.57 billion , while India's current account is woefully in the red.

And against all expectations, Bangladesh is on course to achieve its 2015 UN millennium goals in poverty alleviation two years before time within 2013.

In their recent book, An Uncertain Glory, economists Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze have noted that India has a lot to learn from Bangladesh in human development index.

Bangladesh is ahead of India and other South Asian countries in most of the criterion used to judge the human development index.

Former Secretary (East) in India's ministry of external affairs Rajiv Sikri has publicly called Bangladesh "India's most important neighbour' during a recent conference in Kolkata.

Russia ranks a close second among partners India should have trust in, according to the survey.

Anuradha Chenoy, professor at the School of International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and a Russia expert, recounted that this trust had 'wavered' after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Sections of the middle class, and the strategic elite, begun having aspirations that they should only go with the US. But after ten years of the strategic partnership with US, and its attitudes on a range of issues, there is a renewed faith in old partners, in Russia, and in the South-South framework."

This, she added, did not mean a reversal to 'Cold War politics', but an 'independent foreign policy'.

54 per cent of the respondents said India should have 'no trust at all' in Pakistan, while only 14 per cent said there should be a 'great deal' or some trust in the country.

These findings come soon after a poll done by the Australia-India Institute and the Low Institute for International Policy, which said that 94 percent of Indians see Pakistan as a threat, while 78 per cent see it as a major threat.

But their study also showed that 89 percent believe that ordinary people in both countries want peace. So there's an window of opportunity to use -- people-to-people contact may help.

China draws mixed response in CNN-IBN-The Hindu Election Tracker Survey, in a reflection of the relationship of competition and co-operation New Delhi shares with Beijing. 33 per cent of the respondents felt India should have trust in China, while 31 per cent believed there should be 'no trust at all' in Beijing.

That should mean there is a window of opportunity to improve relations with China , specially if India reacts positively to Li Keqiang's 'handshake across the Himalayas' and work on specific proposals like developing the BCIM (Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar) economic corridor .

"This indicates that while there are sections pandering to jingoism about China, there's equal or more people in India who believe the two Asian giants can develop a great future relationship.

This could also be the result of the growing disillusionment with US, a strategic partner of India but with whom relations have plummeted on a host of controversial issues.

First appeared in IBN-CNN blog, July 29, 2013

Bangladesh: Momentous Ruling

S. BINODKUMAR SINGH

In a landmark ruling, the Dhaka High Court (HC) on August 1, 2013, declared the registration of Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), the biggest right-wing party of Bangladesh, illegal. A three-member Special Bench, including Justice M. Moazzam Husain, Justice M. Enayetur Rahim and Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque, passed the judgment, accepting a writ petition challenging the legality of JeI's registration as a political party. The petition filed by the secretary general of the Bangladesh Tariqat Federation, Syed Rezaul Haque Chandpuri, and 24 other leaders of the Federation on January 25, 2009, noted that JeI was a religion-based political party and rejected the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh. In its verdict, the Court observed: "By majority, rule is made absolute and registration given to Jamaat by the Election Commission is declared illegal and void. It is hereby declared illegal."

Chief Election Commissioner, Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad, on August 1, 2013, stated, "Let us get the certified copy of the verdict first. We will take a decision after scrutinising the verdict. After the execution of the verdict, anybody from the party [Jamaat] will be able to take part in elections individually. Nobody can take part in the polls from the party platform."

The JeI was registered with the Election Commission (EC) on November 24, 2008, by making some provisional changes in its original charter. Significantly, the military-backed Caretaker Government (CG) had introduced the registration system before the December 29, 2008, parliamentary polls.

At the time of its registration as a political party, JeI had promised to further amend its Charter by January 24, 2010, in line with the 2008 Representation of the People Order (RPO), disallowing the registration of a communal outfit as a political party. However, JeI did not deliver on its pledge and, even after the expiry of the deadline, continued to ignore the EC's repeated calls to amend its Charter.

According to the EC's findings, a number of provisions in JeI's Charter, including the call for establishing rule of Islam through organized efforts and the refusal to accept Parliament's plenary power to enact laws, were not in conformity with the country's Constitution and the RPO. Indeed, JeI was founded in undivided India in 1941 by its first ameer (chief), Maulana Abul A'la Maududi, with the goal of developing an Islamic community of devout believers guided by and subordinated to 'Islamic law' alone.

On July 24, 2013, moreover, the EC had finalised proposed amendment to the Electoral Rolls Act 2009, in order to drop convicts of any offence under the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act 1973 from the voters' list.

Condemning and protesting the exclusion of war crimes' convicts from the electoral rolls, a JeI delegation, in a written statement to the EC on July 28, 2013, declared, "According to electoral law 2009, every citizen reserves right to be included in the voter list who are 18 years old of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. But EC has been determined to remove the convicted Jamaat leaders from the voter list. This is contrary to human rights and constitution." On the same day, JeI 'acting secretary general' Maulana Rafiqul Islam Khan alleged, "The government is trying to come to power again in the illegal way. The country will prevent strictly this kind of conspiracy."

It is significant, here, that the International Crimes Tribunals (ICTs) have, thus far,indicted 12 high-profile political figures, including 10 JeI leaders and two Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders. While 11 persons had been indicted earlier, the JeInayeb-e-ameer (deputy chief) and alleged founder of the infamous Razakar Bahini, A.K.M. Yusuf, was indicted by the ICT-2, on August 1, 2013, on 13-counts, including seven charges of genocide, one charge of looting and arson attacks on Hindu houses, and five charges of abduction, torture in confinement and murder in the Khulna region.

Thus far, six of the 12 persons indicted, all from the JeI, have been awarded sentence, four death penalties and two to extended terms of imprisonment. ICT-2 sentenced to death JeI leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad alias Bachchu Razakar on January 21, 2013; ICT-2 awarded life imprisonment to JeI 'assistant secretary general' Abdul Quader Mollah on February 5, 2013; ICT-1 awarded death sentence to JeI nayeb-e-ameer Delwar Hossain Sayedee on February 28, 2013; ICT-2 handed over a death sentenced to JeI 'assistant secretary general' Muhammad Kamaruzzaman on May 9, 2013; ICT-1 sentenced to 90 years in prison former JeI ameer Ghulam Azam on July 15, 2013; and ICT-2 awarded the death sentence to JeI 'secretary general' Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed on July 17, 2013.

Meanwhile, protests, hartals (general strikes) and street violence, which have become the order of the day in Bangladesh, escalated after the HC verdict banning JeI. The JeI, its affiliates and supporting political formations, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have been engaging in violent street mobilization since the constitution of the ICT on March 25, 2010, to investigate and prosecute suspects for the crimes committed during the Liberation War of 1971. Since the latest cycle of violence erupted, at least 30 persons have been injured. Moreover, according to partial data collected by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), the country has recorded 139 fatalities, including 70 JeI and Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS, the students' wing of JeI) cadres, 60 other civilians, and nine Security Force (SF) personnel (all data till August 2, 2013) since March 25, 2010, in street violence unleashed by the JeI-ICS combine backed by BNP, as well as other extremist groups such as Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI, 'Protectorate of Islam'), who are opposing the War Crimes trials.

However, as SAIR noted earlier, strong resistance is, now building up against the repeated hartals called by the Islamist combine.

Against this backdrop, there are apprehensions that the cycle of violence will escalate, even as JeI's linkages with other dormant Islamist formations within and outside Bangladesh are restored. For instance, the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which came into the limelight after it carried out near simultaneous blasts in 63 out of 64 Districts of Bangladesh on August 17, 2005, has historical links with JeI. On July 13, 2010, the 'chief' of the JMB Maulana Saidur Rahman, who was arrested on May 26, 2010, had exposed the connections between JeI and JMB, revealing that he and several other members of the group had earlier been members of the JeI. Rahman is still under trial for the serial blast, though the group's other leaders, including Abdur Rahman, Abdul Awal, Khaled Saifullah, Ataur Rahman and Hasan Al-Mamun, were executed on terrorism charges on March 30, 2007.

Similarly, linkages between the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) and JeI were exposed on July 11, 2010, when HuT 'adviser', Syed Golam Maola, arrested on July 8, 2010, told interrogators that JeI 'Publicity Secretary' Tasneem Alam coordinated a meeting in 2008 to discuss a joint campaign against the National Women's Development Policy, 2008.

JeI links with Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B) were exposed on March 29, 2013, when Detective Branch (DB) personnel arrested 13 extremists, including former JeI leader Farid Uddin Ahammad, along with Afghan war veteran Farid Uddin Masud who was a leader of HuJI in Pakistan, from Dhaka city. Nazrul Islam Mollah, Deputy Commissioner of DB, on March 31, 2013, stated, "The detained militant leaders directly and indirectly support the anti-government movement and they were working against the war crimes trial. Farid Uddin Ahammad opted for reviving HuJI as there are similarities in the ideologies of the HuJI in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Deputy Leader of the Jatiya Sangsad (Parliament), Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, warned against a extremist-terrorist revival on July 25, 2013: "They are trying to raise heads once again. they are conspiring again. We must get united as we'll have to resist JeI. we'll have to be tougher. we the freedom fighters will have to annihilate them in our lifetime. We'll have to resist those who still dream of turning the country into Pakistan. We'll never let the country slip into the hands of Pakistan. We'll have to move forward with the Liberation War spirit."

As the country's General Elections approach, the Sheikh Hasina Wajed Government will be confronted with a rising challenge to stem escalating violence and to provide an environment of security and safety for an ordered exercise of the people's democratic rights.

First published in South Asia Intelligence Review, Weekly Assessments & Briefings, Volume 12, No. 5, August 5, 2013

S. Binodkumar Singh, Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management