General Moeen U Ahmed took over Bangladesh on the ground that politician have failed to govern the nation. Now his 15 month rule made things much worse. The country has shown deterioration in every possible economic and quality of life indicators.
This General and his coterie have even failed to ensured the most basic need of the Bangladeshis, some rice to eat. Failing miserably, he now started lecturing the nation to eat potato instead of rice.
Well, General, why don’t you start it at your home first? Members of Bangladesh armed forces get almost free rice through a hugely subsidized ration. Lets stop that first, give them potato ration instead. We will sure than line up to listen to your lectures about potato.
April 3, 2008 at 7:41 pm
After about 4 decades GMUA’s Potato-Prescription is the repeat of irony of history. Mr. Moeen is now invoking Allah saying, “Allah is testing us and after the days of great trial of extreme hardship we will Inshallah have good days” Of course, Allah tests people. But it’s very shameful for our nation when we see Bangalee general now recommends potato eating instead of rice eating. We aren’t exploding now whereas late General Ayub Khan was patheitically embarrassed by Bangalee advising the latter eating bread instead of rice. Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s politics was doomed when he said “Urdu and only Urdu shall be the state language of Pakitan.” Ayub Khan was doomed by the suggestion that Bangalee should stop eating rice instead of bread. Now we are advised to eat potato instead of rice whereas bread is 100 times better than potato.
“Bangalee Dhat Thakte Dhater Morjada Bujlona.” One of my friends said pointing fingers on my eyes that did no leader up until now, so much for the development of East Pakistan as did Ayub Khan. During his 10 years’ tenure we got all most all the mega projects that we can still brag about, like Kamlapur station, Tongi international airport, Shangshad Baban [by the way, if I remember correctly, our Shangshad Bhavan is the one of the 10-20 best architectural buildings of the world], chittagong university, Jahagir Nagar university, Rajshahi university, Memensigh agriuniversity, 1/2 dozen of medical Schools, 1/2 dozens of cadet colleges are few important to name.
During his time as part of malaria eradication programe, there was not even an inch of land left not to spread by DDT and for long decades we had been free of malaria for that. All the Khoka and Bura mayor of Dhaka surrender to this menacing mosquito problem.
About agricultural development, one of my religious teacher who was avid fan of Ayub Khan once commented if there hadn’t Ayub Khan Bangalee would have been an extinct human species by now for famine and starvation. Before Ayub Khan we had 15 to 20 mons[40 kg/sher]of rice per acre of land. And then Ayub had brought a revolution in rice cultivation introducing IRI rice in erstile East pakistan. In place of 15-20 mons the farmers started grow 60-90 mons of rice per acre. Bangalee were ingrateful to AK being the victim of propaganda machine.
Sorry, my above facts finding piece is like “Dhan Bhante Shiber Gheet Ghaoya” it is harsh undeniable truth, though.
Thanks.
April 7, 2008 at 10:52 am
Simple economics:
The problem: Shortage of supply, international price-hike and government incompetence leads to a major increase in the price of Commodity A.
The economist’s suggestion: Try to increase the supply and in the mean time divert at least some of the unmet demand to Commodity B, a substitute to Commodity A.
If there’s anything to be blame, it is the problem. Nothing wrong with the suggestion.
April 7, 2008 at 12:27 pm
S Mahbub
Who says there is something wrong with tis suggestion? But wouldn’t it be nice if he starts this in his own backyard i.e. Bnagladesh armed forces?
April 8, 2008 at 5:31 am
The sarcasm is too big to miss.
April 8, 2008 at 10:05 am
Is it? is it too big to miss? I’m glad to hear that, because nowdays, Moeen’s words are treated as the font of all wisdom.
April 10, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Yes, Moeen notwithstanding, is it a really bad idea?
April 12, 2008 at 10:07 am
Eating Aloo or potato as an alternative staple, isn’t a bad idea at all. By Bangalee we, the oldies, used to mean ‘Mache Baathe Bangalee’. As I said before in my first response to the same thread that Ayub Khan became unpopular advising us to try eating bread instead of rice. We thought it was conspiracy of Ayub to debangaleefy us.
Now we are no more Bangalee in our legal document [passport]. We are now Bangladeshi after 1975, thanks to Zia’a HIKKMA, otherwise we had to suffer from identity confusion in generation after generation.
So we now can’t malign Moeen’s design as conspiracy to debangaleefy [as we once blamed Ayub] by giving Naseeyat of eating AlOO instead of rice. The advisce isn’t bad at all. However, though we are Bangladeshi in our legal document we have an deeper undelineable instinct of ourselves as ” Mache Baathe Bangalee.” Moreover, this advice has a very negative feel how he messed up the politics and economy while he gunned-get the power making an mega excuse of fixing it.
Thanks.
May 8, 2008 at 1:54 pm
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