There Is a sens'- of triumph In many important areas of world opinion, most of them naturally situated in the industrial West, over the collapse of communism. It' will not at all help us in the undeveloped ELast to forget that we are not soclo-eco-nomically so placed that we can share in the Jubilation and build ' ur cenotaphs after interring everything that great human endeavour of seven decades meant and represented and taught We must beware of not throwing the baby out with the bath-water

One good lesson of socialist proselytization was the emphasis on the truism that emancipation would not come to woman until she has been gainfully employ* I or all her labour is paid for and she can contribute significantly to the family budget. If our so< ieiy. badly as it is in the need of all-round progre^ - has to have a balanced development. the foremost item on the card of needfuls would be th elimination of the gender imbalance. The best way to this would be bringing about a radical lm rease in the number of paying lobs for women The great and now-supposed-to-te-falled socialist experiment also taught us a very good way to go about this business.

Our successive governments, not excluding the administrations during the Pakistani colonial dispensation. have been willy-nilly responsive to the weight of logic and common sense on the one hand and the trends of the times — of going for more and more women in education and medicine. Bangladesh has also been keeping to trend rather enthusiastically.

The first meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Women's Affairs was held at the Sangsad Bhaban on Tuesday. Of the diverse Items the meeting deliberated on what was non-fulfilment Job quotas for women in primary schools and colleges and government establishments. Any reader will suspect a gap in the foregoing sentence. Is the quota for women teachers in the high schools full up? He or she should be well-advised to be wakeful to the absurdities of our educational realities. There perhaps is no quota for women teachers In the high schools! Girls' schools employ male teachers all right. And again there are girls' colleges as well and that hasn't stopped both boys' and girls' colleges to employ both male and female teachers. Education, let us exclude madrasa education from this category, is at no level in Bangladesh segregated genderwise Why should educational employment be? If there is no problem In letting male children and male young people to be taught by women teachers, where can the wrong be in women teaching boys? This Is a lacuna which should be taken care of as soon as it is identified.

The more serious aspect of the non-fulfilment of the Job quota reserved for women lies elsewhere. What's holding induction of the required number of women? Non-avallability of eligible women? That cannot be true. Male pressure Is what prevails and people in authority In all such establishments are either not very serious about their duty in this respect or are plainly giving a damn to the whole despicable business.

The quota fulfilment work is something required by the state of its paid functionaries. It is now for the state to take to. task all who have . been responsible f or not only disobeying government direction but also seriously undermining the very spirit of our Constitution.