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A Welcome Departure in Style
In a radical departure from the practices now evolving around the act and art of governance. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has written to all MPs. irrespective of party identity, to help make a success of the government’s canal digging programme. According to a national daily, she has written to all MPs. including the Leader of Opposition and even to the MPs of General Ershad's Darty, personally seeking the co-operation that nas been necessitated by the patently unspectacular progress of the present canal ramification programme. It is up to the MPs’ pleasure what they will make of the call or if they would ignore it. One thing, however, is sure to be appreciated in the letter by all of them and. now that the content is out. the nation at large. And that is the sense of urgency that has made the Prime Minister to depart so sharply from her style of government. And we. along with the nation. like it. The question of water — enough water — has always been one of our prime concerns long before they barraged the Ganges at Farakka — the dam has only slided the same into a question of life and death for Bangladesh. Everything that has a bearing on water is urgent for Bangladesh. The Prime Minister has matched her timely and wise move by another unusual and yet most welcome move, one that should add a lot to the power of persuasion of that letter. She has admitted, without being much too diplomatic about it. that her government's canal programme hasn't been doing eminently well. We like that too.
The canal digging programme has been expanded by some as the linchpin of President Ziaur Rahman's claim to greatness. The list of these impressed people was never rich with the names of hydrographers and hydrologists, meteorologists and ecologists, economists and sociologists. Twelve years after that dazzling involve-the-people show performance by the late lamented President the canal programme continues to be at the very best a very debatable move, to improve the water situation. The Prime Minister has in her reported letter mentioned two objects of the programme, which if achieved, are sure to contribute very fundamentally to averting a certain national disaster. One of these is the reduction in water-logging which a perennially flowing canal should be able to do capitally. And the other object is to reduce exploitation of subterranean water. This technical element lends the appeal an image of a true attempt at a better water rather than political management. We like this too.
But this wonderful letter doesn't make up for the absence of a convincing hydrological model of the projected canal? dove-tailing into something that would flow round the year and yet not harm the depths and flows of the rivers. Where will the extra water to keep the canals usefully watery come from and what will happen to them once the drought season sets ? Why hasn't the government oeen wedded with equal or more enthusiasm to the centuries-old tested-tried-and-passed rainwater reservoirs or pukurs and dighis Just riddling the nation as of old ? The historic Bengali, according to Wilcox, were the best water managers in the world for thousands of years— better than other illustrious water managers : the people of the Nile or Mekong delta. And two thing they desisted from religiously : tampering with the rivers, tampering with the ground water.
We hope the MPs would take the letter seriously and act at least by replying to the Prime Minister and using the occasion to open their minds on the question. Much confusion had piled on the talk of the programme been executed on a voluntaiy labour basis. Khaleda's letter has tried to lessen it by making it look less voluntary. Still it should continue to be true. While the rural pauperised classes, on the basis of no or half payment. would dig the canals for the benefit ol the firopertied ones, would the MPs and government unctlonaries forego billing the government for their movement etc on account of the digging?