AS we bid adieu to 2001 and greet the second year in the new millennium we become conscious of how defining the by-gone year has been, primarily in terms of international relations and global value system. This marked a paradigm shift of sorts in the way we understood the world thus far. And it won't be long before we know how the definitional shift will impact on the hitherto established patterns of inter-regional and inter-state equations. And that's the note basically on which we would like to comprehend the mankind's collective obligations to the new year.

Not since the Second Great War has the global situation been fraught with such a diversity of dangers and conflict of interests as it is today. And that too, ironically, when the opportunities are at their most plentiful to build a new world order based on equality of access to information superhighway.

The quest for a new global order, both political and economic, in the post-cold war era which is almost a decade-old, should have met with success by now. Far from it, the USA's grossly unequal anti-terrorist war against Afghanistan which spilled more blood than did the terrorist attack on twin-tower and Pentagon has rewritten the script for the "might is right" story, raking it up from the ashes of the two great wars. If the process were to end with the war in Afghanistan, the search for a peaceful and equitable global order could still be deemed to be on course. But this prospect seems blighted by the US' off-repeated resolve to take the war against terrorism beyond Afghanistan.

The scenario is one of 'broad-spectrum US domination' in prospect as a self-prescribed anti-dote to global terrorism while the seeds of terrorism are nurtured by the world's most powerful in some flash-points, of which, Palestine is the most glaring instance. The outgoing year therefore ended with an urgency felt for a more democratic decision-making process embedded in the UN system itself, so that the world body can play its due role in international affairs.

On the home front, last year marking the thirtieth birth anniversary of our national independence, there was a stock-taking of where we stood in terms of fulfilling the aspirations of our people. On the minus side has been the failure to maintain national unity which we had forged during the Liberation War in 1971 and resurrected through a popular upheaval against autocracy in 1990. Although investment in social sectors increased in fits and starts, the asymmetrical distribution of wealth continues chiefly because of corruption, rent-seeking and extortion being associated with the implementation of development programmes. Criminalisation of politics feeding on mastani (musclemanry) and black money prospered as years went by. Public confidence in the police as the custodians of law diminished, something that was illustrated most graphically by lynching of suspected or real muggers in the streets of Dhaka. Oppression of the weak and the vulnerable continued.

On the positive side, we saw food self-sufficiency, a greater public awareness of environmental concerns by virtue of their forceful articulation by civil society leaders and the resultant save the Osmany Uddyan campaign and save the Buriganga drive by demolishing illegal structures along the banks or into the river. The women's employment issues came to the fore revolving around the demand for their greater representation in parliament. Courts took cognisance of newspaper reports to order the release of illegally detained children and adolescents. Judicial activism was pronounced in the areas of public interest litigation and disposal of writs. These trends need to be furthered during the coming year.

Last year's election yielded a government with an overwhelming mandate to rule the country, by far the most powerful one since 1973. With the very emergence of such an inherently strong government, the law and order situation should have improved automatically. Unfortunately, this has not happened so far; partly because some of the initial signals were wrong but mostly owing to the fact that the oft-repeated resolve at the top to eradicate hooliganism is yet to percolate the lower tiers.

That said, we face the world better in the new year with an ambience of political conciliation replacing that of political confrontation.

Happy and prosperous new year to our readers and patrons!