বিভাগ/বিষয় নিরপেক্ষ

সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক: অক্টোবর ২০১৭

আজকের লিন্ক

মুক্তাঙ্গন-এ উপরোক্ত শিরোনামের নিয়মিত এই সিরিজটিতে থাকছে দেশী বিদেশী পত্রপত্রিকা, ব্লগ ও গবেষণাপত্র থেকে পাঠক সুপারিশকৃত ওয়েবলিন্কের তালিকা। কী ধরণের বিষয়বস্তুর উপর লিন্ক সুপারিশ করা যাবে তার কোনো নির্দিষ্ট নিয়ম, মানদণ্ড বা সময়কাল নেই। পুরো ইন্টারনেট থেকে যা কিছু গুরত্বপূর্ণ, জরুরি, মজার বা আগ্রহোদ্দীপক মনে করবেন পাঠকরা, তা-ই তাঁরা মন্তব্য আকারে উল্লেখ করতে পারেন এখানে।
ধন্যবাদ।

আজকের লিন্ক

এখানে থাকছে দেশী বিদেশী পত্রপত্রিকা, ব্লগ ও গবেষণাপত্র থেকে পাঠক সুপারিশকৃত ওয়েবলিন্কের তালিকা। পুরো ইন্টারনেট থেকে যা কিছু গুরত্বপূর্ণ, জরুরি, মজার বা আগ্রহোদ্দীপক মনে করবেন পাঠকরা, তা-ই সুপারিশ করুন এখানে। ধন্যবাদ।

১৮ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ২ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৫:৪২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    প্রয়াত দ্বিজেন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়

    চলে গেলেন দ্বিজেন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়। দীর্ঘ অসুস্থতার পর হৃদ্‌রোগে আক্রান্ত হয়ে। শারদোৎসবের মধ্যেই। ২৭ সেপ্টেম্বর। বয়স হয়েছিল ৬৮ বছর।‌‌ মঞ্চের এই দক্ষ অভিনেতা জীবনের শেষ দিকে বেশ কিছু দিন অবশ্য অভিনয় থেকে দূরেই ছিলেন শারীরিক কারণে। তবে এই সময়ের ভেতরেও নাট্য–‌নিবেদিতপ্রাণ মানুষটি মঞ্চের জন্য কাজ করে গেছেন নেপথ্য থেকেই। কখনও তা পরিচালনা–উপদেশনার কাজ, আবার কখনও নিজের দল ‘সংস্তব’–‌এর প্রযোজনা, পৃষ্ঠপোষণ। সেদিক থেকে ‘‌সংস্তব’‌–‌এর প্রযোজনা ‘‌কাউ’‌ ছিল মঞ্চের সঙ্গে তাঁর শেষ যোগাযোগ–সূত্র।
    দ্বিজেন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়ের জন্ম ১৯৪৯–‌এর ২২ সেপ্টেম্বর, কলকাতায়। চার্টার্ড অ্যাকাউন্ট্যাসির ছাত্র দ্বিজেনবাবু ইন্টারমিডিয়েট পাস করার পর ফাইনাল পরীক্ষা দেননি। পেশা হিসেবে বেছে নিয়েছিলেন অভিনয়কে। অভিনেতা হিসেবে তাঁর খ্যাতির শুরু থিয়েটার কমিউনের প্রযোজনা ‘‌কিংকিং’‌ থেকে। এই সময় নীলকণ্ঠ সেনগুপ্তর সঙ্গে তাঁর জুটি জনপ্রিয় হয় আরও একটি নাটকে। প্রেমচন্দর গল্প থেকে তৈরি ‘‌দানসাগর’‌–‌এ। তবে দ্বিজেনবাবু পরিচিতির শীর্ষে পৌঁছন শূদ্রক–‌এর প্রযোজনা ‘অমিতাক্ষর’–‌এ। আদ্যন্ত এক ভীরু মানুষ চাপের মুখে কীভাবে রুখে দাঁড়াচ্ছেন, তারই কাহিনী এই নাটক। কেন্দ্রীয় চরিত্র ত্বিষাজনতি করতেন তিনি। নাটকটির পরিচালনাও ছিল তাঁরই। এর পর গান্ধার–‌এর ‘‌নিলাম নিলাম’‌, ‘‌ভস্মা’, কিংবা রংরূপ–‌এর ‘‌বিকল্প’ নাটকগুলিতে আবার অসিত মুখোপাধ্যায়ের সঙ্গে তাঁর জুটি তৈরি হয়। দ্বিজেনবাবু একদিকে যেমন ছিলেন স্বভাববাদী অভিনেতা, তেমনই একজন পরিচালকের পক্ষে বিশ্বস্ত অভিনেতাও। তাই বড় পরিচালকরা বরাবরই তাঁকে আমন্ত্রণ জানিয়েছেন নিজেদের প্রযোজনায়। সেভাবেই শম্ভু মিত্রের সঙ্গে দু’বার অভিনয় করেছেন দ্বিজেনবাবু— ‘‌গ্যালিলেওর জীবন’‌ ও ‘‌দশচক্র’‌–‌এ। বিভাস চক্রবর্তীর পরিচালনায় করেছেন বলিদান এবং ‘‌গাজি সাহেবের কিস্‌সা’‌। পরবর্তী কালে সৌমিত্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়ের পরিচালনায় টানা অভিনয় করে গেছেন দু’‌দশক ধরে। যার সূত্রপাত বিশ্বরূপা মঞ্চে পেশাদারি থিয়েটারে, ন্যায়দণ্ড নাটকে, যা ছিল পেশাদারি মঞ্চে সৌমিত্রবাবুর শেষ কাজ। পরে গ্রুপ থিয়েটারে যখন সৌমিত্রবাবু এলেন, তখনও তাঁর নির্ভরযোগ্য প্রধান অভিনেতা দ্বিজেন বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়। ‘‌প্রাণতপস্যা’‌, ‘‌নীলকণ্ঠ’, ‘‌আরেকটি দিন’‌, ‘‌কুরবানী’, ‘‌আরোহণ’‌, ‘‌হোমাপাখি’ হয়ে ‘‌ছাড়িগঙ্গা’‌ পর্যন্ত যার বিস্তার। এমনকী সৌমিত্রবাবুর আত্মকথামূলক নাটক ‘‌তৃতীয় অঙ্ক অতএব’‌–‌এও সৌমিত্রবাবুর অন্যতম অল্টার ইগোর চরিত্র করেছেন দ্বিজেনবাবু।
    টেলিভিশন ধারাবাহিকেও তিনি হয়ে উঠেছিলেন জনপ্রিয় মুখ। বিশেষত হাস্যরসের অভিনয়ে। কিন্তু অভিনেতা হিসেবে এই ব্যস্ততা কখনই মঞ্চ‌বিমুখ করেনি তাঁকে। নিজে পরিচালনা করেছেন ‘তৃষাগ্নি’ এবং ‘‌মুষ্টিযোগ’‌–‌এর মতো দুই পলিটিক্যাল স্যাটায়ার। তাঁর নিজের পরিচালিত ‘‌গুণধরের অসুখ’‌–‌এ তিনি করতেন নাম চরিত্রটি, যে গুণধর বয়সে যুবক হলেও মনের দিক থেকে শিশু। আবার সম্প্রতি দ্বিজেনবাবুর পরিচালনায় ‘স্পর্ধাবর্ণ’ নাটকটি ছিল আদ্যন্ত সিরিয়াস এক রাজনৈতিক নাটক। এর পর পরই তিনি কাফকার উপন্যাস ‘‌ট্রায়াল’‌ থেকে তৈরি নাটক ‘‌আইনসিদ্ধ’‌ পরিচালনা করেন। এই নাটকেরও মূল চরিত্রে অভিনয় করতেন তিনি। এই নাটক চলতে চলতেই স্মৃতিভ্রংশ অসুখের শিকার হন, যা তাঁর অভিনয় জীবনে ছেদ ঘটায়। ইচ্ছে ছিল ‘স্পর্ধাবর্ণ’ ও ‘‌আইনসিদ্ধ’র পর আরেকটি রাজনৈতিক নাটক করে একটি ট্রিলজি করবেন। আকস্মিক মৃত্যুতে তা আর হয়ে উঠল না।‌

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ২ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৫:৫০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    >Tom Alter (1950-2017): The actor, sports lover and reciter of Urdu poetry

    Tom Alter has been working in Indian films since 1976. He is best known for ‘Parinda’, ‘Aashiqui’ and the TV show ‘Zabaan Sambhalke’.

    Tom Alter was often asked if he was Indian. “I hope you won’t ask me if I am an Indian. I trust you know that I am one,” Alter said before the journalist even began the interview in 2003.

    The go-to actor for portraying foreign characters, particularly British nationals, has died in Mumbai. Alter died on the night of September 29 at the age of 67. He had been suffering from skin cancer for the past few years. He is survived by his wife Carol and his children Jamie and Afshaan.

    In a career spanning 40 years, Alter played British officers, British doctors, and anything else British numerous times. Seldom did he get purely Indian roles on screen. The exceptions include Mandakini’s screen brother Karam Singh in Raj Kapoor’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), the gangster Moosa in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parinda (1989) and Mahaguru, an all-powerful sage in the superhero TV series Shaktimaan (1997-2005).

    Alter was actually an American. Born Thomas Beach Alter on June 22, 1950, to Presbyterian missionaries whose parents had come to India from Ohio a century ago, Alter spent his childhood in Mussoorie, Allahabad, Jabalpur, Saharanpur and Rajpur. His father, a teacher of history and English, was instrumental in giving Alter the knowledge of Hindi and Urdu. Alter, along with the members of his parents’ order, would have to recite Biblical texts in Urdu and Hindi.

    Alter studied at Woodstock School in Landor. He was initially more interested in sports rather than acting, and he preferred Hollywood films to Hindi cinema. It was in 1969, after his return from Yale University, where he had studied for a year, and during his employment as a teacher in Jagadhri, a town in Haryana, that he discovered Hindi films. There, he watched Aradhana, became a lifelong fan of Rajesh Khanna, and thereafter decided to become an actor.

    Alter enrolled into the Film and Television Institute of India and learning acting alongside Naseeruddin Shah and Benjamin Gilani under the tutelage of Roshan Taneja. Alter’s first onscreen role was of an intelligence officer in Rome trying to nab a cannabis-smuggling network in Charas (1976). Alter’s character bossed around the hero played by Dharmendra – which was a big deal at that time, especially in Punjab, where Dharmendra was hugely popular.

    The next year, Alter starred as Weston, the personal secretary to General James Outram (Richard Attenborough) in Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977). Early in the movie, Alter charmed audiences with his chaste Urdu enunciation as his character recited a poem written by Awadh’s ruler Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan). Alter’s command over Hindi and Urdu, and, of course, his looks, repeatedly got him roles of white, mostly villainous men who could drop purple prose at the drop of a hat: a good example being Kranti (1981) directed by and starring Manoj Kumar.

    The first Indian character Alter played was that of the Gangotri resident, the simple-minded Karam Singh in Ram Teri Ganga Maili. Parinda was another interesting addition to his career because for the first time, he played a Mumbai gangster, Musa. His entry scene had him wearing a black kurta and pyjama. After Musa threatens the hero, Kishan (Jackie Shroff), a fight sequence erupts between Musa’s henchmen and Kishan.

    Through the 1990s and 2000s, Alter kept playing foreign or Anglo-Indian men in several high-profile films such as Aashiqui (1990) and Veer-Zaara (2004). Alter became a household name with his comedic turn in the TV show Zabaan Sambhalke (1993-’97), in which he played a British man trying to learn Hindi in India. He went on to play supporting roles in Shaktimaan and the shortlived sci-fi series Captain Vyom (1997). Alter, who had played a series of British characters, including Louis Mountbatten in Ketan Mehta’s Sardar (1993), got a chance to play Abdul Kalam Azad in Shyam Benegal’s TV series Samvidhaan: The Making of the Constitution of India (2014).

    Even as acting became Alter’s day job, he always found time to attend to his first love: sports, particularly, cricket. He has written columns on cricket for a variety of publications over time, including Sportsweek, Outlook and Debonair. In fact, he was the reporter who interviewed Sachin Tendulkar for the first time on television.

    His involvement with the arts extended to the stage. In 1977, Alter formed Motley Productions, a theatre company with his FTII friends Shah and Gilani. One of the first plays staged by the company was an acclaimed adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Alter also performed with the New Delhi theatre group Pierrot’s Troupe.

    On stage, Alter had the freedom to exercise more creativity by portraying an array of historical characters: Mirza Ghalib, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sahir Ludhianvi, Bahadur Shah Zafar, KL Saigal, Rabindranath Tagore, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, among others.

    For a man who once wanted to “be like Rajesh Khanna”, Alter has had to clarify that he is not a foreigner time and again, though that never seemed to come in the way of his illustrious career in theatre. Cinema remained his first love. “I came to Bombay (Mumbai) to become Rajesh Khanna. I didn’t come to act on stage. Theatre isn’t secondary, but my passion lies in films,” Alter said earlier this year.

  3. মাসুদ করিম - ২ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৫:৫৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Nobel prize for medicine awarded for insights into internal biological clock

    The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded a trio of American scientists for their discoveries on the molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms – in other words, the 24-hour body clock.

    According to the Nobel committee’s citation, Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young were recognised for their discoveries explaining “how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions.”

    The team identified a gene within fruit flies that controls the creatures’ daily rhythm. The gene encodes a protein within the cell during the night which then degrades during the day.

    When there is a mismatch between this internal “clock” and the external surroundings, it can affect the organism’s wellbeing – for example, in humans, when we experience jet lag.

    The team’s discoveries of various genes and proteins involved in the internal clock helped to explain how the self-regulating mechanism works and adapts to different conditions, as well as the mechanism by which light can synchronise the clock.

    All three winners are from the US. Hall, 72, has retired but spent the majority of his career at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachussetts, where fellow laureate Rosbash, 73, is still a faculty member. Young, 68, works at Rockefeller University in New York.

    Sir Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute, who shared the Nobel prize in 2001 for research on the cell cycle, said the work was important for the basic understanding of life.

    “Every living organism on this planet responds to the sun,” he said. “All plant and also animal behaviour is determined by the light-dark cycle. We on this planet are slaves to the sun. The circadian clock is embedded in our mechanisms of working, our metabolism, it’s embedded everywhere, it’s a real core feature for understanding life.

    “We are increasingly becoming aware that there are implications for human disease,” Nurse added. “There is some evidence that treatment of disease can be influenced by circadian rhythms too. People have reported that when you have surgery or when you have a drug can actually influence things. It’s still not clear, but there will almost certainly be some implications for the treatment of disease too.”

    “I think it is a fantastic development,” said professor Hugh Piggins, an expert on circadian rhythms at the University of Manchester. But, he added, it was not unexpected, pointing out the work had been tipped for the win for several years.

    Bambos Kyriacou, professor of behavioural genetics at the University of Leicester, who is friends with all three winners and a former colleague of two, described the laureates as being very different. “Jeff [Hall] is eccentric … brilliant but eccentric,” he said. “Michael [Rosbash], there is no stopping him – he is just going 100%, he will die with his boots on in the lab, and Michael Young is the most charming, nicest one of them because he is polite and pleasant, whereas the other two aren’t like that, they are just crazy.”
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    The winners will share a prize of 9m Swedish kronor (£825,000), and each receive a medal engraved with their name.

    Last year the prize was won by Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist who unpicked the mechanisms by which the body break downs and recycles components of cells – a process that guards against various diseases, including cancer and diabetes.

    In total, 107 Nobel prizes for physiology or medicine have been won by 211 scientists since 1901, with just 12 awarded to women. Nonetheless, it remains the science award with the highest such tally – the physics prize has only been awarded, so far, to two women: Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert Mayer.

    This year’s winners of the physics, chemistry, literature and peace prizes are scheduled to be announced over the coming days. The economics prize will be announced on Monday 9 October.

  4. মাসুদ করিম - ৩ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৩:০৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    লাল সালাম, কমরেড জসিম

    বাংলাদেশের কমিউনিস্ট আন্দোলনের বর্ষীয়ান নেতা কমরেড জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডল ২ অক্টোবর ঢাকার একটা হাসপাতালে মারা গেছেন। তার বয়স হয়েছিল ৯৫ বছর।
    তিনি মুক্তিযুদ্ধের সংগঠক ছিলেন, ছিলেন রেলের শ্রমিক ও পরে শ্রমিক নেতা। জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডল ১৯২৪ সালে বর্তমান কুষ্টিয়া জেলার কালিদাসপুর গ্রামে জন্মগ্রহণ করেন। ১৯৩৯ সালে তিনি রেল ইঞ্জিনে কয়লা ফেলার চাকরি পান। কিশোর বয়স থেকে তিনি মহাত্মা গান্ধী, বাঘা যতীন, প্রীতিলতা, জ্যোতি বসু, কবি সুকান্ত ভট্টাচার্য, বিদ্রোহী কবি কাজী নজরুল ইসলামসহ প্রখ্যাত মানুষের সাম্নিধ্য পান। ষাটের দশকে রেলওয়েতে চালের বদলে খুদ দেওয়ায় তিনি রেল শ্রমিকদের নিয়ে প্রতিবাদ ও আন্দোলন করেন। এতে তার চাকরি চলে যায়। তিনি জেলের বন্দিদের ওপর পাকিস্তান সরকারের নির্যাতনের বিরুদ্ধে আন্দোলন করতে গিয়ে নিজেই অমানুষিক নির্যাতনের শিকার হয়েছেন। তিনি বাংলাদেশেও জিয়া এবং এরশাদের শাসনামলে একাধিকবার কারাবরণ ও নির্যাতনের শিকার হন। রাজনীতির জীবনে তিনি মোট ১৯ বছর জেলে কাটিয়েছেন।
    জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডল শ্রমজীবী রাজনীতি করতেন। নিজেও ছিলেন সর্বহারা। তার নিজস্ব কোনো বাড়ি নেই। পাবনার ঈশ্বরদীতে বন্দোবস্ত নেওয়া সরকারি একখণ্ড জায়গায় তিনি বসবাস করতেন। তিনি খুব সাধারণ পরিবারে জন্মগ্রহণ করেছিলেন। প্রাতিষ্ঠানিক শিক্ষা তেমন ছিল না।
    জসিম উদ্দিল মণ্ডল কমিউনিস্ট পার্টির রাজনীতি করতেন। পার্টির অনেক গুরুত্বপূর্ণ পদে ছিলেন। তিনি সারাদেশে ব্যাপক পরিচিত ও জনপ্রিয় নেতা ছিলেন। এই পরিচিতির কারণ হলো, তিনি খুব সাধারণ ভাষায় মানুষের প্রাণের কথা বলতেন। সমাজে বৈষম্য-হাহাকার-বেকারত্ব-অনাচার তিনি খুব সরল ভাষায় ফুটিয়ে তুলতেন।
    আমার মনে আছে, ১৯৮৮ সাল। আমরা ছাত্র ইউনিয়নের কর্মী। মফস্বলে থাকি। আমাদের স্বপ্ন, আমরা সমাজ পাল্টে দেব। আমরা গ্রামে গ্রামে ক্ষেত মজুরদের সংগঠিত করছি, শ্রমিকদের সংগঠিত করছি, জনগণের সঙ্গে আমাদের যোগাযোগ বাড়াচ্ছি। আন্দোলন-সংগ্রাম-সংগঠন একসঙ্গে এগিয়ে চলছে। ‘৮৭-র এরশাদবিরোধী আন্দোলনে আমাদের কমরেডরা মূলশক্তি। কেন্দ্র থেকে প্রান্তে।
    ফলে জেল-হুলিয়া-নির্যাতনেও আমাদের কমরেডরা পুলিশের প্রথম টার্গেট। আমাদের বাগেরহাটেও পুলিশ দাপিয়ে বেড়াচ্ছে। বাড়ি বাড়ি হানা দিচ্ছে, কমরেড মৃণ্ময় মণ্ডল, ছাত্রনেতা কামরুজ্জামান গ্রেফতার। কাজী সোহরাব, অ্যাডভোকেট হাবিবুর রহমানসহ অনেকে পলাতক জীবনে। আমরা থানা শহরে থাকি, চাপ আছে তবুও আমরা ছুটে চলি- দিনে ছাত্রদের মাঝে কাজ করি, রাতে গ্রাম বৈঠক। আমাদের শক্তি বাড়ছে। আমরা ছড়িয়ে পড়ছি, ২০০০ সালের মধ্যে দৃশ্যমান শক্তি হিসেবে আমাদের পার্টিকে দাঁড় করতে হবে। আমরা মানুষের কাছে আমাদের কথা নিয়ে যাব।
    ১৯৮৮ সাল। তারিখটা মনে নেই, জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডল আমাদের এলাকায় এলেন। পরদিন জনসভা। মনে আছে, তরুণ কর্মী হিসেবে আমরা কয়েকজন মাইকিং করছিলাম। তিনি আমাদের ডাকলেন। বললেন, মাইকিংয়ের ধরন পাল্টাও। কে বক্তৃতা করবে সেটা গুরুত্বপূর্ণ না, জনসভায় কী বিষয়ে কথা হবে সেটা বলো। মনে আছে, তিনি বললেন, এরশাদ কেন যাচ্ছে না, চালের দাম কেন কমছে না, চাষি কেন পাটের দাম পায় না- এ বিষয়ে জনসভায় কথা বলা হবে। আমরা সেভাবে প্রচার করলাম। পরদিন তিনি বক্তৃতা দিলেন প্রায় দুই ঘণ্টা। আমরা মুগ্ধ হয়ে শুনলাম। যেন আমরা প্রশিক্ষণ নিচ্ছি। তখন পর্যন্ত ছোটদের রাজনীতি-অর্থনীতির মতো বই পড়া শেষ করা তার বক্তৃতায় বুঝতে পেরেছিলাম, পৃথিবীর ইতিহাস আসলে শ্রেণি-সংগ্রামের ইতিহাস। পৃথিবীতে আসলেই দুটি শ্রেণি। ধনী ও গরিব। ধনী গরিবকে ঠকায়, শোষণ করে। একটি সমাজ গড়ে ওঠে, সভ্যতা গড়ে ওঠে শ্রমজীবীদের রক্ত আর ঘামে। অথচ সেই সভ্যতার সব থেকে বঞ্চিত জনগোষ্ঠী এরাই।
    যারা তার বক্তব্য শুনেছেন তারা জানেন, আমাদের সমাজে আমাদের চোখের সামনে মানুষ মানুষকে কীভাবে শোষণ করছে, ধর্মের নামে, বর্ণের নামে বিভাজন ছড়িয়ে। তা তিনি বলতেন জীবনঘনিষ্ঠ ভাষায়। দেখেছি দু-একজন পণ্ডিত তার ভাষার ব্যবহার নিয়ে পেছনে আহ-উহ করেছেন। তিনি গেয়ো ভাষায় বক্তব্য দেন বলে। কিন্তু এটা তো ঠিক, বহু পণ্ডিত মার্কসবাদ নিয়ে ভলিউম লিখেছেন। কিন্তু এরা মানুষের কাছে পৌঁছাতে পারেননি। যে শ্রমজীবী মানুষের জন্য আমরা রাজনীতি করি বলে দাবি করি, জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডল তাদের নেতা ছিলেন। এরা জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডলকে নেতা হিসেবে ভালোবেসেছেন।
    আমরা কি বলতে পারব, তার মতো আর কেউ সহজ ভাষায় মার্কসবাদ, লেনিনবাদ বা বস্তুবাদকে শ্রমজীবী মানুষের কাছে কে তুলে ধরতে পেরেছে? খেয়াল করুন- ‘আমার ফরিদপুরের পাটচাষি পাট বোনে, পাট ক্ষেত নিড়ায়, তার পায়ে জোঁক লাগে, ছটাক ছটাক রক্ত খায়। পাট বেচে সেই চাষি পায় ২০০ টাকা আর যে মতিঝিলে সাততলার পরে বসে ইনডেন্টিং ব্যবসা করে, পাটও দেখে না, জোঁকও দেখে না, সে পায় ৮০০ টাকা। এই ব্যবস্থা আমরা ভাঙতে চাই।’ আবার তিনি বলেছেন, ‘আমি শ্রমিকের বাড়িতে যাই, আমার শ্রমিক বলে, জসিম ভাই, আমি বিস্কুট কারখানায় কাজ করি, রাতে বাসায় ফিরলে আমার ছেলে বলে, বাপ তোর গায়ে এত ঘ্রাণ কেন? কিসের ঘ্রাণ? আমার জন্য একটা বিস্কুট আনতে পারিস নাঙ্ঘ তুই কেমন বাপঙ্ঘ’ সমাজের বৈষম্য, শ্রমজীবী মানুষের জীবনের হাহাকার এভাবে কে তুলে ধরতে পেরেছে? এত সহজ করে শোষণ আর তাকে টিকিয়ে রাখার চেষ্টার উদাহরণ আর কে দিতে পারত?
    তিনি বক্তা ছিলেন, নেতা ছিলেন, শিক্ষক ছিলেন। ছিলেন মার্কসবাদী আর তার শিক্ষক। তার বক্তব্য শুনে অনেকে মার্কসবাদ বুঝত। তিনি ছিলেন নিজের জীবনের পাঠশালায় স্বশিক্ষিত এক বিপল্গবী। নিজের জীবন দিয়ে দেখেছেন তার সময়ে সমাজের বৈষম্য। তিনি সেই বৈষম্য দূর করতে সংগঠনের প্রয়োজনীয়তা অনুধাবন করেছেন, রাজনীতির প্রয়োজনীয়তা অনুধাবন করেছেন, কমিউনিস্ট পার্টি বেছে নিয়েছেন। তিনি ছোটবেলায় বুঝতে শিখেছেন, এই সমাজ আমাদের ভাত দেয় না, এই সমাজ আমাদের মধ্যে শোষক আর শোষিত সৃষ্টি করে। সেই সমাজকে টিকিয়ে রাখা মানেই শোষণকে টিকিয়ে রাখা। তিনি বিশ্বাস করতেন- সমাজ বদলের একমাত্র হাতিয়ার হলো রাজনীতি। বিপল্গব ছাড়া মুক্তির পথ নেই। তিনি জানতেন, সমাজ পাল্টাতে হলে একটি শক্তিশালী শ্রেণি-সংগ্রামের পার্টি দরকার। তিনি সেই পার্টি বেছে নিতে পেরেছিলেন। তিনি পার্টিকে ভালোবাসতেন। সে জন্য যখন তার পার্টিকে ১৯৯৩ সালে পার্টির ভেতর থেকে বিলুপ্ত করার উদ্যোগ নেওয়া হয়েছে, তিনি তার বিরুদ্ধে দাঁড়িয়েছেন। তার সময়ের অনেকে রাজনীতির সুবিধা নিতে উল্টো দিকে ছুটেছেন। তিনি ছোটেননি। যে দেশের জন্য ত্যাগের যে জীবন তিনি বেছে নিয়েছিলেন, সেই বাল্যকালে সেখান থেকে সরেননি।
    কমরেড জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডল বুকে সমাজ বদলের স্বপ্ন ধারণ করতেন। জেলজীবন-আত্মগোপন-জেলে অনশন সব ছিল মানুষের জন্য। তিনি জানতেন, স্বপ্ন বাস্তবায়নের জন্য একটা শক্তিশালী পার্টি দরকার। সে জন্য তিনি ছুটেছেন দেশের এ-প্রান্ত থেকে ও-প্রান্ত। মানুষের কাছে, যে মানুষ ছিল তার রাজনীতির নায়ক। বিদ্যমান শোষণ কাঠামোর সমাজ পরিবর্তনের জন্য আরও শক্তিশালী আন্দোলন গড়ে তোলা এবং তাকে জয়ী করার মাধ্যমে আমরা তার প্রতি শ্রদ্ধা জানাব।
    কমরেড জসিম উদ্দিন মণ্ডল, লাল সালাম।

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ৩ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৫:১৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017

    The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”.

  6. মাসুদ করিম - ৪ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৬:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017

    The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson “for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution”.

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ৫ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৯:১১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Myanmar’s resurgent nationalism shapes new political landscape

    Extreme sentiments fueled by social media highlight external, internal disconnect

    The United Nations Security Council in recent weeks has placed new focus on Myanmar through discussions about violence in the country’s western Rakhine state, allegations of “ethnic cleansing” and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring Bangladesh.

    Missing though was the bigger picture in Myanmar, beyond Rakhine, which will not only shape future options for refugee return, but also regional stability, and any possibility of a better life for all the country’s peoples.

    Aside from Rakhine, there are at least another half million internally displaced persons, around 20 ethnic-based armed groups (the largest with more than 20,000 soldiers), hundreds of militias in the rest of the country and no real peace in sight. In addition, the economy is far from healthy, with the stability of the banking sector in question, investor confidence in decline, and prospects for millions of the poorest people in Asia in the balance. Meanwhile, Beijing is offering major infrastructure projects that would tie the country more closely with China’s interior provinces and essentially make Myanmar China’s bridge to the Indian Ocean.

    The current constitution gives the armed forces crucial powers over security while allowing the elected civilian government free reign over economic issues and foreign relations. It has been a tense cohabitation and the success of the next elections in 2020 and further democratic reforms are far from guaranteed.

    For Myanmar’s people, this is a time of anxiety. Millions are worried that the fast pace of change will leave them and their families destitute and without opportunity. These same millions are now on the internet. Over the past five years the proportion of people with mobile phones has gone from a few percent to more than 70%. A population that still largely lacks access to electricity, clean water or health care is now on Facebook, widely regarded as Myanmar’s only social media platform.

    New dark currents

    In this time of national anxiety, a neo-nationalism is taking shape, enabled by social media and fueled both by the unfolding crisis in Rakhine state and a sense that the outside word, in particular the U.N. and the West, are siding with Myanmar’s mortal enemies.

    While world opinion is focused on the humanitarian tragedy along the border with Bangladesh and allegations of horrific human rights abuses mainly against the minority Rohingya, the view inside the country is not only different but diametrically opposite.

    In Myanmar the overwhelming focus among not only by the government but also the general public has been on the threat from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and fears of Islamic extremism. Since ARSA’s attacks on Aug. 25, Myanmar social media has been brimming with reports of alleged ARSA atrocities against Buddhist and Hindu minorities, tens of thousands of whom have fled south away from the country’s Muslim majority areas.

    In late September, both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group called for action in Myanmar, heightening fears of impending terrorist attacks in Yangon or Mandalay. Eyewitness accounts from refugees are often dismissed as fabrications, and what is seen from outside as a Rohingya human rights tragedy is portrayed within Myanmar — especially by Rakhine Buddhists — as a foreign invasion by illegal immigrants turned terrorists.

    A resurgent nationalism is taking shape but remains inchoate, uncertain of its attitudes toward the country’s many and varied minorities, relations with the West and China, as well as the very idea of Myanmar democracy.

    Forsaken Rakhine

    The northern part of Rakhine is one of the least hospitable places on the planet — an earthquake zone, prone to devastating cyclones, and with up to nearly a meter of torrential rain a month during the monsoon season. It was here in February 1944 that Indians, Gurkhas, Englishmen and West Africans fought the Japanese in the Battle of the Admin Box. It has also long been a civilizational divide. Burmese chronicles relate ancient encounters in the region between humans and bilus, or ogres. For ancient Indians, the lands beyond the Meghna river in Bangladesh were a Pandava barjita desh, a land of utter barbarism, a place no self-respecting Hindu would go.

    It was here too in 1824, after a different insurgency and refugee crisis, that the British East India Company invaded the kingdom of Burma. In Myanmar, the region is still known as the anouk-taga, the “western gate.”

    The early history of Rakhine, also known as Arakan, is little understood, but by the 1400s it was a spirited little kingdom that stretched from present-day Chittagong to the Andaman Sea. The kings spoke Rakhine, a variant of Burmese, and were Buddhists who built temples of singular beauty. But they were cosmopolitans too, some taking both Bengali-Muslim and Burmese Pali titles, welcoming Dutch traders and integrating Afghan archers and renegade Japanese samurai into their bodyguard. Bengali slaves, captured together with Portuguese pirates, were brought to populate today’s borderlands.

    The Burmese coming from the Irrawaddy valley destroyed this kingdom in 1785. Then came the British, who in the interests of ever more revenue encouraged the immigration of hundreds of thousands of what one colonial officer termed the “frugal and hard-working Bengali Muslims from Chittagong.” Burmese settlers arrived from the other direction and by 1910 the Rakhine were a minority in their own land.

    Burmese nationalism was born around the same time as what we might call today an anti-globalization and anti-immigration movement. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Bengali Muslims were migrating overland into Rakhine, millions of others from the Indian subcontinent were arriving by sea. The colonial economy grew by leaps and bounds, but with the Burmese near the bottom of the new social pyramid.

    Rakhine nationalism was akin to Burmese nationalism. There were ties to Theravada Buddhism and a dread of being overwhelmed both by modernity and by outsiders. When the Japanese invaded in 1942 and civil administration broke down, thousands were butchered in Buddhist-Muslim ethnic violence, with the Japanese arming the Buddhist Rakhine and the British arming the Muslims (as part of their “V Force” reconnaissance and guerrilla operation).

    After the war, leaders of local Muslim communities (who speak a dialect of Bengali) toyed with the idea of northern Rakhine joining Pakistan and demanded their own “homeland” within Burma. The “mujahideen” and other local insurgencies waxed and waned over the following decades. In 1978 and 1990, hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees fled to Bangladesh in the wake of army crackdowns. By the 1990s Rakhine had become one of the poorest and most isolated parts of a very poor and isolated country.

    A question of ethnic identity

    Burmese nationalists, like the British ethnographers before them, take an essentialist view of ethnicity (like nearly all foreign commentators today, unfortunately) and divide the country into “indigenous” and “alien” races. A central tenet of Burmese nationalism is that the country belongs to people officially recognized as indigenous (taing-yin-tha), with everyone else a “guest.” The Shan and the Kachin, for example, are seen as indigenous. So too are the Kokang, descendants of Chinese freebooters who fled the Manchu invasions of the 17th century; and the Muslim Kamans, whose Afghan ancestors arrived around the same time in the train of the Mughal Prince Shah Shuja, an erstwhile governor of Bengal. They were regarded as indigenous because “their people” came prior to British rule. Those who arrived after — Tamil Christians, Nepali Hindus, Yunnanese Muslims, and many others — are welcome to stay, say the nationalists, but their cultures will never be accepted in the same way.

    It is not really an issue of citizenship. Under the current 1982 citizenship law, immigrants and their children may only be “naturalized” or recognized as “associate” citizens, with restricted political rights. But by the third generation, people of any ethnic background, for example the grandchildren of early 20th century Bengali Muslim migrants, are allowed the privileges of full citizenship.

    It is more an issue of perceived history and discrimination. Today, virtually all Burmese believe that Bangladesh (and East Pakistan before) has been the source of mammoth illegal immigration. They blame the corruption of border officials and the greed of businessmen in search of cheap labor. They say many in northern Rakhine are recent illegal migrants. They accept that many may also be descendants of British-era Bengali immigrants and so qualified for citizenship, but oppose allowing them to identify themselves as “Rohingya.”

    The very word “Rohingya” is anathema in Myanmar because it is seen as a claim to be officially recognized as an indigenous people, a taing-yin-tha. The presence of distinguished Muslims, like the 17th century poet Shah Aloal or eunuch and war minister Ashraf Khan, at the court of the old Rakhine kingdom of Mrauk U in cannot be disputed. It is also clear that Rakhine had a significant population of Bengali Muslims, captured as slaves, long before the British arrived on the scene. What is not clear is who is actually descended from whom. The British had a mix of terms for varied Muslim peoples in this area: Arakanese Mohamedans, Chittagonians, Zerabadis, Kamans, Bengali Muslims.

    In the 1950s, local Muslim politicians crafted the ethnonym “Rohingya” as a new overarching and indigenous identity for all but the Kaman Muslims, and by the end of the last decade, Rohingya had become the preferred way for Muslims in northern Rakhine, at least, to identify themselves. It is this very claim to be taing-yin-tha that is rejected ferociously by Burmese.

    Final opportunity

    Five years ago, around the time U.S. President Barack Obama spoke at Yangon University about the importance of seeing Myanmar’s diversity as a strength, there was a hope that the country’s incipient transition would be infused with liberal views and that efforts toward peace, free markets and democracy would all go hand in hand. What was conveniently overlooked was the resurgent strength of ethnic based Burmese nationalism, its century-old suspicions of capitalism and the outside world, the mental scars from decades of war, isolation and Western sanctions, and the very nature of state institutions that had not evolved to serve the people.

    There was a vacuum of ideas waiting to be filled. In 2012, communal violence erupted in Rakhine, leaving hundreds of both Buddhists and Muslims dead and over 100,000 displaced. Images of Buddhist-Muslim violence merged online with images of Islamic terrorism around the world. Tens of thousands of Muslims in Rakhine were left in camps or encouraged to flee in boats. Then came ARSA and the present tragedy.

    The U.N. Security Council will continue to meet on Myanmar over the coming weeks. The council is right to focus on ending the violence in Rakhine and mobilizing assistance for urgent humanitarian needs. It is also important to recognize that Myanmar is at a tipping point. Myanmar can still be a liberal democracy and a peaceful and prosperous crossroads at the heart of Asia. But there is an alternative scenario too, one where neo-nationalism takes a clear illiberal and xenophobic turn; inter-communal tensions, not only in Rakhine, rise and spill over into violence; the peace process descends into disarray amid an escalation of fighting along the other, Chinese border; the economy fails to offer anything resembling a better life; and the attractions of democratic change are increasingly in doubt.

    Now more than ever, the country’s friends need to understand local history, engage local sentiment, help the Burmese move away from an essentialist view of ethnicity, and appreciate the complexities of Myanmar’s big picture.

  8. মাসুদ করিম - ৬ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (১১:১১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2017 is awarded to the English author Kazuo Ishiguro

    “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.

    On the High Wire

    Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan thirty-five years ago. He came to England when he was six, and has lived there ever since. This is a stranger experience than being Japanese in the United States, where the landscape is dotted with second and third generation Japanese. Even twenty years ago, few Japanese lived in England, and a Japanese child, except in a group of tourists, was a rare sight indeed.

    Ishiguro writes in English. His English is perfect, and not just in the obvious sense: it is accurate, unhurried, fastidious, and noiseless. A hush seems to lie over it, compounded of mystery and discretion. The elegant bareness inevitably reminds one of Japanese painting. But at the very start of the first novel, A Pale View of Hills, he warns against such a cliché response. A Japanese girl has committed suicide in England:

    Keiko…was pure Japanese, and more than one newspaper was quick to pick up on this fact. The English are fond of their idea that our race has an instinct for suicide, as if further explanations are unnecessary.

    In a sense, all three of Ishiguro’s novels are explanations, even indictments, of Japanese-ness, and that applies equally to the third novel, The Remains of the Day, in which no Japanese character appears. He writes about guilt and shame incurred in the service of duty, loyalty, and tradition. Characters who place too high—too Japanese—a price on these values are punished for it.

    A Pale View of Hills is eery and tenebrous. It is a ghost story, but the narrator, Etsuko, does not realize that. She is the widow of an Englishman, and lives alone and rather desolate in an English country house. Her elder daughter, Keiko, the child of her Japanese first husband, killed herself some years before. The novel opens during a visit from her younger daughter, Niki, the child of her English second husband. Etsuko recalls her past, but Niki, a brusque, emancipated Western girl, is not very sympathetic. Her visit is uncomfortable and uncomforting, and she cuts it short: not only because of the lack of rapport with her mother, but because she can’t sleep. Keiko’s unseen ghost keeps her awake.

    Etsuko’s reminiscences go back to the days just after the war. She is newly married to a boorish company man, and expecting his child. They live in one of the first blocks to be built in the ruins of Nagasaki. Etsuko is lonely and strikes up an acquaintance with an older woman, an embittered post-1945 Madam Butterfly. Sachiko lives in a derelict cottage among the rubble, and receives visits from an American who is always promising to take her to the States, but never does. She has lost everything in the war except her ten-year-old daughter, Mariko. The child is hostile to people but deeply attached to her cat and kittens; her mother leaves her alone for long periods while she goes into Nagasaki about her dubious business. Mariko speaks of visits by a strange, silent woman during her mother’s absence. Sachiko explains that this is all imagination, the result of an experience Mariko had in the last days of the war: she saw a woman drown her baby. The woman later killed herself.

    Etsuko tries to befriend the disturbed and neglected child, but is rebuffed. Eventually the American lover really seems on the point of taking Sachiko and Mariko away. The kittens are to be left behind. Mariko pleads for them, but her mother drowns them before the child’s eyes. Mariko runs away—she has done it before and always come back. Nevertheless, Etsuko insists on going to look for her. It is dark when she finds her by the river. Mariko seems frightened and asks Etsuko why she is trailing a rope. Etsuko replies that it got caught on her foot. Mariko runs from her in terror. The scene is a replay of an earlier occasion when Etsuko also went to retrieve the child, who noticed the rope and fled.

    Mariko disappears from the story. Her suicide—actual or just probable—is the second of three, beginning with the woman who drowns her baby and ending with Keiko. They overlay one another like shadows—which they are—on a trebly exposed negative. The fourth shadow is Etsuko herself, though the hint that she too may take her own life is so faint that it may not be there at all. Ishiguro leaves a lot of room for reflection and conjecture, and after one puts down his novels insights go on plopping into one’s mind like drops from a tap that is supposed to be turned off.

    Etsuko feels guilty about having uprooted Keiko and taken her to England when she remarried. She knew the child would be unhappy in an English environment, though one can be sure she did not force her to leave Japan with the brutality displayed by Sachiko toward her own daughter. Brutality is not part of Etsuko’s docile, self-effacing, well-behaved persona—the traditional persona for a Japanese woman of her generation. Even when she was young it was already so much a part of her that she was unable to see how unhappy she was in her role of Japanese wife, or why she could not get through to Mariko. She wanted very much to help the child, but only to become a well-behaved little Japanese girl; and the only method she could think of was to offer her trivial distractions from her obsessions and her misery.

    Ishiguro puts across Etsuko’s inadequacy behind her back, as it were, even though he does it in her own quiet, resigned, but very faintly smug voice. Her mask never slips: it faces inward as well as outward, blinding her with self-deception. Masks are what Ishiguro’s novels are about, and he himself always chooses the mask of a first-person narrator. All the narrators are sedate and formal people so he never needs to drop into any kind of vulgar slang or colloquialism, and hardly to change gear when he allows them to call up a landscape or an atmosphere. Descriptions are as factual and plain as a Morandi still life, but they exude powerful moods and mostly sad ones: nostalgia, regret, resignation.

    Just as Etsuko’s disapproval of Sachiko in the past and Niki in the present seeps out from under her mask, so does Ishiguro’s disapproval of Etsuko herself. The tension of the novel depends on the gradual revelation, clue by clue, of how misguided her behavior has been throughout her life. Ishiguro uses this detectivefiction format in all his novels and with cunning. The narrator is always blind, a well-intentioned person in good standing with him- or herself when the story begins. The degree of insight and disillusion they attain, the shame and remorse they suffer varies from novel to novel. They never go unpunished, though. Ishiguro is severe, vindictive sometimes; but then he is also very good at compelling the reader’s pity, sometimes with positively Dickensian pressure.

    A Pale View of Hills is about private guilt, but it has a small subplot about public guilt as well. Etsuko’s first father-in-law is a retired teacher, proud of his old pupils and what he did for them. What he did for them was to imbue them with imperialist values and spur them on to die in a patriotic war. In postwar Nagasaki these ideas are discredited. The old man is attacked in print by one of his former pupils, and treated with contempt by his son, and even by Etsuko.

    In the second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, the teacher of discredited values is the narrator and main character. Mr. Ono is a retired painter and art master, and as in A Pale View of Hills, the story bobs about between reminiscences of different periods of the hero’s life. Not that Mr. Ono is a hero: in fact, he is the least admirable and sympathetic of Ishiguro’s chief characters, an opportunist and timeserver, adapting his views and even his artistic style to the party in power. So it comes that in the Thirties he deserts his first, westernizing master of painting for the strict, old-fashioned style and patriotic content of the imperialist, propaganda art.

    An Artist of the Floating World shows the traditional Japanese atelier system of art training in operation. The pupils all work in the master’s studio; in this case they even live together in his villa. The arrangement is charming and convivial up to a point: but there is a lot of unkind teasing, ostracizing, and jockeying for position. Still, the students develop a mutual sense of loyalty, especially toward the master, far more intense than loyalties bred on a Western campus. So Ono’s breakaway is seen as a betrayal, and causes much pain.

    Worse still, he denounces a dissident colleague to the police, but he remains able to persuade himself that all his apparent disloyalties spring from the best of motives—in this case concern for the future of Japan. His own favorite creation is a painting of boys arming for war while politicians debate; he calls it Complacency. The title would fit the novel itself: It is a wry and funny novel, with the comedy springing from Ono’s impregnable self-regard in the face of every kind of humiliation.

    The plot hinges on the difficulty of getting Ono’s younger daughter married. One match has already fallen through, and delicate negotiations are in progress to arrange another. Ono’s daughters persuaded him that the first attempt failed because of his political past. So during the traditional miai—a dinner arranged by the marriage broker to bring the families together—Ono takes it upon himself to confess that he made political mistakes. Everyone is terribly embarrassed, except for Ono, who manages to extend his complacency to being proud of his courageous admission. The marriage takes place, but the irony is that it does not depend on Ono’s admission at all. The bridegroom’s family, and Ono’s family too, consider him much too unimportant for his political record to be of any consequence. But even when his eight-year-old grandson begins to patronize him, his smugness is unshaken, his optimism undiminished. The little macho grandson is a beguiling comic portrait, and the novel as a whole is highly enjoyable, especially for the author’s delicate duplicity toward his hero.

    It could be called a comedy—just. Ishiguro’s third book, The Remains of the Day, is a tragedy in comedy form, both played to the hilt: it is more harrowing than the first book, more broadly funny than the second, but in spite of having recently won the Booker Prize in London, it has more flaws than the others and seems more naive. This time Ishiguro impersonates an aging English butler—one can’t help seeing the work as a performance, an act put on with dazzling daring and aplomb. The chronological template is the same as before: from a Fifties present Mr. Stevens recalls the Twenties and Thirties, when he worked for Lord Darlington.

    Ishiguro gives a virtuoso performance, telling the story in the old man’s pompous, deferential voice. A Japanese soul (or at any rate Ishiguro’s critical version of the Japanese soul) could not have chosen a better body to transmigrate into than Stevens’s: the butler runs on loyalty, devotion, propriety, and pride in his profession, and after much rumination he decides that the most important quality for a great butler—which his father was and he aspires to be—is dignity. He arrives at this conclusion during a meeting of the Hayes Society, a group of upperechelon butlers who meet to discuss the finer points of their “profession” with other “professionals.”

    Sometimes the ghost of P.G. Wodehouse gets into the works. It causes havoc when Stevens tries to carry out instructions to explain the facts of life to Lord Darlington’s godson, a young man who has just become engaged to be married. Stevens never gets very far because he keeps being interrupted by the demands of the French foreign secretary, who is staying in the house and wants him to attend to the blisters he got from too much sightseeing. The episode is about as convincing as a country house charade.

    While it is going on, Stevens’s old father lies dying upstairs. Too frail to go on as head butler in his old post, he has joined Lord Darlington’s household as second butler, serving under his own son. Their relations are strictly “professional,” without intimacy or warmth. One day the old man falls with a trayful of tea things: he has had his first stroke. His duties are curtailed until all he is allowed to do is push a trolley. The second and final stroke comes on during an important house party: Stevens is too busy with the guests to be with his father when he dies. He just carries on:

    If you consider the pressures contingent on me that night, you may not think I delude myself unduly if I go so far as to suggest that I did perhaps display, in the face of everything, at least in some modest degree a “dignity” worthy of someone like Mr Marshall [a model “great” butler]—or come to that, my father.

    Ishiguro specializes in the humiliations and sorrows of old age, and I found old Stevens’s end as afflicting as Dickens’s readers found the deathbed scene of Jo the crossing-sweeper boy.

    Stevens sacrifices to his profession not only filial affection, but his own prospect of happiness. Miss Kenton joins the household as housekeeper. She is almost impeccable, and we watch Stevens becoming obsessed with her. Their relationship is prickly: if porcupines had a mating dance it would be like this. Still, the edgy repartee is the nearest thing to a love scene in any of Ishiguro’s novels, and there has been no sex at all so far—Miss Kenton makes overtures, Stevens pretends not to notice, and when he hears her sobbing in her room, he pretends he may have been mistaken. “Why, Mr. Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?” she says, and makes a loveless match with another man.

    Lord Darlington, in Stevens’s eyes, is the truly distinguished employer a butler has to have in order to be a truly distinguished butler. He is an eminence grise in British politics: his house parties are arranged to further certain causes, and Stevens is convinced that by helping to make the arrangements perfect he is serving not only a great man but his country as well. There is a problem about Lord Darlington though: we watch him develop from a chivalrous critic of the Versailles Treaty into a Nazi sympathizer. Admirers of Hitler gather at Darlington Hall; Herr von Ribbentrop is among the guests; an Anglo-German alliance is being plotted.

    After the war Lord Darlington dies, discredited and broken, but Stevens’s loyalty to his memory is unshaken. Darlington Hall has been taken over by an American, and Stevens with it, an authentic English butler to go with the authentic Chippendale. Mr. Farraday’s genial style is very different from Lord Darlington’s hauteur, and the novel opens with Stevens resolving to learn how to banter, since Mr. Farraday seems to expect bantering from him. It is a move in the direction of democracy, and Stevens is proud of his own progressive attitude in making it. When Mr. Farraday takes a holiday he encourages Stevens to do the same. It will be Stevens’s first, and Mr. Farraday lends him a car.

    Stevens motors sedately towards Cornwall, where the former Miss Kenton has settled. A letter telling him that she has left her husband has given him an inspiration: she might consider returning to Darlington Hall, where an extra pair of capable hands would not come amiss. Stevens manages to have trouble with his engine, run out of petrol, lose his way. These mishaps may symbolize his incompetence in the face of real life, but they themselves are much less competently handled than the rest of the book. Stevens encounters specimens of ordinary, warmhearted, decent humanity; each one is an argument for spontaneity, openness, and democracy, and against Japaneseness. They are wooden and implausible, but not as implausible as the sacked maids we read about earlier on: Ishiguro wants us to believe that in the early Thirties there were two Jewish maids on the Darlington Hall staff, and that Lord Darlington instructed Stevens to sack them (he did, of course). I would be prepared to bet that before the arrival of the first German refugees no Jewish maid had ever been seen in an English country house: not for anti-Semitic reasons, but because Jews didn’t go in for domestic service. Still, this is Ishiguro’s only gross sociological error.

    When Stevens finally has his rendezvous with the former Miss Kenton over tea in his hotel, it turns out that she has made it up with her husband.

    It took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed—why should I not admit it?—at that moment, my heart was breaking.

    On the homeward journey Stevens breaks down and bursts into tears while defending Lord Darlington to yet another person he happens to meet:

    He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really—one has to ask oneself—what dignity is there in that?

    Still, he pulls himself together and returns to the pursuit of perfect butling.

    It occurs to me, furthermore, that bantering is hardly an unreasonable duty for an employer to expect a professional to perform. I have of course already devoted much time to developing my bantering skills, but it is possible I have never previously approached the task with the commitment I might have done.

    The end is touching, but all the same, The Remains of the Day is too much a roman à thèse, and a judgmental one besides. Compared to his astounding narrative sophistication, Ishiguro’s message seems quite banal: Be less Japanese, less bent on dignity, less false to yourself and others, less restrained and controlled. The irony is that it is precisely Ishiguro’s beautiful restraint and control that one admires, and, in the case of the last novel, his nerve in setting up such a high-wire act for himself.

  9. মাসুদ করিম - ৬ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৮:৫২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    The Nobel Peace Prize 2017

    International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

    Prize share: 1/1

    The Nobel Peace Prize 2017 was awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.

  10. মাসুদ করিম - ১০ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৬:৪৮ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017

    Richard H. Thaler

    Prize share: 1/1

    The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017 was awarded to Richard H. Thaler “for his contributions to behavioural economics”.

    Thaler’s Nobel is a well-deserved nudge for behavioural economics

    Richard Thaler has won the Nobel memorial prize in economics, an award that had been anticipated for some time. Prof Thaler is a behavioural economist, one of the group of economists who applies insights from psychology, or perhaps plain common sense, into the idealised world of economic modelling.

    One trivial behavioural insight that Prof Thaler is fond of mentioning concerns a large bowl of cashew nuts he once served to dinner guests over drinks. Observing his guests hoovering up the contents of the bowl, he removed it to the kitchen so as not to spoil everyone’s appetite. The guests could in principle have stopped of their own accord; nevertheless they were pleased to see temptation removed.

    Early in his career, he started making a list of “Dumb Stuff People Do” on the blackboard in his office. The cashew nut example was on the list, and it is a classic piece of Thaler thinking: obvious, trivial, fun and yet completely beyond the scope of traditional economics to model. Prof Thaler’s insight is that such trivia might lead to important analytical and policy insights.

    Thomas Schelling, Nobel laureate in 2005, was also a master of these deceptively simple observations of human nature. And Daniel Kahneman — a psychologist, mentor for Prof Thaler, and winner of the prize in 2002 — had with Amos Tversky laid the foundations for behavioural economics.

    Prof Thaler advanced the field in two important ways. He campaigned for behavioural economics to be taken seriously within the economics profession. He also brought it into the policy environment with his book Nudge (co-authored with Cass Sunstein) and his support for behavioural policy units in the White House and 10 Downing Street.

    Within the profession, Prof Thaler found a pulpit in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, an academic journal supplied to all members of the American Economic Association. His Anomalies column was witty and sharply reasoned, highlighting strange features of the economic and financial world that standard economic theory could not explain, and rigorously debunking unconvincing attempts at rationalisation.

    His evangelism for behavioural economics has been successful, at least in microeconomics: it is commonplace to see economic models incorporate psychological realism, and Prof Thaler himself was president of the American Economic Association in 2015.

    In the policy world, Prof Thaler’s most famous idea was to use behavioural insights in pensions policy — for example, by enrolling people in a pension scheme by default, while giving them the choice to opt out. The stakes here are much higher than with cashew nuts: default enrolment has, according to the UK pensions regulator, increased participation in private-sector pension schemes from 42 per cent to 73 per cent between 2012 and 2016.

    Rational economic man does not care — or even notice — whether a pension is opt-in or opt-out. He simply calculates (instantly) whether it pays to participate and chooses accordingly. Prof Thaler’s insight is not only that people are not perfectly rational (that much is obvious, even to the most traditional of economists) but that apparently small departures from rationality can have outsized impacts.

    Prof Thaler’s catch-all advice: whether you’re a business or a government, if you want people to do something, make it easy. This year’s choice of Nobel Prize winner is an easy one to like.

  11. মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৯:২৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Who Really Wins When Activist Investors Attack?

    Once upon a time, they were known as corporate raiders. They used junk bonds to buy stakes in companies whose entrenched management they hoped to oust and whose undervalued stock they hoped to boost. Today’s raiders, mostly hedge funds, prefer to be called activist investors. And while they talk of changes in “strategic direction” and increases in “shareholder value,” the goal is much the same: to profit from the disruption, while claiming it’s all for the greater good. But do other shareholders, public companies and the broader economy really benefit? Or are activists themselves on the defensive, accused of encouraging short-termism, in which managers aim for better quarterly earnings at the expense of investing for the future? One test came on Oct. 10, when Nelson Peltz asked shareholders of Procter & Gamble Co., the largest company to face off against an activist, to give him a board seat. P&G claimed victory but Peltz is seeking independent certification of the results, which were close.

    1. Who are today’s prominent activists?

    Carl Icahn and Peltz, two of the more-famous raiders from the 1980s, have refashioned themselves as pro-shareholder activists and are among the biggest players. Peltz prefers to be called a “highly engaged shareowner.” But the most active activist is probably billionaire Paul Singer, whose Elliott Management Corp. has positions in more than 20 companies. A younger generation of activist, which came of age in the late 1990s around the time of the dot-com bubble, includes Dan Loeb’s Third Point LLC, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and Jeff Smith’s Starboard Value LP. An even younger generation, led by former acolytes of Icahn and Ackman, is now popping up. It includes Keith Meister’s Corvex Management LP, Mick McGuire’s Marcato Capital Management LLC and Scott Ferguson’s Sachem Head Capital Management LP.

    2. Who’s being targeted?

    Just about any company that trades at a discount to its peers, but in recent years the targets have gotten bigger. A co-founder of Peltz’s fund, for example, on Oct. 9 won a seat on the General Electric Co. board. Peltz thinks the management of P&G, a $235 billion company by market value, has let the company drift and wants shareholders to award him a board seat. He claims P&G has spent more than $100 million to fend him off. Loeb is making numerous demands from Europe’s largest company, Nestle SA, while David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital LLC has wrestled with General Motors Co. One of the most famous ongoing battles isn’t even between a company and an activist, but between two activists over Herbalife, a seller of nutrition supplements. Ackman has been talking down Herbalife’s shares since 2012, and repeatedly calls it a pyramid scheme. Icahn defends the company and publicly assails Ackman at every opportunity. The two even fought for more than an hour in a live phone-in on CNBC.

    3. What do activists want?

    They mostly seek to raise the value of their holdings through bigger share buybacks and more generous dividends. They also agitate for asset spin-offs and outright sales of companies. Loeb, for instance, wants Nestle to sell its 23 percent stake in L’Oreal SA and to improve margins — as well as his fund’s returns. Sometimes activists take positions in companies to prevent them from making acquisitions or from being acquired.

    4. Do activists hurt companies’ long-term interests?

    A 2015 study by Harvard Law professor Lucian Bebchuk of about 2,000 activist campaigns found no evidence that they caused short-term gains in share prices at the expense of long-term performance. He examined 1994 to 2007 data on stock-market returns and performance ratios, such as return on assets and Tobin’s Q, a measure of the market value of a company’s debt and equity relative to their book value, which indicates how successful a company is at rewarding investors. He found that target companies’ results were better than their peers for three, four and five years after an activist intervened.

    5. What do the targets say?

    Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the law firm co-founded by Martin Lipton, one of the most vocal critics of Bebchuk’s research, argues that their attacks — or just the threat of them — forces companies to reduce investments in people and technology, which results in unemployment and slower economic growth. The law firm also has criticized Bebchuk’s study for using data based on average instead of median results, which would have showed corporate performance improving only in the fifth year after an activist attack.

    6. How do activists operate?

    They often nudge and prod companies behind closed doors before going public with demands. If the company resists, activists typically launch proxy fights. But what makes most activist battles so compelling is the use of the so-called poison pen letter. It often contains scathing criticisms of a company, its board and its strategies. The criticisms can range from juvenile insults to accusations of inappropriate conduct. Loeb’s fund, Third Point, is famous for such missives. He once branded a chief executive officer who defied him as the “CVD,” or chief value destroyer, and called two great-grandsons of that company’s founder members of the “Lucky Sperm Bank.”

    7. Do they always win?

    Absolutely not. Dissident shareholders launched 109 proxy fights in the U.S. in 2016 and won nine, or just 8.3 percent, according to FactSet. That’s below the 15.9 percent average for the previous four years. The 2017 record should best 2016’s: As of October, dissidents had fought 81 proxy battles and won 12, or 14.8 percent. Often a company will grant board seats to avoid a proxy battle, so the figures understate the success rate. Natural-food company Hain Celestial Group Inc., for example, in September granted activist investor Engaged Capital six new board seats to stave off a proxy fight.

    8. How have managers reacted?

    The first response tends to be resist, resist, resist. But managers often back down by adopting some of the proposed changes or by granting board seats to the activist. Singer’s Elliott Management, for example, in April took a stake in Australia’s BHP Billiton Ltd. and then urged it to spin off its U.S. shale business and shutter a Canadian potash project. The company pushed back, but eventually agreed. The heat of these fights can sometimes get the best of management. Klaus Kleinfeld, the former CEO of aluminum parts-marker Arconic Inc., was forced to step down in April after sending an unauthorized letter to Elliott, which had targeted Arconic for a lagging share price. The letter contained thinly veiled references to allegedly bad behavior by Singer and his entourage while partying at the 2006 World Cup games in Germany. A month later, Singer’s fund received three seats on Arconic’s board.

    9. Why did activism develop?

    It is largely a reaction to so-called poison pills, which many companies adopted to make buyouts so expensive they effectively stymied hostile takeovers — even when they were in shareholders’ interest. By taking stakes below the threshold that would trigger the pill and winning over fellow investors, modern activists have been able to render poison pills useless. Simply shining a light on an undervalued company can often be enough to attract would-be acquirers.

  12. মাসুদ করিম - ১৬ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৮:২০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Introducing Sicily’s 2000-year old dancing satyr: Il ‘Satiro Danzante’ di Mazara del Vallo

    We investigate the story of an extraordinary, mysterious find made by a Sicilian fisherman in the waters of the Mediterranean.

    Mazara del Vallo, a historic and charming fishing town in Sicily’s south western corner. Known throughout Italy for its prolific fishing industry, its fisherman often unearth treasures in the deep blue waters around the island’s picturesque coastline. However, one fascinating find, made in March 1998, would elevate the town to international acclaim and firmly re-establish it as a place of cultural interest.

    Residents of Mazara have long been accustomed to seeing fisherman return from the sea clutching giant barnacle-clad urns and assorted merchants’ paraphernalia – the remnants of centuries of bustling intercontinental trade and forgotten shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. Despite this, no-one was prepared for the discovery of ‘il satiro’, an ancient copper statue with flowing locks and an elfin appearance, chiselled with intricate detail. Prior to becoming entangled in a modern day fisherman’s net, the statue had lain silently on the seabed for 2,000 years, undisturbed by battles, traders and cruise ships, and had long since become home to fish and crustaceans alike.

    The satyr appears to be leaping forward in an ecstatic move, its back arched and head thrown back. A symbol of revelry and wild, hedonistic abandon in classical times, historians and archaeologists have pondered whether it could have been a figurehead for a boat, due to the round hole in its back. Satyrs formed part of the raucous entourage of Dionysus, the greek god of wine, who was associated simultaneously with divine bliss and brutal rage. According to Greek mythology, the satyr may well have held a cup of wine in one hand, with a panther’s skin slung over his arm, and a staff in the other, tipped with a pine cone and twined with ivy.

    It is commonly thought that Mazara’s satyr was made by the ancient Greeks between 2 and 4 AD. The statue itself is beautifully well preserved. It weighs 96kg and reaches a majestic height of 200cm. Both of its arms are missing, while one leg, bent backwards as if running, was recovered separately.

    Scientists spent more than five years restoring the statue at the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome. Through a painstaking process of cleaning and chemical treatment, they have managed to uncover much of its original beauty and character, and curb any damage caused by exposure to the air. They also inserted a metal frame inside the satyr, so that it could be displayed upright.

    Undoubtedly the most famous archaeological find in Italian waters for decades, the satyr has since captured the world’s imagination, visiting Japan and the Louvre in Paris on its global tour, before settling in a purpose-built museum in Mazara. The building in which the satyr is displayed has a colourful history, having previously been a mosque, then a Catholic church and a city hall. Many of Sicily’s churches tell a similar story, having been converted from mosques or synagogues into churches as various foreign powers swept through the island, dominating its culture and shaping its customs and architecture.

    Still the subject of many a historical and popular debate, the ‘Satiro Danzante’ has put Mazara del Vallo back on the map and encouraged increased numbers of tourists to visit the town.

  13. মাসুদ করিম - ২০ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (১:১৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    How the oligarchy wins: lessons from ancient Greece

    few years ago, as I was doing research for a book on how economic inequality threatens democracy, a colleague of mine asked if America was really at risk of becoming an oligarchy. Our political system, he said, is a democracy. If the people don’t want to be run by wealthy elites, we can just vote them out.

    The system, in other words, can’t really be “rigged” to work for the rich and powerful unless the people are at least willing to accept a government of the rich and powerful. If the general public opposes rule-by-economic-elites, how is it, then, that the wealthy control so much of government?

    The question was a good one, and while I had my own explanations, I didn’t have a systematic answer. Luckily, two recent books do. Oligarchy works, in a word, because of institutions.

    In his fascinating and insightful book Classical Greek Oligarchy, Matthew Simonton takes us back to the ancient world, where the term oligarchy was coined. One of the primary threats to oligarchy was that the oligarchs would become divided, and that one from their number would defect, take leadership of the people, and overthrow the oligarchy.

    To prevent this occurrence, ancient Greek elites developed institutions and practices to keep themselves united. Among other things, they passed sumptuary laws, preventing extravagant displays of their wealth that might spark jealousy, and they used the secret ballot and consensus building practices to ensure that decisions didn’t lead to greater conflict within their cadre.

    Appropriately for a scholar of the classics, Simonton focuses on these specific ancient practices in detail. But his key insight is that elites in power need solidarity if they are to stay in power. Unity might come from personal relationships, trust, voting practices, or – as is more likely in today’s meritocratic era – homogeneity in culture and values from running in the same limited circles.

    While the ruling class must remain united for an oligarchy to remain in power, the people must also be divided so they cannot overthrow their oppressors. Oligarchs in ancient Greece thus used a combination of coercion and co-optation to keep democracy at bay. They gave rewards to informants and found pliable citizens to take positions in the government.

    These collaborators legitimized the regime and gave oligarchs beachheads into the people. In addition, oligarchs controlled public spaces and livelihoods to prevent the people from organizing. They would expel people from town squares: a diffuse population in the countryside would be unable to protest and overthrow government as effectively as a concentrated group in the city.

    They also tried to keep ordinary people dependent on individual oligarchs for their economic survival, similar to how mob bosses in the movies have paternalistic relationships in their neighborhoods. Reading Simonton’s account, it is hard not to think about how the fragmentation of our media platforms is a modern instantiation of dividing the public sphere, or how employees and workers are sometimes chilled from speaking out.

    The most interesting discussion is how ancient oligarchs used information to preserve their regime. They combined secrecy in governance with selective messaging to targeted audiences, not unlike our modern spinmasters and communications consultants. They projected power through rituals and processions.

    At the same time, they sought to destroy monuments that were symbols of democratic success. Instead of public works projects, dedicated in the name of the people, they relied on what we can think of as philanthropy to sustain their power. Oligarchs would fund the creation of a new building or the beautification of a public space. The result: the people would appreciate elite spending on those projects and the upper class would get their names memorialized for all time. After all, who could be against oligarchs who show such generosity?

    An assistant professor of history at Arizona State University, Simonton draws heavily on insights from social science and applies them well to dissect ancient practices. But while he recognizes that ancient oligarchies were always drawn from the wealthy, a limitation of his work is that he focuses primarily on how oligarchs perpetuated their political power, not their economic power.

    To understand that, we can turn to an instant classic from a few years ago, Jeffrey Winters’ Oligarchy. Winters argues that the key to oligarchy is that a set of elites have enough material resources to spend on securing their status and interests. He calls this “wealth defense”, and divides it into two categories. “Property defense” involves protecting existing property – in the old days, this meant building castles and walls, today it involves the rule of law. “Income defense” is about protecting earnings; these days, that means advocating for low taxes.
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    The challenge in seeing how oligarchy works, Winters says, is that we don’t normally think about the realms of politics and economics as fused together. At its core, oligarchy involves concentrating economic power and using it for political purposes. Democracy is vulnerable to oligarchy because democrats focus so much on guaranteeing political equality that they overlook the indirect threat that emerges from economic inequality.

    Winters argues that there are four kinds of oligarchies, each of which pursues wealth defense through different institutions. These oligarchies are categorized based on whether the oligarchs rule is personal or collective, and whether the oligarchs use coercion.

    Warring oligarchies, like warlords, are personal and armed. Ruling oligarchies like the mafia are collective and armed. In the category of unarmed oligarchies, sultanistic oligarchies (like Suharto’s Indonesia) are governed through personal connections. In civil oligarchies, governance is collective and enforced through laws, rather than by arms.

    With this typology behind him, Winters declares that America is already a civil oligarchy. To use the language of recent political campaigns, our oligarchs try to rig the system to defend their wealth. They focus on lowering taxes and on reducing regulations that protect workers and citizens from corporate wrongdoing.

    They build a legal system that is skewed to work in their favor, so that their illegal behavior rarely gets punished. And they sustain all of this through a campaign finance and lobbying system that gives them undue influence over policy. In a civil oligarchy, these actions are sustained not at the barrel of the gun or by the word of one man, but through the rule of law.

    If oligarchy works because its leaders institutionalize their power through law, media, and political rituals, what is to be done? How can democracy ever gain the upper hand? Winters notes that political power depends on economic power. This suggests that one solution is creating a more economically equal society.

    The problem, of course, is that if the oligarchs are in charge, it isn’t clear why they would pass policies that would reduce their wealth and make society more equal. As long as they can keep the people divided, they have little to fear from the occasional pitchfork or protest.

    Indeed, some commentators have suggested that the economic equality of the late 20th century was exceptional because two world wars and a Great Depression largely wiped out the holdings of the extremely wealthy. On this story, there isn’t much we can do without a major global catastrophe.

    Simonton offers another solution. He argues that democracy defeated oligarchy in ancient Greece because of “oligarchic breakdown”. Oligarchic institutions are subject to rot and collapse, as are any other kind of institution. As the oligarchs’ solidarity and practices start to break down, there is an opportunity for democracy to bring government back to the people.

    In that moment, the people might unite for long enough that their protests lead to power. With all the upheaval in today’s politics, it’s hard not to think that this moment is one in which the future of the political system might be more up for grabs than it has been in generations.

    The question is whether democracy will emerge from oligarchic breakdown – or whether the oligarchs will just strengthen their grasp on the levers of government.

  14. মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৭:৫৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Analysis: what China’s leadership reshuffle means for Xi Jinping’s New Era

    The era of President Xi Jinping has begun. As he strode to the podium of the Great Hall of the People and delivered his extraordinarily long speech at the opening of the Communist Party’s 19th congress on Wednesday, Xi laid out an ambitious vision not only for his upcoming second term of five years, but more importantly for the next 30 years. China would become “a great modern socialist country” by the middle of the 21 century, Xi said to the applause of about 2,300 party delegates for the one-week meeting.

    Xi made no bones about his own leadership role and his own place in the annals of party history as he declared China had entered a new era and the party had embarked on a new journey that would propel it to the centre-stage of the world, thus living up to his call to fulfil the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

    While his marathon speech of three hours and nearly 30 minutes touched on almost everything – from politics to economics to Hong Kong and Taiwan to foreign relations – it boiled down to this fundamental conclusion: as the party tightens its grip on “everything”, it will also do whatever it can to fulfil the Chinese people’s aspirations for a better life in exchange for the legitimacy to maintain authoritarian rule at home.

    Internationally, Xi clearly intends to promote China’s ways of developing its economy with authoritarian rule and without espousing Western values – a model known as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ – as a model for other countries to follow.

    “It offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence,” he said.

    A Xinhua commentary went further, exclaiming that Xi’s speech signalled that “the 21st century is likely to see capitalism lose its appeal while the socialist movement, led by China, rapidly catches up”.

    On a different note, Xi’s marathon speech, which would have tested the physical fitness of any 64-year-old, should also help put to rest any lingering concerns about his health since he came to power in 2012.

    As expected, Xi’s grand vision and rationale expounded in the speech will be written into the party’s constitution when the congress closes on Tuesday. Already, following Xi’s speech, other Chinese leaders have started to heap praise on the new body of political theory that will bear his name – “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”.

    This will put Xi on par with Mao Zedong, who was still in power when thoughts bearing his name were enshrined in the party constitution.

    For a top Chinese leader who enjoys sweeping power, Xi needs to pursue three goals: to have his thoughts enshrined as guiding theories in the party constitution, exercise absolute control of the armed forces, and appoint his own supporters to fill the 25-member Politburo and its smaller seven-member standing committee (the highest governing council for the party and country).

    Having effectively achieved the first two goals, the final test will come on Wednesday morning when Xi is expected to lead the other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee onto a stage in the Great Hall of the People to meet the press.

    Many overseas media and analysts see the new composition of the committee as the ultimate test of Xi’s power and an indicator of his intentions regarding whether he plans to hold on to power longer than expected.

    As exclusively reported by the South China Morning Post over the past few days, the new leadership line-up will most likely be this: Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Han Zheng, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Wang Yang. If this list proves accurate and the political rankings of the line-up mimic the current composition of the committee, it will certainly run contrary to the predictions of many overseas analysts. It will also send multiple interesting signals regarding Xi’s governance style for the years to come.

    As previously argued in this column, Xi appears to have opted for political continuity and stability when deciding the leadership line-up, despite his ascendancy in power. The composition of the new line-up also reflects his considerations of interests from other party factions, including the Shanghai faction headed by Jiang Zemin and the Communist Youth League headed by Hu Jintao, Xi’s two predecessors.

    Contrary to speculation, Li Keqiang, hailing from the Communist Youth League, will remain as premier for the next five years with his political ranking unchanged at No 2 in the party hierarchy.

    Wang Qishan, Xi’s trusted ally in charge of the anti-corruption campaign, will step down from the committee because he has reached the retirement age. Chen Miner, Xi’s protégé, will not make it into the committee. This signals that Xi has closely followed the rules regarding age limits and seniority when considering candidates for the top posts, again contrary to speculation he would break rules to his advantage.

    Li Zhanshu, one of Xi’s most trusted lieutenants, is most likely to become the chairman of the National People’s Congress. This should come as a surprise as he was long rumoured to head the anti-graft watchdog after Wang’s retirement.

    The elevation of Han Zheng, the party secretary of Shanghai, Jiang’s power base, is widely expected. There had been suggestions he could become the executive vice-premier, but taking over the helm of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – the fourth ranked job in the party hierarchy – should give him more status and prestige.

    The induction of Wang Huning, a trusted party theoretician who has advised three presidents from Jiang to Hu and now Xi on building their political thoughts, will also be a surprise to some analysts who widely believe the party prefers its top committee leaders to have prior hands-on experience managing one or two provinces as party chief. But there was an exception back in 2002 when Wen Jiabao was named on the committee and later became the premier despite having no experience of managing any province.

    Zhao Leji taking over the anti-graft watchdog may also seem surprising at first glance, but a closer look indicates good rationale behind the appointment. Over the past five years, Zhao has been in charge of the party’s powerful Organisation Department, responsible for managing the careers of millions of party officials. As China’s anti-corruption campaign is aimed at rooting out official corruption, his experience should come in handy in his new job.

    Last but not least, the elevation of Wang Yang to the position of executive vice-premier, is expected. Wang, who worked his way up in the Communist Youth League, proved his skills in managing complex economic matters while party chief of Chongqing and of Guangdong, and in his current role as a vice-premier in charge of agriculture and foreign trade. Over the past five years, as the official in charge of the poverty alleviation campaign, one of Xi’s top priorities, Wang has also proved his loyalty. As China’s point man on dealing with Washington over economic and trade matters, Wang’s elevation should be welcomed by foreign investors.

    The likelihood that both Hu Chunhua and Chen Miner have failed to make it to the Politburo Standing Committee should come as a bigger surprise to many observers, but not readers of this column.

    As previously written in this column, Xi’s decision in July to topple Sun Zhengcai, former party chief of Chongqing and a Politburo member, was clearly intended as a signal that he no longer recognised the previous successor arrangements. Sun and Hu, both of them born in the 1960s, were picked by Jiang and Hu to be groomed as potential successors to Xi and Li Keqiang.

    Moreover, elevating Chen onto the standing committee would mean he would have to jump two rungs from his current political position as a mere member of the Central Committee, which would run contrary to the seniority based system and risk a backlash from inside the party.

    Now, with Chen set to join the bigger Politburo and Hu remaining as a Politburo member, the compromise will be better received by all party factions.

    Of course, the new line-up without a potential successor in sight might trigger more speculation about whether Xi will hold on to power beyond his second term. But the arrangement might also signal a new approach by Xi over the successor issue – namely, potential candidates will have to prove themselves at the Politburo level before getting an opportunity to rise to the next level.

    Either way, such a leadership line-up will help entrench Xi’s position as China’s next paramount leader, something underlined by the fact that Jiang, Hu and the rest of the retired Politburo Standing Committee members all braved the cold weather to lend their appearance and applaud Xi’s speech at the opening ceremony.

  15. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (৯:৪২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ‌প্রয়াত গিরিজা দেবী

    প্রয়াত বিশিষ্ট শাস্ত্রীয় সঙ্গীত শিল্পী গিরিজা দেবী। সকাল সাড়ে ১১টা নাগাদ বুকে ব্যাথা নিয়ে বি এম বিড়লা হাসপাতালে ভর্তি হন তিনি। রাত ৮টা ৪৫ মিনিট নাগাদ হাসপাতালেই জীবনাবসান হয় তাঁর। বেনারস ঘরানার বিশিষ্ট সঙ্গীত শিল্পী গিরিজা দেবীর বয়স হয়েছিল ৮৮ বছর। তাঁর প্রয়ানে শোকস্তব্ধ সঙ্গীত জগত। তাঁর হাত ধরেই জনপ্রিয়তা পেয়েছিল ঠুমরি। শাস্ত্রীয় সঙ্গীতের জগতে ঠুমরি কুইন নামেও জনপ্রিয় ছিলেন গিরিজা দেবী। পরিবারের লোকেরা জানিয়েছেন সকালে হৃদরোগে আক্রান্ত হওয়ার পরেই হাসপাতালে নিয়ে যাওয়া হয়েছিল তাঁকে। সেখানে লাইফ সাপোর্ট সিস্টেমে ছিলেন। কিন্তু শেষ রক্ষা হল না। গিরিজা দেবীর প্রয়ানে শোক প্রকাশ করেছেন প্রধানমন্ত্রী নরেন্দ্র মোদি। শোকবার্তায় তিনি লিখেছেন, শাস্ত্রীয় সঙ্গীতে তাঁর নাম স্বর্ণাক্ষরে লেখা থাকবে। বেনারস ঘরানার শিল্পী গিরিজা দেবীকে পদ্মশ্রী সম্মান প্রদান করা হয়েছিল ১৯৭২ সালে। ১৯৮৯-এ পদ্মভূষণ এবং ২০১৬-য় তাঁকে পদ্মবিভূষণ সম্মানে সম্মানিত করা হয়। ১৯২৯-এর ৮মে বেনারসের জমিদার পরিবারে জন্ম গিরিজা দেবীর। পরিবারে সঙ্গীত অনুরাগী হওয়ায় শৈশবে তাঁর বাবা রামদেও রাইয়ের কাছেই হারমোনিয়াম শিখেছিলেন তিনি। সেটাই সঙ্গীতের সঙ্গে তাঁর প্রথম পরিচিতি। পাঁচ বছর বয়স থেকেই সরযূ প্রসাদ মিশ্রার কাছে গান শিখতে শুরু করেন। তাঁর কাছেই খুমরি, খেয়াল, টপ্পা শেখা। ১৯৪৯-এ ইলাহাবাদের অল ইন্ডিয়া রেডিওতে প্রথম অনুষ্ঠান করেন গিরিজা দেবী। কিন্তু রক্ষণশীল পরিবারে বিয়ে হওয়ায় কোনও গানের অনুষ্ঠান আর করতে পারেননি। নিজের সঙ্গীত চর্চা অবশ্য জারি রেখেছিলেন। ১৯৫১য় বিহারে ফের মুক্ত মঞ্চে অনুষ্ঠান করেন গিরিজা দেবী। এরপর কলকাতায় চলে আসেন তিনি। এখানেই পাকাপাকিভাবে বসবাস শুরু করেন।

  16. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (১০:১৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Activists to educate people in the US and Myanmar about the Rakhine crisis

    Myanmar activist Myo Win and American filmmaker Jeanne Hallacy are on a major speaking tour in the United States this week with the aim to look behind the crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State that has seen over half a million Muslim Rohingya flee to the safety of Bangladesh.

    Myo Win is a leading human rights advocate in Myanmar who founded the NGO, Smile Education and Development Foundation. Smile works on legal reform including the Inter-Faith Harmony Bill, the discriminatory marriage law and hate speech in Myanmar.

    He is on a American speaking tour starting with an event with UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to Myanmar, Professor Yanghee Lee in New York on the day she presents her report on the Rohingya to the UN.

    He will also present the documentary film “Sittwe” he produced with director Ms Hallacy and speak at an event in the US Congress hosted by Congressman Eliot Lance Engel, the U.S. Representative for New York’s 16th congressional district.

    Myo Win told Mizzima that the trip is focused on advocacy and peace, to improve understanding of the Rakhine conflict as well as the Rohingya, using the 20-minute-long “Sittwe” documentary as a tool to look behind the curtain in Rakhine.

    “Some people in the US understand what is happening in Rakhine but the general public are not so much aware of it, and we aim to meet various people including students and politicians and high-level people in Washington DC,” he said.

    Ironically, the message Myo Win and Hallacy are bringing to America applies to this country as much as it does in Myanmar and many other countries around the world.

    There is a need for healing and education in the villages of Rakhine State but also on the streets of Charlottesville and Baltimore in the US.

    As Ms Hallacy told Mizzima, the Rakhine crisis has been international headline news for weeks, yet many Americans are bewildered or shocked by the story, given traditional views of Buddhists and stories coming out of targeted hate and discrimination.

    “Hopefully we will deepen awareness of Burma’s fragile democratic transition,” Ms Hallacy said, adding that the tour including talks at Stanford and Harvard universities will provide the American public and also academia an insight into the situation and this could strengthen Smile’s work when they return to Myanmar.

    But Ms Hallacy stresses that the US tour is a secondary objective of the film, “Sittwe” – a film that was banned by Myanmar censors.

    “With all honesty, I do not think the censors who banned it watched the film,” said Ms Hallacy.

    Perhaps if they watched it at all, they only saw the opening, she said, which is unfortunate because the film was consciously made to try to create a level field to step back from the issue and really see through the eyes of youth, to depoliticize all of the complex factors that are part of this.

    The aim was not to simplify that complexity but to step back and take one aspect which is youth and education with the view that as long as there are segregated youth then they will not live in the normalcy that can be had in integrated schools with daily contact which diminishes misinformation and misunderstanding, Ms Hallacy said.

    This is the most fundamental step towards reconciliation and it begins with youth, she said.

    The English-language version of “Sittwe” is designed to educate foreign audiences about the complexities of the Rakhine situation.

    “Sittwe” gives voice to two teenagers separated by conflict and segregation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, Phyu Phyu Than, a Rohingya girl and Aung San Myint, a Buddhist boy. Filmed over two years, the youths share their ideas about mutual fear between their communities and the hope of reconciliation.

    The main aim of the film project, however, is to help people in Myanmar understand the tensions and views of those caught up in the Rakhine crisis.

    Myo Win and his foundation plan to tour with a Burmese-language version of the film, entitled, “Heal”.

    As Ms Hallacy said, they have “edited the first two and a half minutes to provide a different opening – we softened the more hard-edged news footage and recut that specifically for a Burmese audience and the rest of the film remains the same with the hope that people will not turn away in the first moments of the film but sit through the 20 minutes to see the message.”

    The US tour may gain press coverage, but the real mission will be launched by the Smile foundation across Myanmar.

    “We have already identified six major urban areas where it is going to be shown, and Smile will be working with some of the partners they have, the civil society groups who are in those cities and towns – ranging from Taunggyi to Mandalay to Myitkyina and Yangon to Moulmein and Pa-an, as well as Sittwe. In terms of the Sittwe showing, we are going to have to see what is feasible,” said Ms Hallacy.

    “But the more important reason why the film was made was for using it as a tool for creating a space for dialogue and open discussion about these issues in Burma,” she said, adding such advocacy has been recommended in the Kofi Annan commission’s report published on August 24.

    The Burmese language version of the film will be used by Smile as a peace-building tool in facilitated discussions with youth across Myanmar addressing issues of intolerance, hate speech and social media and reconciliation.

    As Myo Win said, the plan is to show the film in Myanmar – making a Myanmar version.

    “The current version is banned. We have to make another name and change a little bit, then we can show that film,” he told Mizzima.

    Myo Win stressed the importance of the rule of law in Myanmar.

    “I think the rule of law is very important because people are understanding Rakhine people do not want Rohingya and therefore Rohingya should be pushed out, but that is not a democracy, not based on the rule of law, this is mob rule, where the majority affects the minority,” he said.

    Ms Hallacy stressed this was a long-term project.

    “Smile is on the ground and can plant seeds that will take root and if they are planted now. Maybe if we are working with middle school or high school kids now that will bear fruit in ten years, and really that is the purpose of the film,” she said.

    “It is important for citizens in Burma and in countries around the world to step back and see the progress that still needs to be made on these issues and the basis of any racism, hatred and intolerance of any group whatsoever, whether it is race-based, whether it is sexual preference based, whether gender-based, that is always rooted in fear. And fear grows without education,” said Ms Hallacy.

    Director Jeanne Hallacy has lived in Southeast for decades producing stories about human rights and social justice issues. Her award-winning documentary films are used as agents for change. Her film titles This Kind of Love, Into the Current: Burma’s Political Prisoners, Mercy (meddah) and Burma Diary are distributed by Kanopy and Documentary Educational Resources. Hallacy directs the InSIGHT OUT! Photo Storytelling project training youth living in conflict and post-disaster areas in photography and digital media.

    Producer Myo Win is the Director of Smile Education and Development Foundation in Rangoon founded in 2007 in response to rising intolerance and discrimination in Burma. Smile promoted interfaith harmony, religious freedom, peacebuilding and conflict resolution and advocated for legal reform including the Inter-Faith Harmony Bill focused on religious freedom, and combating hate speech and hate crime. Myo Win is trained in psychological first aid and has worked extensively on trauma healing and mental health post-disaster. Myo Win received a degree in Islamic theology and in 2004 completed a graduate degree in psychology from the University of East Yangon.

  17. মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (২:৪২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    The incredible story of 52 year old bookstore Sapna Book House

    Sapna Book House positions itself as a family multi-brand retail store. It sells everything to do with the ecosystem of education and educational technology in India

    The year was 1957 and a young man was working as a porter on Dadar railway station in Mumbai. As luck would have it, he had a chance encounter with the then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, at the railway station. A brief conversation with the leader sparked an idea in the mind of Suresh Shah, who had quit college to support his family. He left his job at the railway station and joined Pocket Book Distributing Company in Mumbai as a bookseller. He started out as a salesperson in the company and was soon promoted as manager and later transferred to Chennai to head the firm’s new branch. The desire to start his own business, however, made the 27-year-old move to Bangalore in 1965 with his wife and Rs 150 in his pocket. On January 26, 1967, he opened his first bookshop, Sapna Book House, which sold Lilliput dictionaries. The 10×10 hole-in-the-wall shop at Gandhinagar soon became the largest bookstore in India, even finding mention in the Limca Book of Records for seven consecutive years. The rest can be qualified as a ‘rags-to-riches’ story, where a porter went on to become the owner of one of India’s largest bookstore chains.

    Sapna Book House today occupies four lakh sq ft of retail space in Karnataka (primarily) and Tamil Nadu, with the average size of each store ranging between 15,000 sq ft and 20,000 sq ft. It has 16 large-format stores in total in the two states. The group now plans to open 50 more stores in the next five years in tier II and III cities, mostly in south India. “We cater to 60,000 customers a day, with a retail turnover of Rs 220 crore annually,” says 26-year-old Nijesh Shah, group president, Sapna Book House. He is the grandson of Suresh Shah—the 79-year-old is now retired from the business. “Each new store will require a basic investment of Rs 2.5-Rs 3 crore. As of now, we are looking at organic growth,” Shah says. The group is also not averse to private equity or raising funds through IPO. “If we get funding through equity, we can open 50 stores in the next three years,” he says.

    Shah’s plans are especially significant at a time when bookshops and libraries are shutting down across cities. Most malls in the country either don’t have a bookshop or the ones that were there have shut down. All three big bookstore chains—Crossword, Landmark and Oxford—have shut at least one store in the past few years. Fact&Fiction, a popular bookshop in south Delhi, and Twistntales in Pune closed down two years back. There are more such examples in other cities. Publishing houses, on the other hand, are wooing readers with new initiatives. Last week, Penguin Random House India and The Book Fairies, a community of book lovers, came together to hide books in public places in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, which readers could pick up, read and pass on. Penguin Random House is also planning to make a new Web series based on a book by its bestselling author Durjoy Datta.

    Clearly, it’s not easy to be a bookstore-owner these days. So how does Sapna Book House remain relevant in these times? “We don’t just sell books. We sell ourselves as a family multi-brand retail store. Simply put, we sell everything to do with the ecosystem of education and educational technology,” says Shah. Any store of Sapna Book House has around 5.5 lakh books, of which 40% are academic books. There is also a wide range of stationery, greeting cards, audiobooks, magazines, movies, music, baby products, sports goods, gift items, chocolates, gaming consoles like Xbox, boardgames and much more.

    The group has its fingers in many pies. It has its own publishing outfits—Sapna Publications and Sapna Ink (self-publishing)—which have, so far, published 6,500 titles. “We are growing at an average rate of 1.5 new books a day, as we publish 650-700 titles a year,” says Shah. Sapna Book House is the sole distributor of NCERT textbooks in Karnataka and one of the three distributors in Tamil Nadu. It has an online retail store, an online test preparatory portal and another online vertical as well, which has tie-ups with schools in Bengaluru to sell their academic kits and uniforms. The company sells and exports stationery under its brand, Store 67. It also has tie-ups with public universities in Ghana, Africa, to develop social studies, English and math curricula for schools there.

    Shah says they have recently come up with two new models: Sapna Express and Sapna Kiosk. The concept of Sapna Express is that of a small-format store, with 500-1,500 sq ft space, which caters to the specific requirements of a particular locality. “Currently, we have two (outlets of) Sapna Express, one in an engineering college and another in a medical college (both in Karnataka). They cater exclusively to the needs of students in those colleges,” says Shah. There are plans to expand Sapna Express to other states as well.

    Under the Sapna Kiosk format, which is yet to be implemented, general stores, schools, libraries, etc, in rural areas across India will be provided with an electronic tablet, which would have Sapna Book House’s entire catalogue of 1.9 crore titles in the language specific to the area. “For instance, someone coming to a kirana shop in Erode (Tamil Nadu) to buy groceries can browse through our catalogue in Tamil and place an order (for a book). The store owner will vouch for our credibility,” says Shah. Interestingly, their success story is now part of a case study at Bangalore University. “None of our stores, so far, are franchised, so our involvement in each store is immense. We thrive on customer satisfaction,” Shah says. A skill that many in the industry would love to learn.

  18. মাসুদ করিম - ৩১ অক্টোবর ২০১৭ (১২:১২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Understanding resilience

    It is easy to admire the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) as a geographical region with beautiful natural scenery. However, it is also important to remember that the abundance of natural resources in the HKH sustains the livelihoods of more than 1.3 billion people. The region, which spans across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar, and Pakistan, is rich in terms of biodiversity hotspots, eco-regions and water supply, and food production and energy generation.

    Apart from its distinct ecological features, the region has mountain specificities. These characteristics include inaccessibility, fragility, marginality, diversity, niche biological opportunities, and human adaptation mechanisms. The remote geographical location, vulnerable environment with increasing threat of climate change, and distance from mainstream society, make the region one of the poorest in the world, with 61 million people living below the poverty line.

    Addressing vulnerability

    The unavoidable structure of the HKH and recent changes in the region require the implementation of approaches to strengthen resilience building as it is a valuable asset for mountain people. Resilience is the ability of an individual to successfully cope with and adapt to change and improve their livelihood choices and opportunities despite environmental instability. However, resilience has been addressed mostly in managerial or technical ways. This method has helped people adapt to challenges, but it pays little attention to the mental and emotional well-being of mountain people and fails to acknowledge the internal struggles they go through.

    The struggle begins with geographical disparity. The HKH is located in a region where the ‘majority’ interest of the political, economic, and social focus shadows the needs of mountain people and fails to allocate resources for them, compromising their claim for redistribution and reallocation. This structural phenomenon has been creating and reinforcing the cycle of poverty amongst mountain people, limiting their influence in society with their minority status and failing to acknowledge their competences.

    This structure has been accepted as being reflective of the normal way of life in the mountains. It has been persistent and passed down from generation to generation—captured in a set of beliefs, values, and abilities. This experience of vulnerability not only affects the social and physical well-being of mountain people but also has detrimental effects on their psychological wellbeing. Due to the struggles associated with maintaining their livelihood while coping with the changing environment, mountain people are more prone to feel hopeless and fatalistic, and may develop mental health consequences such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. While struggling to cope with both internal and external obstacles, the resilience of mountain communities is affected severely as they are overcome by stress and frustration. This leads to a tendency among mountain people to focus only on immediate goals and ignore long-term ones.

    Building strength

    In order to build resilience, first, there needs to be awareness that resilience is not a trait but rather a process of learning and of adapting to changes in the face of climate change. This ability then needs to be manifested in behaviour, where mountain communities need to come together and practise resilience to cope with changes for future well-being, as resilience is not only a mental outlook but also a community effort. The process of resilience building takes place in many forms—ranging from disaster risk management, biodiversity conservation, and water management to livelihood diversification and income-enhancing activities, including migration, among others.

    The progress of resilience building is reflected in the Resilient Mountain Villages of the HKH where the effects of climate change are dealt with through approaches such as recycling wastewater, identifying high-value product value chains, and improving and diversifying vegetable harvest with the help of bio-fertilisers such as ‘jholmal’.

    Furthermore, for improved resilience, efforts have been made to integrate geographical information systems (GIS) and the knowledge of local villagers to help identify local strategies and analyse people’s perceptions of coping mechanisms so that they may become empowered and able to deal with disasters triggered by changes in the environment. This has proven especially beneficial to certain social groups such as women, children, the elderly, the disabled, and minorities who face additional challenges because of their social position, leaving them more vulnerable to depression.

    There is a need to achieve better understanding of the changes taking place in the HKH and strengthen resilience building approaches not only from a mountain perspective but also to successfully achieve sustainable development goals. At present, changes and resilience building efforts in relation to mountain people are recognised mainly under three heads: climate resilience, socio-economic resilience, and future resilience, representing solutions only to external challenges. For a comprehensive resilience-building approach, an understanding of the internal challenges that mountain communities face is equally crucial. After all, the strength to cope with change and muster preparedness for adaptation both begin within.

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