বিভাগ/বিষয় নিরপেক্ষ

সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক: জানুয়ারি ২০১৮

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।

১১ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (৫:৩১ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Slaver’s Bay: The little-known history of Dutch slave trade in a small town in Tamil Nadu

    Pulicat or Pazhaverkadu was the capital of the Dutch slave business in India.

    It was a busy day in Pulicat, a little town 60 km to the north of Chennai. Set on the edge of the Pulicat lake, Asia’s second-largest brackish water lagoon, the tourism-driven town offered boat rides on the lake with the chance to spot rare migratory birds. Every hour, buses rumbled down its narrow roads carrying picnickers who left behind a trail of trash along the streets. With its bustling fish market and blaring loudspeakers, Pulicat was like any other coastal town.

    But this increasingly commercialised town has a past of which little is known. A history involving a clash of colonial powers, a prosperous diamond trade, smuggler’s ships and slavery.

    Dutch stronghold

    Hidden under a field of brambles behind the Pulicat bus stop, were the ruins of a 400-year-old fort, Castle Geldria. The fort only comprises of a few broken brick structures that are barely visible to public eye. Nobody ventures near the thicket of bushes for fear of snakes. “It’s just a jungle now,” said a local shopkeeper.

    This ruined fort was once the seat of power of the Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, which arrived in the continent in the 16th century. After gaining control of Masulipatnam of present-day Andhra Pradesh in 1605, Tegenepatnam in 1608, the Dutch made their way to Pulicat in 1610. With their large armed sailing vessels, the Dutch ousted the Portuguese, who had dominated the seaport for several decades after establishing a trading post in 1502. Pulicat was then turned into the Coromandel headquarters of the Dutch East India company.

    For almost two centuries, Pulicat was the administrative stronghold of the Dutch, who led a flourishing trade off the Coromandel coast. Hundreds of diamonds were exported to western countries from this port. Thousands of barrels full of fine spices such as nutmeg, cloves and mace were shipped from Dutch settlements in Indonesia and Ceylon to be transported to Deccan India. Indigo, pepper and pearls were traded in bulk across its various settlements. At Pulicat, the gunpowder factory set up by the Dutch proved to be invaluable as they sought to establish their hegemony in the East during the 17th century using arms and ammunition.

    But it was for their notorious slave trade that the Dutch were best known. Except for the company records written in Dutch, little information exists about the extent of this trade. Wil O Dijk, an independent researcher, had spent a considerable amount of time in the National Archives of Netherlands, translating documents of the VOC for her PhD at Leiden University. In her subsequent research paper Djik notes: “The ‘master list’ of slaves transported in VOC ships within and from the Bay of Bengal from June 1621 to November 1665 shows a total of 26,885 men, women and children – of which 1,379 died.”

    Slave trade capital

    Evidence of European slave trade is scant and periodic. It began with Portuguese traders in the 1500s when they transported hundreds of slaves in large cargoes to Portugal, Manila and even Mexico, wrote Richard B Allen, in his book European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850.

    But the Dutch exceeded their numbers by far. Between 1624 and 1665, the Dutch shipped over 11,000 slaves from Arakan, now known as Rakhine State of Myanmar. Slaves from Bengal and from settlements further in the South at Tegenpatnam and Carcal were brought to Pulicat, clad in dungarees made of coarse cotton cloth and sold at rates that varied each year. A slave in Pulicat could be sold anywhere between 4 guilders to 40 guilders, the currency of the Dutch.

    According to Dijk, slaves in Pulicat were occasionally categorised as Muslim, Hindu or even caffers, an offensive term for Black Africans.

    Natural calamities resulting in famine, failed harvests and food shortage only led to the growth of the trade. When famines struck, the prices of rice and other food grains rose exorbitantly and the price of slaves became much cheaper. Dijk wrote:

    “The insatiable demand by Europeans, especially the Dutch, for slaves thus procured on the South Eastern Coromandel Coast appears to have become well known in the interior, and offered enslavement as an alternative to starvation during times of scarcity and famine. The trade was run mainly by the Dutch at Pulicat who employed brokers at Madras for slave catching. The shipping was done at Madras port itself.”
    — Wil O Dijk, Seventeenth-century Burma and the Dutch East India Company, 1634-1680.

    Even battles and revolts against rulers led to booms in slave trade. The export of Coromandel slaves spiked during a famine that took place at the time of a revolt in 1645 by the Nayaka Hindu rulers of Thanjavur, Gingee and Madurai against the crumbling Vijayanagara empire. The subesequent invasion of the Bijapur army led to the devastation of fertile agricultural lands of Thanjavur, pushing more people into slavery. In 1646, around 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, which is now the city of Jakarta in Indonesia. An overwhelming majority of these slaves were from Southern Coromandel, wrote Dijk, as far as Tondi, Adirampattinam and Kayalpatnam along the Tamil Nadu coast.

    “For the Dutch, the Coromandel slave trade was the most useful means of augmenting the supply of labour in their colonies,” Dijk writes. “The Coromandel slaves were reputedly malleable and subject to disciplined control. They were agricultural workers and there was a fair proportion of skilled labourers among them.”

    The Dutch slave trade continued towards the end of the 1700s, even with the competing slave trade of the French and the British.

    “The traffic was large enough to attract the attention and incur the displeasure of local Mughal officials, as a result of which Governor Elihu Yale and his council banned the purchase and exportation of slaves from Madras and neighbouring ports in May 1688 on pain of a 50-pagoda fine for each slave illegally purchased and exported,” wrote Allen.

    Despite the ban, the Dutch slave trade continued sporadically till the end of the 18th century. The British East India company officials were well aware about this, especially in the late 1700s, when the VOC factories in Pulicat, Bimilipatnam (a neighbourhood of Vishakapatnam) and Jaggernatpuram facilitated the acquisition and shipment of slave cargoes to Mauritius and the Reunion. Allen even notes that in 1792, officials from the British East India company in Masulipatnam sent a note to their Dutch counterparts in Jaggernatpuram saying that they had received information that contractors of slave-carrying vessels openly resided in the factory, who had most recently transported 500 people as slaves from the country. “We are also informed that this traffic is openly countenanced by you, and written passes granted, in consideration of which, seven rupees per head is paid for each slave exported,” the note read.

    In the 1780s and 1790s, abolitionist sentiments had grown among officials of the British East India company. Correspondence between the Madras Presidency and the Dutch in Pulicat led to the gradual phasing out of slave trade.

    Except for the works of a few scholars, very little is known today about this sordid past of Pulicat. Like the ruins of Castle Geldria, it lies buried in a largely forgotten history of Dutch colonial rule in India.

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (৯:৫২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Why did protests erupt in Iran?

    The Islamic Republic of Iran is the platypus of humanity’s political evolution.

    Episodic Iranian unrest, from the focused, reformist uprising of 2009 (led by middle-class protesters of Tehran) to the current, wildly rejectionist riots (spearheaded by the underclass and the unemployed in the poor neighborhoods of provincial towns) cannot be understood in isolation from that melange of procedural democracy and obscurantist theocracy that was crammed into the constitution of revolutionary Iran, four decades ago.

    Deep within Iran’s authoritarian system there is a tiny democratic heart, complete with elective, presidential and parliamentary chambers, desperately beating against an unyielding, theocratic exoskeleton. That palpitating democratic heart has prolonged the life of the system – despite massive mismanagement of the domestic and international affairs by the revolutionary elites.

    But it has failed to soften the authoritarian carapace. The reform movement has failed in its mission because the constitution grants three quarters of the political power to the office of the “Supreme Leader”: an unelected, permanent appointment whereby a “religious jurist” gains enormous powers, including command of the armed forces and foreign policy, veto power over presidential cabinets and parliamentary initiatives, and the world’s most formidable Pretorian Guard (IRGC), with military, paramilitary, intelligence, judicial and extrajudicial powers to enforce the will of its master.

    The democratically-elected president and parliament (let alone the media and ordinary citizens) have no prayer of checking the powers of the Supreme Leader. As a result, the system has remained opaque, blind to its own flaws, resistant to growth and incapable of adaptation to its evolving internal and external environments.

    These uprisings express the frustration of the people with that obdurate rigidity.

    It took a decade after the revolution of 1978-1979 for the democracy movement to gain self-consciousness, in the mind of a segment of the cadre elite of the revolution, at the disappointing end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988.

    It took another decade for this sentiment to gestate before it took political shape in the wave that carried President Mohammed Khatami to power in 1997. The empowered reformists aimed to strengthen the democratic component of the Republic while softening its theocratic and authoritarian casing.

    They failed in this mission because the ruling theocrats would not brook the slightest diminishment of their power. They fought Khatami tooth and nail and sabotaged his plans. They created, in the words of the first reformist president, a “crisis every nine days” to break him.

    The failure of the reformers resulted in a popular malaise. As hopes of reforming the Islamic Republic were frustrated, many stayed away from the polls in 2005 elections. This allowed the rise of a neo-conservative counter elite headed by the firebrand, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

    The ensuing international isolation and precipitous devaluation of the currency sobered the people enough to send them back to the polls in 2009, to depose the dangerous lunatic who had climbed to the office of presidency. When Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, the perception of a stolen election led to immense street demonstrations that came to be known as the Green Uprising.

    Unlike the present riots, the 2009 movement had a well-defined political vision and a seasoned leadership which was quickly arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned. Street demonstrations were brutally suppressed.

    Ahmadinejad’s second term was even more disastrous than his first. The near economic collapse under the UN-imposed sanctions, and rampant profiteering due to the ubiquitous black market in everything from cancer drugs to selling oil in international markets, persuaded people to once again return to the polls.

    In the 2013 elections, people elected Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric who promised international normalisation and economic prosperity, but not hardcore reform or liberalisation. The reformers extended an olive branch to the autocratic right-wing establishment to let the bygones of 2009 be bygones.

    But the Supreme Leader arrogantly rejected the gesture. Far from being ashamed of what they had done, the ruling theocrats had decided to transform the suppression of the Green Uprising into a foundational myth for their neo-fundamentalist cult. Not even the emerging regional threats by a new Arab/Israeli alliance and the election of a blatantly anti-Iran president in the United States persuaded the right wing to put aside their “anti-reformist” sentiments.

    In his first term, Rouhani managed to check the hyperinflation and the runaway unemployment while concluding a historic agreement with Iran’s iconic adversary, the US. But his second term did not start auspiciously.

    First, Rouhani appeared to buckle under right-wing pressures when he appointed a relatively conservative cabinet: A disappointing pattern people had already seen in President Khatami’s second term. To make matters worse, the Americans under Trump (or, as he is known in Iran, the American Ahmadinejad) started to renege on the promises of the nuclear deal. Hopes for a quick recovery had now been dashed.

    Further fuel was added to the volatile mix as a series of mammoth corruption schemes came to the light. Then, under pressure from the right wing, President Rouhani decided to justify raising taxes on gasoline by revealing the massive, entitlement budget for religious foundations that was imposed on him by powers that be. It is hard to overestimate the anger this profligacy inspired in people.

    The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back was a mere rise in the price of eggs. The right-wing powerful duo of the city of Mashad, Ebrahim Raisi (the embittered rival of Rouhani in the recent elections) and his famously simple-minded father-in-law, Ahmad Alamolhoda, struck the first match by staging a small anti-Rouhani demonstration, blaming the high price of consumer goods on the Rouhani government.

    This was the proximate cause of the current unrest, which must be seen only as a trigger, rather than its driving force. The sudden spread of these riots has led to the speculation that they are instigated by extraterritorial enemies such as the Saudi-Israeli-US alliance. But, as there is nothing new about that sort of anti-regime agitation, it is unlikely that they were causally significant.

    As long as Iran does not radically modify its institution of the office of the Supreme Leader, and as long as the democratic element of that system remains marginalised and powerless to express the wishes of the people and reduce tensions through legal representation, riots and uprisings will be an immanent and permanent feature of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    Maybe, under a benevolent despot, all these powers would be put to effective use. But Iran and its neighbours on all sides are no exception to British historian Lord Acton’s rule: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

    IRGC’s cmdr pronounces recent anti-Iran plot defeated

    The Commander-in-Chief of IRGC, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, announced that the recent days’ riots were part of the most recent plot against Iran and he asserted the plot was definitely foiled.

    “This is a divine vow that each difficulty and sedition is followed by an easement,” said the Chief-Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, on Wednesday.

    The Iranian commander mad ethe remarks touching upon the recent week riots in some cities of Iran.

    “The enemies perfectly know that by no means can they threaten the Islamic Republic of Iran in terms of defense. So they have mustered all their capital, after the sacred defense, to pose cultural, economic, and security threats against the Islamic Iran, and with God’s help they are assuredly to be defeated in these fields, too,” ascertained the top commander of IRGC.

    “In addition to the 5000 forces trained, as announced by Ms. Clinton, to create riot, anarchy, insecurity, and intrigue in Iran, a huge number of anti-revolutionary agents, pro-monarchists, and MKO members, were tasked with creating and developing riot and anarchy in Iran,” he noted.

    “Today, I can pronounce, that the intrigue of 96 is over and defeated,” asserted the Iranian General.

  3. মাসুদ করিম - ৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (৫:০৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    প্রায় ৭ বছর আগের সুপারিশকৃত লিন্কে চট্টগ্রাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের ছাত্র মোহাম্মদ সাজিদ আলি হাওলাদার কি এই খবরের প্রাণীবিজ্ঞানী ড. সাজিদ আলী হাওলাদার, তাই তো মনে হচ্ছে।

    প্রাণীবিজ্ঞানী সাজিদে মুগ্ধ হেলসিংকি বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়
    দেশে ফিরে উচ্চতর গবেষণা করার ইচ্ছা

    ড. সাজিদ আলী হাওলাদার। বাংলাদেশি তরুণ। বিশ্বের কনিষ্ঠতম প্রাণিবিজ্ঞানী। ২০১১ সালে চট্টগ্রাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের প্রাণিবিদ্যা বিভাগের চতুর্থ বর্ষের ছাত্র থাকার সময়ে মাত্র ২৬ বছর বয়সে আবিষ্কার করেন ‘ফেজারভেরিয়া আসমতি’ নামের ব্যাঙ। ইংরেজ শাসনামলের পরে প্রথম বাংলাদেশি হিসেবে এটাই ছিলো নতুন কোনো চতুস্পদী মেরুদন্ডী প্রাণী আবিষ্কারের ঘটনা।

    ২০১৫ সালে আবিষ্কার করেন ‘ইউফ্লিকটিস কলসগ্রামেনসিস’ ও ২০১৬ সালে ‘জাকেরানা ঢাকা’ নামের আরো দুটি ব্যাঙ। অর্জনের ঝুড়ি এখানেই শেষ নয়। বিশ্বের সরীসৃপ প্রাণীর শ্রেণিবিন্যাসের ক্ষেত্রে তিনি সর্বকনিষ্ঠ বিজ্ঞানী হিসেবে আমেরিকান মিউজিয়াম অব ন্যাচারাল হিস্ট্রির কিউরেটর ড. ড্যারেল ফ্রস্টের স্বীকৃতি পেয়েছেন।

    ড. সাজিদ আলী হাওলাদার ‘জাকেরানা’ নামের নতুন এক জাতের ব্যাঙের নামকরণ করেছেন। দীর্ঘদিন ধরে ‘ফেজারভেরিয়া’ নামের যে জাতটি দক্ষিণ এশীয় বিভিন্ন ব্যাঙের নামের আগে যুক্ত হতো, সেটাকে বাতিল করে নতুন জাতের প্রচলন ঘটান এই তরুণ গবেষক ও বিজ্ঞানী। এছাড়া ২০১৩ সালে ফিনল্যান্ডের ‘হেলসিঙ্কি কালচারাল ফাউন্ডেশন অ্যাওয়ার্ড-২০১৩’ লাভ করেন তার বিভিন্ন গবেষণাকর্মের জন্য। অ্যাওয়ার্ডটি জৈব প্রযুক্তি গবেষণার জন্য প্রতিবছর একজনকেই দেয়া হয়। সে বছর আমাদের এই তরুণ প্রাণিবিজ্ঞানী সাজিদই হলেন সেই একজন।

    যুক্তরাষ্ট্র থেকে প্রকাশিত জার্নাল ‘প্লসওয়ান’ সাজিদ আলীর ‘ইউফ্লিকটিস কলসগ্রামেনসিস’ ব্যাঙ নিয়ে প্রতিবেদন প্রকাশ করে। এর আগে এ রকম আরেকটি ব্যাঙের নাম ছিল ‘ইউফ্লিকটিস সায়ানোফ্লাইকটি’। ১৭৯৯ সালে সেটি জার্মান প্রকৃতিবিদ জে জি স্কুনেইডারের দেয়া। সাজিদের ব্যাঙটির জিনগত বৈশিষ্ট্য, আকার ও গঠন আগের ব্যাঙটির চেয়ে পৃথক হওয়ায় ‘ইউফ্লিকটিস কলসগ্রামেনসিস’কে নতুন ব্যাঙ হিসেবে স্বীকৃতি দেয়া হয়।

    বরিশালের কলসগ্রাম নামের জায়গা থেকে ব্যাঙটি আবিষ্কৃত হওয়ায় সাজিদ ব্যাঙটির বৈজ্ঞানিক নামের সঙ্গে জুড়ে দেন কলসগ্রাম শব্দটি। এছাড়া সাজিদের ‘জাকেরানা ঢাকা’ নামের ব্যাঙটির আবিষ্কারের ঘটনা আরো তাত্পর্যপূর্ণ। ঢাকার মতো প্রবল ঘনবসতিপূর্ণ জায়গা, যেখানে নগরায়নের ফলে অসংখ্য বন্যপ্রাণি বিলুপ্তির মুখে রয়েছে, সেখান থেকে নতুন বন্যপ্রাণি আবিষ্কার পৃথিবীর ইতিহাসে বিরল ঘটনা।

    সাজিদের গ্রামের বাড়ি বরিশাল জেলায়। ১৯৮৫ সালে ঢাকায় জন্ম নেয়া সাজিদ চট্টগ্রাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের প্রাণিবিদ্যা বিভাগ থেকে ২০১১ সালে স্নাতক ডিগ্রি লাভ করেন। স্নাতকোত্তর ডিগ্রি অর্জনের আগেই ফিনল্যান্ডের হেলসিংকি বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় তাকে জীববিজ্ঞান বিভাগে ব্যাঙের শ্রেণিবিন্যাস বিদ্যার (ট্যাক্সনমি) ওপর গবেষণা করার জন্য আমন্ত্রণ পাঠায়। পরবর্তীতে হেলসিংকি বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় কর্তৃপক্ষ সাজিদকে মাস্টার্স ছাড়াই বিশেষ ব্যবস্থায় পিএইচডি শিক্ষার্থী হিসেবে অন্তর্ভুক্ত করে। এখানেও ‘সাজিদ যাদু’তে মুগ্ধ হন হেলসিংকি বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় কর্তৃপক্ষ।

    হেলসিংকি বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের বায়ো সায়েন্স বিভাগ থেকে তিন বছরেরও কম সময়ের মধ্যে ‘ইকোলজি এ্যান্ড ইভ্যুলেশন’ বিদ্যায় পিএইচডি ডিগ্রি লাভ করেন এই তরুণ। বর্তমানে পপুলেশন জেনেটিক্স ও ইভোল্যুশন বায়োলজির গবেষক হিসেবে সেন্ট্রাল ফিনল্যান্ডের এভাসকুল বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে ইউরোপিয়ান সবুজ ব্যাঙের উত্পত্তি ও বিবর্তনের উত্সমুখ খুঁজতে গবেষণার কাজে হাত দিয়েছেন তরুণ এই প্রাণিবিজ্ঞানী।

    ড. সাজিদ আলী হাওলাদারের মতে, বাংলাদেশের প্রাকৃতিক বৈচিত্র্য ইউরোপের চেয়ে কয়েক গুণ বেশি। বাংলাদেশের একটা অংশ ‘ইন্দো-বার্মা বায়োডাইভার্সিটি হটস্পট’এর অংশ। তাই বাংলাদেশের প্রাণীদের নিয়ে কাজ করে সারা পৃথিবীতে হৈচৈ ফেলে দেয়ার সুযোগ খুব বেশি। গোটা বিশ্বে প্রাণিবিদ্যা গবেষণায় যে কর্মযজ্ঞ চলছে, তার সঙ্গে তাল মিলিয়ে এগিয়ে যেতে হলে আমাদেরকে প্রচুর কাজ করতে হবে।

    উন্নত দেশের মতো আমাদের দেশের বিভিন্ন বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের প্রাণিবিদ্যা বিভাগের আওতায় স্বতন্ত্র প্রাণী জাদুঘর প্রতিষ্ঠা করতে হবে। সেসব জাদুঘরে বাংলাদেশের নতুন প্রজাতি সনাক্তকরণ কাজের পাশাপাশি প্রাণী আবিষ্কার ও উচ্চতর গবেষণার সুযোগ তৈরি হবে। এ ধরনের উদ্যোগ বাইরের দুনিয়ায় বাংলাদেশের সুনাম যেমন বৃদ্ধি করবে, তেমনি দেশের গবেষণার মানকে আরো সামনে এগিয়ে নেবে।

    প্রতি বছর অসংখ্য শিক্ষার্থী মেধাবৃত্তি নিয়ে পড়াশুনার জন্য দেশের বাইরে যাচ্ছেন। এর অনেকে আর ফিরে আসেন না। পিএইচডি, পোস্ট-ডক্টরেট, গবেষণা, শিক্ষকতা করে দিব্যি দেশের বাইরে গোটা জীবন কাটিয়ে দেন। সারা জীবন দেশের সাধারণ মানুষের টাকায় পড়াশুনা করে সুনির্দিষ্ট বিষয়ে বিশেষায়িত জ্ঞানের অধিকারী হয়ে বিদেশে রয়ে যান।

    ড. সাজিদ আলী হাওলাদার ফিরে আসবেন কিনা জানতে চাইলে বলেন, আমি চাই প্রাণিবিদ্যা গবেষণায় বাংলাদেশ বিশ্বের বুকে মাথা উঁচু করে দাঁড়াক। পিএইচডি শেষ করেছি, এবার দেশে ফিরতে চাই। আমার সমস্ত জ্ঞান ও শিক্ষা নিংড়ে দিয়ে দেশের জন্য কাজ করতে চাই। সম্ভব হলে শিক্ষকতার পাশাপাশি যে কোনো বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে একটি স্বতন্ত্র প্রাণী জাদুঘর প্রতিষ্ঠা করবো, যেটা নতুন প্রজাতি সনাক্তকরণ, আবিষ্কার, সংরক্ষণ ও উচ্চতর গবেষণার একটি তারুণ্য নির্ভর প্রতিষ্ঠান হয়ে উঠবে। আমি বিশ্বাস করি, আমার দেশ আমাকে এই সুযোগটি করে দেবে।

  4. মাসুদ করিম - ৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (৬:২৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    First Djibouti … now Pakistan port earmarked for a Chinese overseas naval base, sources say

    The facility would be similar to one in operation in African nation, offering logistics and maintenance services to PLA Navy vessels

    Beijing plans to build its second offshore naval base near a strategically important Pakistani port following the opening of its first facility in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa last year.

    Beijing-based military analyst Zhou Chenming said the base near the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea would be used to dock and maintain naval vessels, as well as provide other logistical support services.

    “China needs to set up another base in Gwadar for its warships because Gwadar is now a civilian port,” Zhou said.

    “It’s a common practice to have separate facilities for warships and merchant vessels because of their different operations. Merchant ships need a bigger port with a lot of space for warehouses and containers, but warships need a full range of maintenance and logistical support services.”

    Another source close to the People’s Liberation Army confirmed that the navy would set up a base near Gwadar similar to the one already up and running in Djibouti.

    “Gwadar port can’t provide specific services for warships … Public order there is in a mess. It is not a good place to carry out military logistical support,” the source said.

    The confirmation follows a report this week on Washington-based website The Daily Caller in which retired US Army Reserve colonel Lawrence Sellin said meetings between high-ranking Chinese and Pakistani military officers indicated Beijing would build a military base on the Jiwani peninsula near Gwadar and close to the Iranian border.

    Sellin said the plan would include a naval base and an expansion of the existing airport on the peninsula, both requiring the establishment of a security zone and the forced relocation of long-time residents.

    Gwadar port is a key part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a centrepiece of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s broader “Belt and Road Initiative” to link China through trade and infrastructure to Africa and Europe and beyond. The corridor is a multibillion-dollar set of infrastructure projects linking China and Pakistan, and includes a series of road and transport links.

    Sellin also said the Jiwani base could be “signs of Chinese militarisation of Pakistan, in particular, and in the Indian Ocean”.

    Chinese military observers said Gwadar had great geostrategic and military importance to China but China was not about to “militarise” Pakistan.

    Zhou said China wanted better access to the Indian Ocean, which was now largely limited to the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia. The Gwadar port could be a transit hub for sea and land routes once the corridor’s railway was up and running, helping improve and cut the cost of logistics for China.

    “The Chinese naval flotilla patrolling in the Gulf of Aden and other warships escorting Chinese oil tankers in the Indian Ocean need a naval base for maintenance as well as logistical supplies because they can’t buy much of what they need in Pakistan,” Zhou said.

    Rajeev Ranjan Chaturvedy, a research associate at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, said India was well aware of China’s plans in Pakistan.

    “China finds it very useful to use Pakistan against India and ignore India’s concerns, particularly on terrorism issues. That has created a lot of stress in the relationship between Beijing and Delhi,” he said.

    “[But] Indian naval capabilities and experience in the Indian Ocean region are fairly good. Much better than Pakistan and China.”

    Swaran Singh, a professor at the school of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said neither Gwadar nor Jiwani would be a wise choice for a naval base because of its proximity to the port of Chabahar in Iran, in which India has a big stake.

    New Delhi has invested more than US$100 million for two berths in the port on a 10-year lease, as a way to promote trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan.

    “Potentially both [Gwadar and Jiwani] can become vulnerable to any stand-off … between Pakistan and Iran but also China in Pakistan and India which is present in Chabahar,” Singh said.

    China began building what it describes as a 36-hectare logistics base in Djibouti in 2016, with its first naval troops arriving in July last year. The troops have staged regular live-fire drills since September, a move military analysts say is meant to show China’s ability to protect its overseas interests in Africa and the Indian Ocean region.

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ১০ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (১০:২৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    খবরে নওয়াজ শরীফের বাংলাদেশ ও শেখ মুজিব নিয়ে বলা কথাগুলো ‘ফান্দে পড়া’ কথা – এসব নিয়ে এত উচ্ছ্বসিত হওয়ার কিছু নেই।

    Ex-PM Nawaz Sharif assails judiciary’s ‘vendetta’ against him

    Continuing his attacks on the judiciary, ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif disclosed on Tuesday that he had written to former chief justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali to complain about the objectionable remarks passed against him by Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed during the hearing of a case regarding the promotion of a government officer in 2015.

    Talking to a group of lawyers from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) at Punjab House, Mr Sharif said he wrote the letter at a time when he had no “tussle” with the judiciary, and hastened to clarify that even today, he did not have any bad blood with the Supreme Court.

    “I have no conflict or tussle with the SC. I do have differences with the judges who had issued the verdict [against me]. I have implemented their decision, but I have not accepted it,” Mr Sharif declared amidst sloganeering by the lawyers.

    Mr Sharif flayed the “irresponsible” remarks, such as ‘godfather’ and ‘Sicilian mafia’, which were passed against him by the judges during the hearing of the Panama Papers case, saying that these remarks came from the same judge who had already made controversial statements about him (Nawaz) during a hearing regarding the promotion of an officer from grade 19 to 20.

    The PML-N chief recalled that during the course of that hearing, Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed had remarked that “Nawaz Sharif should know there is enough space for him in Adiala Jail”.

    “If we respect you, then it is compulsory for you to respect the office of the prime minister,” he said, adding that the remarks hurt his feelings because he was totally unaware of the case,

    Mr Sharif also regretted incumbent Chief Justice Saqib Nisar’s recent remarks, who had observed that he would wind up the Orange Line Metro Train project if the government did not give any importance to health and education. Without naming the chief justice, he said the people were already suffering “because of you” and due to the delay caused by the protracted hearings in the case.

    Mr Sharif noted that the judiciary faced a massive backlog of cases, because of which people were being denied justice, adding that justice had become too expensive for poor people to afford.

    He also joked that he has already paid a lot of money in legal fees to his lawyers, adding that had he known justice was this expensive when he was prime minister, he would have taken steps to resolve the issue. He was of the opinion that the state should bear the legal expenses of poor people.

    The PML-N chief claimed that judges who had validated the military takeovers, authorised dictators to subvert the Constitution and invented the ‘doctrine of necessity’ were guilty of “treason”. He also mentioned the name of former chief justice Irshad Hassan Khan, who had authorised Gen Pervez Musharraf to amend the Constitution after coming to power in a military coup.

    He said that the country was plagued with crises because those who had violated the Constitution had not been held accountable and regretted that the nation had not learnt anything from history.

    Likening his plight to that of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman’s in 1971, he said that decisions such as the one against him produced “rebels”. The Awami League chief was a strong supporter of Pakistan, but he was pushed against a wall and turned him into a rebel, Mr Sharif claimed.

    Referring to the petitions challenging the passage of the Elections (Amendment) Act 2017, Mr Sharif alleged that after removing him from the office of PM, efforts were afoot to unseat him as the president of PML-N by “undoing” legislation that was passed by parliament.

    The former prime minister also deplored the recent statement by US President Donald Trump, terming it an “insult” for the whole nation. He said the country was facing this situation because of its own internal weaknesses.

    কিন্তু এই একই খবরে বিডিনিউজ২৪.কম এত কথা কোত্থেকে লিখল, তাহলে কি ‘ডন’ খবর ছেঁটে দিয়েছে নাকি বিডিনিউজ২৪.কম আমাদেরকে ‘মাধুরী খবর’ পরিবেশন করছে।

    আমরাই বাংলাদেশকে আলাদা হতে বাধ্য করেছি: নওয়াজ শরিফ

    পাকিস্তানে একের পর এক গণতান্ত্রিক সরকারকে ক্ষমতাচ্যুৎ করার প্রসঙ্গ তুলে দেশটির সাবেক প্রধানমন্ত্রী নওয়াজ শরিফ বলেছেন, ১৯৭১ সালে তাদের কারণেই বাংলাদেশ আলাদা হয়েছিল।

    মঙ্গলবার ইসলামাবাদে পাঞ্জাব হাউজে একদল আইনজীবীর সমাবেশে তিনি একথা বলেন বলে পাকিস্তানভিত্তিক সংবাদমাধ্যম ডনের এক প্রতিবেদনে বলা হয়েছে।

    ১৯৭০ সালের নির্বাচনে আওয়ামী লীগ জয় পাওয়ার পরও তৎকালীন পাকিস্তান সরকার ক্ষমতা ছাড়েনি। উল্টো নানা টালবাহানার পর বাঙালির ওপর চালায় নির্মম হত্যাযজ্ঞ, যার পরিণতিতে স্বাধীনতার ঘোষণা দেন বঙ্গবন্ধু শেখ মুজিবুর রহমান।

    ওই প্রসঙ্গ তুলে নওয়াজ বলেন, “শেখ মুজিবুর রহমান বিদ্রোহী ছিলেন না, কিন্তু আমরা তাকে বিদ্রোহী করেছিলাম।”

    তিনি বলেন, “পাকিস্তান সৃষ্টিতে বাঙালির কেন্দ্রীয় ভূমিকা ছিল। কিন্তু তাদের সঙ্গে আমরা ভালো আচরণ করিনি এবং আমাদের থেকে আলাদা করেছি।”

    পাকিস্তান মুসলিম লীগের (পিএমএল-এন) নেতা নওয়াজ শরিফ তিনবার পাকিস্তানের প্রধানমন্ত্রী হয়ে কোনোবারই মেয়াদ পূরণ করতে পারেননি। সর্বশেষ গত বছর আদালতের রায়ে প্রধানমন্ত্রী হিসেবে অযোগ্য ঘোষণার পর ২৮ জুলাই পদত্যাগে বাধ্য হন তিনি।

    এর আগে ১৯৯০ ও ১৯৯৭ সালে দুই বার পাকিস্তানের প্রধানমন্ত্রী নির্বাচিত হলেও ক্ষমতাচ্যুত হওয়ায় কোনোবারই মেয়াদ পূর্ণ করতে পারেননি নওয়াজ। দ্বিতীয়বার সেনাবাহিনীর হাতে ক্ষমতাচ্যুত হয়ে তিনি দেশান্তরিত হয়েছিলেন। তখন বেশিরভাগ সময় থাকতেন সৌদি আরবে। ২০১৩ সালের নির্বাচনে ফের ক্ষমতায় আসেন নওয়াজ।

    তার আগের পাকিস্তানের ১৭ জন প্রধানমন্ত্রীর কেউই তাদের পুরো মেয়াদ কখনও দায়িত্ব পালন করতে পারেননি।

    পাকিস্তানের এই পরিণতির জন্য দেশটির সেনা শাসকদের কৃতকর্মের জন্য বিচারের মুখোমুখি না হওয়াকে কারণ হিসেবে দেখছেন নওয়াজ শরিফ।

    এ প্রসঙ্গেও একাত্তরে বাঙালির উপর সংঘটিত নিষ্ঠুরতা এবং তার জন্য কারও শাস্তি না হওয়ার বিষয়টিকে উদাহরণ হিসেবে তুলে ধরেছেন তিনি।

    নওয়াজ বলেন, “বিচারপতি হামদুর রহমান কমিশন বাংলাদেশের সৃষ্টি নিয়ে বিস্তারিত বিশ্লেষণপূর্বক খুবই সত্য ও স্পষ্ট প্রতিবেদন প্রকাশ করেছিল। কিন্তু আমরা তা পড়েও দেখিনি।

    “ওই প্রতিবেদনের ভিত্তিতে আমরা যদি পদক্ষেপ নিতাম তাহলে আজকের পাকিস্তান ভিন্ন হত এবং যে ধরনের খেলা হয়ে থাকে সেগুলো হত না।”

    বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা নিয়ে পাকিস্তান সরকার গঠিত হামদুর রহমান কমিশনের প্রতিবেদনে একাত্তরে বাংলাদেশে গণহত্যার জন্য পাকিস্তানি সামরিক বাহিনীকে দায়ী করে তাদের বিচারের সুপারিশ করা হয়।

    পাকিস্তান সে অনুযায়ী কোনো ব্যবস্থায়ই নেয়নি। একাত্তরে গণহত্যার জন্য বাংলাদেশের কাছে আনুষ্ঠানিকভাবে ক্ষমাও চায়নি। বরং বাংলাদেশে একাত্তরের মানবতাবিরোধী অপরাধের বিচার নিয়ে ক্ষুব্ধ প্রতিক্রিয়া জানিয়েছে, যা নিয়ে এই নওয়াজের সর্বশেষ আমলেই দুই দেশের কূটনৈতিক সম্পর্কে টানাপড়েন সৃষ্টি হয়।

    পানামাপেপারর্সে দুর্নীতির মাধ্যমে বিদেশে সম্পদের পাহাড় গড়ার তথ্য ফাঁসের পর আদালতের রায়ে ক্ষমতাচ্যুৎ হয়ে এখন দেশটির বিচার বিভাগ ও দৃশ্যত সেনাবাহিনীর সমালোচনা করছেন তিনি। সেনা কর্তাদের সমালোচনায় ঐতিহাসিক প্রেক্ষাপট হিসেবে বাংলাদেশের প্রসঙ্গ টানলেন।

    “স্বৈরশাসকের বিচার করতে পারে এমন আদালত পাকিস্তানে কখনও আসেনি,” বলেন তিনি।

    Pakistan ‘pushed Bangladesh into secession’, says ousted leader Nawaz Sharif

    Comparing his situation with the revolt of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the recently ousted prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif has said his country pushed Bangladesh to break away.

    Speaking to lawyers at the Punjab House in Islamabad on Tuesday, he claimed he had been ‘persecuted’ over the years and ‘pushed towards revolt’, the Daily Dawn reported.

    “Sharif drew parallels between what he considers to be his own ‘cornering’ by the state and the events that led to the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan,” the Pakistani newspaper wrote.

    “Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (sic) was not a rebel, but was made into one,” it quoted Sharif as saying, and referencing the situation following which Bangabandhu called for Bangladesh’s War of Independence from Pakistan.

    The then Pakistani government did not hand powers to the Awami League headed by Bangabandhu even after it won a landslide victory with an absolute majority of 160 seats in the National Assembly, all from the then East Pakistan in 1970 Pakistan General Election.

    “What has been done to me, and to all the elected prime ministers in this country’s history, is not correct,” Sharif said, referring to the fact that no prime minister in the history of Pakistan could complete his or her term.

    “What kind of return for service to the nation is this?” the thrice-ousted prime minister asked.

    After his election as prime minister for the third time, the PML-N leader had to resign on July 28 last year following a Supreme Court verdict that disqualified him from holding office over undisclosed assets in a case based on the leaked Panama Papers.

    Sharif’s two previous stints in power were also cut short, including by a military coup in 1999, but he returned from exile to win a resounding victory in general elections in 2013.

    Following his latest unceremonious ouster, he has invoked the spectre of 1971 several times, according to the Dawn.

    About the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, Sharif again said: “The Bengalis had a central role in the effort to create Pakistan, but we did not treat them well and separated them from us.”

    For the fate the country has faced, he blamed Pakistan’s failure to bring the military dictators of the country to justice for their misdeeds, like the atrocities faced by Bangladeshis in 1971.

    To back his claim, he asked the Pakistanis to read the report by the Justice Hamoodur Rehman Commission, terming it ‘a very truthful and clear’ report on the creation of Bangladesh after a detailed analysis.

    “…but we did not even read it,” Sharif lamented and added, “Had we acted on it, today’s Pakistan would have been different and the kinds of games that are being played would not have been played.”

    The Commission reportedly recommended action against the then Pakistani generals for the 1971 War, but no action was taken and only parts of the report were declassified in 2000.

    “No court that can try a dictator has ever come into existence in Pakistan,” Sharif said.

    • মাসুদ করিম - ১০ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (৪:০৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

      বিডিনিউজ২৪.কম এর প্রতিবেদনের সূত্রটি পেয়েছি। কিন্তু মূল বক্তব্য একই থাকল – খবরে নওয়াজ শরীফের বাংলাদেশ ও শেখ মুজিব নিয়ে বলা কথাগুলো ‘ফান্দে পড়া’ কথা।

      No court can try dictators in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif tells lawyers

      “No court that can try a dictator has ever come into existence in Pakistan,” ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, himself sent packing by the Supreme Court, complained to a group of lawyers gathered at Punjab House, Islamabad on Tuesday.

      Claiming that that he had been “persecuted” over the years and “pushed towards revolt”, Sharif drew parallels between what he considers to be his own ‘cornering’ by the state and the events that led to the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan.

      “[Former Bangladesh prime minister] Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was not a rebel, but was made into one,” Sharif remarked, referring to the tragic consequences that followed the state’s refusal to allow a popularly elected leader to hold the prime minister’s office.

      This is not the first time Sharif has invoked the spectre of 1971 ever since he was unceremoniously ousted from power by the Supreme Court’s Panamagate decision.

      But “I want to forget all these wounds,” he remarked. “I don’t want to take them to a point where my emotions get out of my control.”

      “What has been done to me, and to all the elected prime ministers in this country’s history, is not correct,” he continued. “What kind of return for service to the nation is this?”

      Demanding an end to the usurpation of democratically-elected governments, he asked that those involved in behind-the-scenes manipulation of the political order “repent for their sins and ask for forgiveness from the nation.”

      Returning to the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the thrice-ousted prime minister said: “The Bengalis had a central role in the effort to create Pakistan, but we did not treat them well and separated them from us.”

      “The Justice Hamoodur Rehman Commission had published a very truthful and clear report on the creation of Bangladesh after a detailed analysis, but we did not even read it,” Sharif lamented.

      “Had we acted on it, today’s Pakistan would have been different and the kinds of games that are being played would not have been played.”

      Sweeping past and incumbent judges together, Sharif accused the judiciary of complicity in weakening the democratic process, saying they had “legitimised dictatorships” and “invented the doctrine of necessity.”

      “They [the dictators] were told that had you not arrived, the country would have been destroyed. They were told that ‘This is Pakistan’s Constitution, and it is your property’. They were given authority to amend the Constitution — an authority that the judges themselves did not have.”

      “They [dictators] were told ‘We will never ask you, no one will ask you’, and the nation kept quiet,” Sharif said, conceding that the nation had collectively been at fault.

      Regarding the current Chief Justice of Pakistan’s suo moto notices of conditions at public hospitals, Sharif said: “Feel free to go to these hospitals, but also look at what is happening in your own courts. Hundreds of thousands of cases are pending in court and people are awaiting their decision.”

      “Justice is so expensive that even I am tired of paying my lawyers’ fees,” Sharif said.

      Recalling that the Orange Line train project in Lahore had been threatened with closure, Sharif said: “It has already remained closed for a very long time, for which the people hold the judges responsible.”

      Stressing again on the need to introspect, Sharif said United States President Donald Trump’s statement should have been an eye-opener for the nation, but nothing happened.

      “Should the humiliating language used by Turmp be acceptable to any country,” Sharif asked, adding that the nation needs to hold itself accountable for why it was in such dire straits.

      “We are the only country in the whole world which are being made to listen to these kinds of statements but are not ready to introspect,” he said.

      “The nations which do not hold themselves accountable face such attacks time and again.”

      Once again criticising the July 28 Panamagate verdict, Sharif claimed that he and daughter Maryam Safdar had been appearing before an accountability court, but had still not been told of the charges against them.

      He also took on Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan, saying while he [Nawaz] had been disqualified over an “imaginary salary”, “those with ‘different standards’ have been declared Sadiq and Ameen.”

      “You are now hearing all their stories,” he said, referring to rumours of Khan’s third marriage.

      Criticising the judgement in Imran Khan and Jahangir Tareen’s disqualification case, Sharif complained that, unlike him, they were not tried by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) “despite so much being there against them.”

      Sharif also said his ascension to the PML-N presidency was made possible because of “a divine intervention”: pointing to the passage of the Elections Act 2017 by the Senate, he said his party does not even possess a majority there.

      “I am here to tell you that I am not going to be scared or worried,” he affirmed, before asking for support from the lawyers present.

  6. মাসুদ করিম - ১১ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (১০:৩৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Bangladesh should readjust foreign policy in line with changing global dynamics

    Experts stress regional connectivity to turn country into FDI hotspot

    Bangladesh should readjust its foreign policy in line with the changing global dynamics to make ‘real’ friends by transforming the small delta into a hotspot for foreign direct investment (FDI), experts suggested on Wednesday.

    According to the speakers, the recent Rohingya exodus has shown Bangladesh really does not have friends to count on, although the main principle of the country’s foreign policy is friendship with all and enmity with none.

    Stressing on the importance of increasing regional connectivity, they said the foreign policy should concentrate more on SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) and BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), and make regional corridors like BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) and BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar) active.

    The suggestions and observations were made at a seminar on ‘Changing Global Dynamics: Bangladesh Foreign Policy’ hosted by Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) at its Eskaton office in the city.

    Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali was present as the chief guest in the programme.

    “In this (Rohingya) crisis time, no one from our region stood beside us. Why did it happen so?” Executive Director of Policy Research Institute (PRI) Dr. Ahsan H Mansur said while talking on economic development and Bangladesh foreign policy.

    It is evident that despite having sour relationships, China and Japan are on the same boat when it came to Myanmar. Moreover, India and China have also managed to keep their enmity aside and essentially sided with Myanmar.

    He also said it is investment and economic interests that determine the relations between the countries, and the associated political support. The countries like China, Japan and India do not have much FDI exposure in Bangladesh comparing to Myanmar.

    This unfortunate situation is mostly due to Bangladesh’s failure in attracting FDI, and the perception about future potentials for investment in Bangladesh economy.

    “The cumulative FDI in Myanmar stood at around US$ 75 billion, whereas it is less than $ 14.5 billion in Bangladesh. So, we have to bring overseas investors in a large number, and the foreign policy should focus on that,” he added.

    Presenting the keynote paper, Director General of BIISS Major General A K M Abdur Rahman said the world is passing through a transition period because of growing incidents of terrorism.

    Besides, protectionism seems to be on rise because of many factors, as the US pulled out of TPP and climate change negotiation as well as Brexit etc.

    At the same time, the issues like North Korea and Rohingya are giving signals of changing global dynamics of politics, and the country’s foreign policy should be in line with this.

    Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali mentioned eight priorities, putting “deeper engagement with Europe” on the top of these priorities.

    The foreign minister said as a natural connector between South and South-East Asia and beyond, Bangladesh will continue to pursue regional cooperation as an engine for sustainable growth and economic integration through SAARC, BIMSTEC, BBIN, SASEC and BCIM.

    Given the shared political, cultural, social and economic history over centuries, he said India has been the country’s most important partner.

    “In bilateral relations with Myanmar, the issue of Rohingya influx remains as an irritant. With the repatriation of the Rohingyas under the arrangement signed on November 23, 2017 we hope to have a new beginning with Myanmar.”

    While talking about the country’s economic interest, the minister said the government will continue to forge effective partnerships with other countries to secure economic benefits.

    “We have already developed such partnerships with India, China, Japan, the UK and the US in the recent years across mega infrastructure, power and energy sector projects,” he added.

    Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) State Minister Md. Shahriar Alam said the country has to be prepared for the necessary requirements of GSP (Generalised Scheme of Preferences) plus once it gets out of the box of LDCs (least developed countries).

    “So, we’ve to take necessary preparations from all quarters, including diplomats and business community.”

    About FTA (free trade agreement), he said Bangladesh is the 46th largest economy of the world, and it is the only among these 46 countries who has no FTA with other countries, which is not acceptable at all.

    “We’re working to have FTA with Sri Lanka. At the same time, we’ve decided to open the book of FTA again after a break. We’re talking with some other countries to have PTA (preferential trade agreement),” he added.

    MoFA Secretary Md. Shahidul Haque said the foreign policy prioritises a broader and deeper relationship with the European Union (EU), especially with France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden.

    “We’ve strategic relation with Asian superpowers – India and China. Relation with India is, in fact, beyond strategic, while strategic relation with China is shifting to partnership.”

    He also said the foreign policy has shifted from land-focused to ocean-based to properly explore Blue Economy.

    Mr Shahriar said it is difficult to maintain relations with China and India — the two big powers — but the government is maintaining balanced relations with the two countries.

    Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed, Professor of International Relations of Dhaka University, emphasized maintaining a balanced relation with China and India to get maximum benefits.

    Former Chief Information Commissioner Ambassador Muhammad Zamir, BIIS Chairman Ambassador Munshi Faiz Ahmed and Professor Tasneem Siddiqui of Dhaka University, among others, also spoke at the function.

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ২৪ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (১০:৩৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Nicanor Parra, Chile’s eminent poet and ‘anti-poet,’ dies at 103

    Nicanor Parra, an eminent Chilean scientist-turned-poet who revolutionized Latin American verse by rejecting its flowery diction and forging a stripped-down, confrontational and darkly comic form that he dubbed “anti-poetry,” died Jan. 23 at his home in the La Reina section of Santiago, Chile. He was 103.

    His family announced the death but did not disclose the cause.

    Chilean President Michelle Bachelet hailed Mr. Parra as “one of the biggest authors of our literature, in our history.” His blunt, subversive and playful work influenced writers ranging from Thomas Merton to the Beat poets to Pablo Neruda and wowed many literary critics. One of them, Yale University professor Harold Bloom, called Mr. Parra as “essential” as Walt Whitman. In 2011, Mr. Parra was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor.

    Mr. Parra’s poetic gate-crashing was partly inspired by the long shadow of Neruda, a fellow Chilean and a Nobel laureate with a global following. Mr. Parra made it his life’s mission to bring such exalted wordsmiths and poetry itself “down from Olympus” and make them accessible to regular people.

    His work had a liberating effect, especially in Latin America, where since the 1930s poets had favored Wagnerian language, romantic yearnings and heroic gestures. By contrast, Mr. Parra preferred street argot and dwelt on the small frustrations of put-upon office workers, alienated students, bag ladies and hoodlums. His blunt style and bleak outlook were influenced by the precise formulas and rational theorems of science as well as by the nightmarish visions of Franz Kafka and T.S. Eliot.

    The result was an outpouring of “anti-poems” about an off-kilter world in which love begets exploitation, sex becomes torture and miscommunication reigns. They often feature lost souls unable to connect with other people as their minds wander from the heads of lettuce in the kitchen to concerns about the reproduction of spiders.

    Humor was a key ingredient.

    In “Help,” the joyous narrator chases a phosphorescent butterfly only to see pastoral bliss dissolve as he trips and smashes his face into the ground. He ends with a plea: “Save me once and for all / Or shoot me in the back of the neck.”

    In “Lullabaloo,” an angel tries to shake the hand of the narrator, who responds by grabbing the angel’s foot and ruffling his feathers.

    Enraged, the angel swipes at him with a sword, but the narrator ducks, then bids a sarcastic farewell:

    Be on your way

    Have a nice day
    Get run over by a car

    Get killed by a train.

    Mr. Parra once explained: “I think that the poet should be a specialist in communication. Humor makes contact [with the reader] easier. Remember that it’s when you lose your sense of humor that you begin to reach for your pistol.”

    Uruguayan-born literary critic and Yale professor Emir Rodríguez Monegal wrote that “by interrupting and even cutting short the anecdotal flow, Parra ‘deconstructs’ the poem and finally achieves an almost epigrammatic structure.”

    Another noted scholar of Latin American verse, Alexander Coleman, wrote in the New York Times in 1972: “Make no mistake: Nicanor Parra is a poet (or an antipoet or whatever) of total command and total grandeur.”

    Others were repulsed. A handful of translators in the United States refused to touch his work, which they viewed as vulgar and sacrilegious. Commenting on Mr. Parra’s 1962 collection “Salon Verses,” Prudencio de Salvatierra, a prominent Chilean-born Franciscan priest, author and literary critic, wrote: “In this work there is complete contempt for women, religion, virtue and beauty. I have been asked if this book is immoral. I would say no; it is too filthy to be immoral. A can of garbage is not immoral, no matter how many times we stir up its contents.”

    Mr. Parra’s work was so incendiary that, despite his stature as one of the world’s leading experts in Newtonian physics, he was far better known for his writings.

    Neruda, who helped him find a publisher for his groundbreaking 1948 collection “Poems and Antipoems,” adopted some of Mr. Parra’s techniques. Devotees included Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose City Lights Books first published Mr. Parra’s work in the United States. Alluding to Mr. Parra’s eruptive techniques, Merton labeled him “the poet of the sneeze.” When Mr. Parra was awarded the Cervantes Prize, Cervantes Institute Director Víctor García de la Concha described the Chilean writer as “a poetic sniper who revitalizes everything.”

    Mr. Parra was dubious about fame and sparred with journalists, turning interviews into “anti-interviews.”

    An arresting presence at readings with his fierce eyebrows, long sideburns and Einsteinian splay of white hair, Mr. Parra would jar audiences by calling his efforts a total failure and signing off with the declaration: “I take back everything I’ve told you.”

    His helter-skelter love life included numerous affairs with much younger women, including his housekeeper, art students, fans and hippies whom he would sometimes entrance with verses made up on the spot.

    His politics were also fickle. An early environmentalist, Mr. Parra in one poem speaks in the voice of God, warning:

    “If you destroy the Earth, don’t think I’ll create it again.”

    In 1963 he spent six months in the Soviet Union translating into Spanish the work of several of that country’s poets. But he refused to join Chile’s Communist Party.

    In 1970, with the Vietnam War still raging, he was photographed taking tea at the White House with first lady Pat Nixon. That prompted the Cuban government under Fidel Castro to rescind Mr. Parra’s invitation to serve as a judge at a prestigious book fair in Havana.

    Leftists were also enraged by his 1972 publication “Artifacts,” a collection of short poems and drawings in which he poked fun at the socialist government of Chilean President Salvador Allende.

    After Allende committed suicide during a 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Mr. Parra refused to join the exodus of artists fleeing the country. Though he mostly avoided politics, some of the poems in his 1977 collection “The Sermons and Teachings of the Christ of Elqui” take aim at the Pinochet regime’s human rights abuses.

    Mr. Parra came to view all government as a form of dictatorship. “Public Works,” his 2006 multimedia exhibition in Santiago, included cutouts of all Chile’s presidents hanging by their necks.

    It caused an uproar. But throughout his career Mr. Parra warned people to approach his work at their own risk, a stance he summed up in “The Solemn Fool.”

    For half a century

    Poetry was the paradise

    Of the solemn fool.

    Until I came

    And built my roller coaster.

    Go up, if you feel like it.

    I’m not responsible if you come down

    With your mouth and nose bleeding.

    Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was born in San Fabian de Alico, a village in southern Chile, on Sept. 5, 1914. His family lived on the edge of poverty, but his schoolteacher father and seamstress mother promoted arts and culture among their eight children. Mr. Parra’s younger sister, Violeta Parra, was one of Chile’s best-known folk singers and penned the classic “Gracias a la vida” before committing suicide in 1967.

    Mr. Parra won a scholarship to a prestigious Santiago high school and graduated from the University of Chile in 1938 with degrees in mathematics and physics. He studied advanced mechanics at Brown University in Rhode Island and cosmology at the University of Oxford in England and was a visiting professor at American universities, including Columbia and Yale. He taught theoretical physics at the University of Chile from 1948 until retiring in 1991.

    But from the beginning, Mr. Parra felt the literary tug. In 1969, he won Chile’s National Literary Prize and, three years later, was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. He once stated that he taught physics to earn a living but wrote poetry to stay alive.

    His marriages to Ana Delia Troncoso, with whom he had three children including the visual artist Catalina Parra, and to a Swedish woman, Inga Palmen, ended in divorce. He had a son with his housekeeper Rosita Muñoz and two more with painter Nury Tuca, who was 33 years his junior. A complete list of survivors could not immediately be determined.

    In contemplating death and his controversial legacy, Mr. Parra created a piece of anti-poetry in 1954 called “Epitaph”:

    Neither too bright nor totally stupid

    I was what I was. A mixture

    Of oil and vinegar

    A sausage of angel and beast.

  8. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (২:২৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    কথাসাহিত্যিক শওকত আলীর প্রয়াণ

    প্রখ্যাত কথাসাহিত্যিক শওকত আলী হাসপাতালে চিকিৎসাধীন অবস্থায় মারা গেছেন। বৃহস্পতিবার সকাল সোয়া ৮টার দিকে বঙ্গবন্ধু শেখ মুজিব মেডিকেল বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় হাসপাতালের চিকিৎসকরা তাকে মৃত ঘোষণা করেন। মৃত্যুকালে তার বয়স হয়েছিল ৮২ বছর।

    ফুসফুসের সংক্রমণ, কিডনি জটিলতা ও হৃদযন্ত্রের সমস্যা নিয়ে গত ৪ জানুয়ারি ল্যাব এইড হাসপাতালে ভর্তি হন শওকত আলী। প্রথমে আইসিইউতে রাখা হলেও পরে অবস্থার অবনতি হলে তাকে লাইফ সাপোর্টে নেওয়া হয়েছিল। পরে তাকে ল্যাব এইড থেকে নেওয়া হয় বঙ্গবন্ধু মেডিকেলে।

    ১৯৩৬ সালের ১২ ফেব্রুয়ারি ভারতের পশ্চিমবঙ্গ রাজ্যের উত্তর দিনাজপুর জেলার থানা শহর রায়গঞ্জে জন্ম নেন শওকত আলী। ছাত্র জীবনেই তিনি কমিউনিস্ট আন্দোলনে জড়িয়ে পড়েন। এর কিছুদিন পরেই তিনি জড়িয়ে পড়েন রাষ্ট্রভাষা আন্দোলনে। ১৯৭১ সালে মুক্তিযুদ্ধ শুরু হলে তাকে বন্দি করে জেলে পাঠায় পাকিস্তানের সামরিক সরকার।

    পরে সাংবাদিক হিসেবে কর্মজীবন শুরু করলেও কিছুদিন পরে শিক্ষকতায় যোগ দেন তিনি। ১৯৬২-১৯৮৭ সাল পর্যন্ত জগন্নাথ কলেজে লেকচারার হিসেবে চাকরি করেন শওকত আলী। ১৯৮৮ সালে জেলা গেজেটিয়ারের ঢাকার হেড অফিসে সহকারী পরিচালক হিসেবে যোগ দেন তিনি। ১৯৮৯ সালে সরকারি সঙ্গীত কলেজের প্রিন্সিপাল করা হয় তাকে। এখান থেকে ১৯৯৩ সালে অবসরে যান তিনি।

    বামপন্থিদের ‘নতুন সাহিত্য’ পত্রিকায় লেখালেখি করেন শওকত আলী। এছাড়া দৈনিক মিল্লাত, মাসিক সমকাল, ইত্তেফাকে তার অনেক গল্প, কবিতা ও শিশুতোষ লেখা প্রকাশিত হয়।

    শওকত আলী ব্রিটিশ আমলে হিন্দু-মুসলিম দাঙ্গা নিয়ে লিখেছেন বিখ্যাত উপন্যাস ‘ওয়ারিশ’। এছাড়াও ‘প্রদোষে প্রাকৃতজন’, ‘পিঙ্গল আকাশ’, ‘অপেক্ষা’, ‘গন্তব্যে অতঃপর’, ‘উত্তরের খেপ’, ‘অবশেষে প্রপাত’, ‘জননী ও জাতিকা’, ‘জোড় বিজোড়’ প্রভৃতি তার জনপ্রিয় উপন্যাস।

    ‘উন্মুল বাসনা’, ‘লেলিহান সাধ’, ‘শুন হে লখিন্দর’, ‘বাবা আপনে যান’সহ বেশ কয়েকটি গল্পগ্রন্থ সম্পাদনা করেছেন তিনি।

    ১৯৮৬ সালে ফিলিপস সাহিত্য পুরস্কার পান শওকত আলী। এরপরে ১৯৯০ সালে একুশে পদকেও ভূষিত হন তিনি। এছাড়াও বাংলা একাডেমি পুরস্কার (১৯৬৮), ফিলিপস সাহিত্য পুরস্কার (১৯৮৬), হুমায়ুন কবির স্মৃতি পুরস্কার, আলাওল সাহিত্য পুরস্কার (১৯৮৯) ও অজিত গুহ স্মৃতি সাহিত্য পুরস্কার (১৯৮৩) পান।

  9. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (১:২৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    চলে গেলেন সুপ্রিয়া দেবী

    শেষ হয়ে গেল বাংলা চলচ্চিত্রের এক অধ্যায়। বৃহস্পতিবার গভীর রাতে শেষ নিঃশ্বাস ত্যাগ করলেন সুপ্রিয়া দেবী। তাঁর বয়স হয়েছিল ৮৩ বছর। দীর্ঘদিন ধরেই নানা শারীরিক সমস্যায় ভুগছিলেন তিনি। তাঁর প্রয়াণে টলিউডে নেমেছে শোকের ছায়া। সার্কুলার রোডে তাঁর বাড়িতে একে একে ভিড় জমাচ্ছেন তাঁর ঘনিষ্ঠ কলাকুশলীরা। সুপ্রিয়ার প্রয়াণে শোকাহত কিংবদন্তি অভিনেতা সৌমিত্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়। তিনি বলেন, ‘‌ষাট বছরের বন্ধুত্বে ছেদ পড়ল।বিধ্বস্ত লাগছে। বাংলা ছবি স্বর্ণযুগের একজন অন্যতম স্থপতি ছিলেন।’‌ আবার পরিচালক তরুণ মজুমদারের কথায়, ‘‌সুপ্রিয়ার চলে যাওয়ার শোকটা ভাষায় ব্যক্ত করা যাবে না।’‌ সুপ্রিয়াকে শেষ শ্রদ্ধা জানাতে এসেছিলেন প্রসেনজিৎ চট্টোপাধ্যায়, মুনমুন সেন, রাইমা সেন, অরূপ বিশ্বাসরা।
    মাত্র ৭ বছর বয়স থেকেই অভিনয় করতে শুরু করেন তিনি। ঋত্বিক ঘটকের মেঘে ঢাকা তারা হোক কী বনপলাশীর পদাবলি— সুচিত্রা নজর কেড়েছেন সব ধরনের ভূমিকায় অভিনয়ের জন্যই। উত্তমকুমার থেকে সৌমিত্র, সকলের সঙ্গে পাল্লা দিয়ে অভিনয় করেছেন। ফিল্মফেয়ার, পদ্মশ্রী, বঙ্গ বিভূষণ সহ একাধিক সম্মানে ভূষিত হয়েছেন তিনি। সুপ্রিয়াদেবীর মৃত্যুতে শোকপ্রকাশ করেছেন মুখ্যমন্ত্রী মমতা ব্যানার্জি। টুইটারে তিনি লেখেন, ‘‌সুপ্রিয়াদেবীর মতো একজন কিংবন্তীকে আমরা হারালাম। বাংলা চলচ্চিত্রে ওঁর অবদান আমরা ভুলব না। ওঁর পরিবারকে সমবেদনা জানাই।’‌ মমতা আরও জানান, দুপুর তিনটের সময় শেষযাত্রায় নিয়ে যাওয়া হবে সুপ্রিয়া দেবীকে। তারপরে রবীন্দ্রসদনে শায়িত রাখা হবে সুপ্রিয়ার মরদেহ। সাড়ে ছ’‌টা পর্যন্ত সাধারণে শ্রদ্ধা জানাতে পারবেন তাঁকে। তারপরে তাঁর দেহ নিয়ে যাওয়া হবে কেওড়াতলা মহাশ্মশানে।
    ১৯৩৩ সালের ৮ জানুয়ারি তৎকালীন বর্মার মিতকিনায় জন্মগ্রহণ করেন সুপ্রিয়া দেবী। দ্বিতীয় বিশ্বযুদ্ধের সময় বর্মা থেকে কলকাতা চলে আসে সুপ্রিয়া দেবীর পরিবার। মাত্র সাত বছর বয়সে অভিনয়ের জগৎে পা রাখেন প্রয়াত অভিনেত্রী। ছোট থেকেই নাচ ও অভিনয়ে পারদর্শী ছিলেন তিনি। প্রতিবেশী চন্দ্রাবতী দেবীর হাত ধরেই অভিনয়ের জগতে পা রাখেন তিনি। তাঁর অভিনীত বিখ্যাত ছবির মধ্যে রয়েছে ‘মধ্য রাতের তারা’, ‘কোমলগান্ধার’, ‘উত্তরায়ণ’, ‘সূর্যশিখা’, ‘লালপাথর’, ‘শুধু একটি বছর’, ‘কাল তুমি আলেয়া’, ‘তিন অধ্যায়’, ‘চৌরঙ্গী’, ‘সবরমতী’, ‘মন নিয়ে’, ‘চিরদিনের’, ‘সন্ন্যাসী রাজা’, ‘বাঘ‌বন্দী খেলা’।

  10. মাসুদ করিম - ৩০ জানুয়ারি ২০১৮ (৬:৪৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Janet Yellen Didn’t Set Out to Be a Feminist Hero

    She has been called “a small lady with a large I.Q.” She has been mocked for wearing the same outfit to both her official White House nomination and her confirmation hearing. (“At least we know her mind won’t be preoccupied with haute couture,” a Washington gossip columnist wrote.) And when President Barack Obama once referred to Janet L. Yellen as “Mr. Yellen,” she didn’t bother correcting him.

    Ms. Yellen, the first woman to serve as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, didn’t ask to become a feminist icon, and she almost never talks about gender in the abstract or her historic role as the agency’s chairman (she bristles at being called “chairwoman”). And yet, during a tenure characterized by a plummeting unemployment rate and consistently low inflation, Ms. Yellen became a pop culture phenomenon.

    Last month, President Trump nominated Jerome H. Powell to replace her. The move broke with a long-held tradition of new presidents (even those of opposing parties) extending the terms of the Federal Reserve chairman they have inherited. Ms. Yellen said she would step down from the Fed’s board, a position that doesn’t expire until 2024, when her four-year term as chairman ends in February. Her impending departure has reminded women of how much it meant to them, to see one of their own making decisions that have reverberated throughout the global economy.

    On Tuesday and Wednesday, she is scheduled to preside over the Federal Reserve’s last meeting of the year — and her last major decision as the Fed’s leader. The central bank is expected to raise its benchmark interest rate in acknowledgment of the steady decline of the unemployment rate and the general strengthening of the economy.

    Despite his unorthodox decision to replace her, even Mr. Trump has agreed that Ms. Yellen has performed well in the job. In the Rose Garden announcing Mr. Powell’s nomination, the president called Ms. Yellen an “absolutely spectacular person” and said she had “done a terrific job.”

    So, why, many women wondered, replace her with a man?

    “Janet should’ve been renominated, as every past Fed chair has been renominated for nearly the last 40 years,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in an interview. “But it’s not the first time and certainly not the last a highly qualified woman is passed over for a job she clearly deserves.”

    It’s a funny thing Americans have about powerful women. Voters haven’t always responded to women who ask for the big jobs (see: Hillary Clinton), but when they see a woman simply doing the job — and a good one, at that — they seem happy to give her rock star status.

    It’s true of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice who has become known to many young women simply as “the Notorious RBG.” And it was true of Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, traveling the world and negotiating with world leaders in a scrunchie and glasses while basking in 70 percent approval ratings. (When Mrs. Clinton was asked about her in-the-toilet favorability numbers during the 2016 presidential campaign, she said, “Once I’m doing the job, we’ll be back to people viewing me as the person doing the job instead of the person seeking the job.”)

    To protest Ms. Yellen’s departure, liberal activists have worn “Yellen wigs” in support of the economist’s signature floppy white bob (as well as her affinity for keeping interest rates low). Supporters describe her in terms more suited to Taylor Swift than a 71-year-old academic shaping monetary policy.

    “I’m the biggest Janet fangirl,” said Julia Coronado, founder of the economic research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives.

    Emily Eisner, a doctoral student a the University of California, Berkeley, and editor of the school’s Women in Economics at Berkeley blog, echoed the sentiment, saying, “I don’t want to use the word idol, but symbolically, she has meant a lot to me.”

    Kaivan Shroff, a former campaign aide to Mrs. Clinton, wrote on Twitter, “Janet Yellen is such a BOSS.”

    Mr. Powell, the incoming chairman, studied closely under Ms. Yellen and is largely expected to continue the economic path she has laid. “They appointed the apprentice instead of the master,” Heidi Hartmann, the president and chief executive of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said.

    The change, Ms. Hartmann added, speaks to the broader problem of a lack of women represented in finance and economic policymaking. “I think men have a fair amount of loyalty to other men, and the other people Trump consulted would’ve been more open to a man,” she said.

    The White House shunned any accusations of sexism playing into the decision. “The mere suggestion is an affront to Chair Yellen,” the press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

    Described as even-keeled and soft-spoken, but fierce (“People underestimate her at their peril,” Ms. Warren said), Ms. Yellen has never inserted herself into the gender wars but by virtue of that “large I.Q.,” she has inadvertently found herself in the cross hairs.

    The Brooklyn-born Ms. Yellen was the only woman among those earning a Ph.D. in economics at Yale in 1971. For years, she was known in academic circles as “the trailing spouse,” overshadowed by her husband, George Akerlof, a Nobel-prize winning economist. The couple has a son, Robert Akerlof, who is also a highly regarded economist.

    This trailing spouse, however, went on to be a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and a member of the central bank’s board of governors. Then, in 2013, 100 years after the Federal Reserve was founded, she made history as its first woman chair.

    But history making is often a messy matter. And even with her low profile, Ms. Yellen managed to kick up a central-banking storm.

    Mr. Obama’s initial choice to steer the nation’s shaky economy through the recession had been the economist Lawrence H. Summers, who had served as an adviser. But many Democrats in the Senate, including Ms. Warren, protested the move. They argued that Ms. Yellen, who had worked closely with the outgoing chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, was the obvious choice.

    Then there was the issue of Mr. Summers, who during his time as president of Harvard had caused controversy and a suitable backlash when he argued that inherent differences between the sexes were a possible reason for the lack of female science professors.

    Theories abound that Ms. Yellen has been accepted — and even beloved — in a high-powered role because she has not made being a woman a central theme of her career. In contrast to Mrs. Clinton who made gender a significant part of her 2016 candidacy, Ms. Yellen has inserted the issue more subtly.

    “You try to make the economy better and reflect priorities of the nation, and there isn’t a woman’s budget,” said Alice M. Rivlin, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget and as vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board during the Clinton administration. “I felt the same way about the Federal Reserve.”

    In May, Ms. Yellen delivered a speech at Brown University on the impact of women in the labor force, one of only a handful of times she has directly addressed gender issues.

    Women in the workplace have been “hampered by barriers to equal opportunity and workplace rules and norms that fail to support a reasonable work-life balance,” Ms. Yellen said, adding that “if these obstacles persist, we will squander the potential of many of our citizens and incur a substantial loss to the productive capacity of our economy.”

    Considering her tenure at the Federal Reserve, economists said that having a woman in that role had brought about a more representative approach to monetary policy, even if Ms. Yellen did not emphasize an agenda intended to advance the interests of women. Several academic studies, for example, show that women economists are more likely to address inequality than their male counterparts.

    “The economic profession as a whole has a terrible white male problem,” Ms. Coronado, said. “Are you even going to ask the right questions if you have a lot of privileged people setting the agenda?”

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