Why not export?
AZ, Dhaka
We are a country who are blessed with abundance of potato, but we import potato chips and crackers from SE Asia. We export fine quality biscuits, but we import the same from India. Why this duplicity? We use foreign jams and marmalades, and are weak in bottling and exporting fruits and value-added products. Our medicines and plastic goods are cheap, but the export volume is not rising as expected. It is depressing to read exposures and shortcoming of this sort in the daily press.Our governance is reactionary, and it always wakes up after the event! Now the railway line between Zia International Airport and Kamlapur is going to be realigned outside the city limits, after WB pressure (it should have been done much earlier). There is so much centralisation in the secretariat that even the planning commission lacks encouragement for bold schemes (the other side is political decision-making). The political leaders generally ignore technical ideas for more quick popular investment. An avoidable mess has been created through the hurried banning of shopping polybags, without first flooding the market with cheap substitutes (the jute sector failed, and no cheap synthetic substitute were approved by the authorities). Zeal, enthusiasm and monomania are not enough for good governance. Our politics of andolon lacks balance. There is no real meaning behind all these. Extremism has become a culture -- some visible, others invisible and indirect. All these weaknesses (in Muslim states) to the right approach to problems have been pointed out by Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his brilliant speech at the recent OIC meet in Malaysia (reprinted in DS Oct 19). Let us get rid of our surplus dry fish and wet vegetables. Export it (value-added!)
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