Power

When we talk of power we are usually referring to that quality that governments, authorities and individuals have that invests them with the ability to make decisions. It can be arbitrary, corrupt even incompetent. Today Dhaka conversations about power are almost certainly confined to electricity, or more accurately the lack of it. Power shedding and outages have become the norm and today the government announced that it ad banned the use of AC from 6 to 11.00 pm each night in an attempt to conserve power for irrigating the boro crop (the winter planting). The lack of electricity affects all but the lack of AC is a particularly middle class problem. In either case it doesn't help the government popularity and makes me think that the diagnoses that the BNP only has to sit back and let the Awami League continue to stuff up if they want to return to power make be an accurate one. There's certainly an air of despondency around that can only get worse as it gets hotter. The issue of electricity needs looking at more closely but indicative of the problems was an announcement that the Khulna generator would come back on line after four years of failure to make good the repairs begun in 2006. Clearly incompetence and corruption are at work here.

Yesterday the New Age ran a front page story saying the government had asked all MPs to include development proposal in the budget claims 'irrespective' of whether they were practicable or not. Surely an invitation to pork barreling or corruption if ever I heard one.

Obviously I'm having a bad day! Very hard to remain optimistic despite reading Yunus' autobiography. Yesterday I went to a quiz night attended by the young, rich and foreign educated. The booze flowed and people enjoyed themselves but it was like living on another planet and difficult to reconcile with the poverty that confronts you as you drive through the slums in your nice air conditioned car!!