The article posted by the moderator says

"Country's foreign exchange reserve increased *by around USD 100
million* to 1.6 billion in a week as the finance authorities cracked
down on a thriving parallel forex market."


So it means the reserve actually increased 100 million not 1.5
billion. Regardless, we can not stress enough the importance of this
remittance to the Bangladeshi Economy, the principle of which may be
coming from exptriates working hard in the middle east and countries
like Malaysia. However, the living condition of most of the people
who are doing low wage jobs in those countries is extremely poor. In
this regard, I would like to highlight a very interesting essay that
came out in Daily Star a few weeks ago. I hope the other alochoks
will be able to throw some suggestions on if there is anything we can
do about the subject of the following essay.



Are miskins people too?

Afsan Chowdhury

Migration is all very nice if you can migrate. There is a huge
difference between guest workers and expatriates in the North. While
one group doesn't need the country and are basically escaping from
Bangladesh, the other group wants to make some money and come home to
Bangladesh. It's really long distance commuting. While we are proud
of our successful brothers in Europe, the others hide inside
construction site holes and pray.

April is the proverbial cruel month. Not just for Eliot but also for
everyone who wishes to see the revival of spring and promise of
harvests. In this world we certainly don't control or even understand
what harvests mean. We have simply become scavengers of happiness. We
are looking for what we have thrown away in the dustbin of our own
world. This was the Bangla New Year and somehow, the sharp features
of our efforts stand out.

Baishakh brought a flurry of calls from people, some regular, some
not. "I don't stay much in Bangladesh nowadays. The environment for
business doesn't exist in this country." "I am sorry there isn't
enough material for a serious scientist like me to live in
Bangladesh." Calls to say they don't live here anymore. I have to
agree with them. One is a leading businessman and the other is into
medical research. One has often defined the nature and course of the
business environment here. If he feels overwhelmed although cushioned
by his millions, how should others feel?

The other has patterns on his mental world created by another sun. In
the end the patterns of survival and justice have boiled down to
having money and access. If you are rich, you can at least run away.
If you aren't rich, you can't even run. You are condemned to stew and
crumble here into your graves. Bangladesh is a place where you come
to die or after you are dead. When you are alive you live elsewhere.

The Letters page is having a debate on whether to stay back or
leave. "Should our sons come back?" The debate is condemned to be
lost. I don't think anybody who has a chance will come back because
after 30 years of concentrated efforts, we have managed to make
Bangladesh a country that is not even worth visiting. It's a painful
experience to be here for us and let's say so forgetting false
patriotism. For those who have lived abroad for a period of time,
it's even worse. By sending kids who are younger or and more so, we
are cutting off the next generation. This is a country without the
next generation. Do you recognise what that means?

"Bangladesh was plundered by Bangladeshis. Your friends did it and
you helped them. Not just by being with them but also by refusing to
condemn them. You are not just guilty but you are a criminal."

The young boy who accuses me of betrayal and wishes to kill me -- I
hope -- finds no words that can carry the burden of his soul's anger.
He has no time for my excuses and keeps asking how come some became
so rich and some became so poor.

"Just because you are not rich doesn't mean you are clean. Maybe you
couldn't find ways of becoming one. Maybe you failed to become rich
too." He drinks pallid coffee served in a chipped cup and waits for
my answer. I have none. I basically want to hide in shame.

I am sure we went wrong but where did we go wrong? Nobody talks about
this. Everyone does blame the politicians and that's universal. Our
leaders failed us and so did the rest. But why did we let them fail
us? Didn't we cheer when one-party rule was established? Didn't we
congratulate the leaders when the newspapers were banned? Didn't we
clap when martial law was imposed? Face the facts. When the Rakkhi
Bahini killed young boys we felt safe.

When Siraj Shikder, was killed we felt safe. When Col. Taher was
hanged, we felt safe.

And the people we followed killed them. Why do we blame our leaders
when we in the first place crave to follow them blindly as they
construct our world? Perhaps it's true that we have become nation of
sheep, happy in following the herd. Our search for safety is mad,
blind and ultimately inevitable.

For many survival is impossible in Bangladesh and thus we have the
expatriate crowd. But they are not the non-resident Bangladeshis of
the USA and other developed countries including a few in the Middle
East who often write to The Daily Star. They are mostly the desperate
poor who populate the lowest end of the job market anywhere in the
world. They are a new category of people, "The Miskins". They will
not stay back but send their money home and often can't even read our
paper.

Neglected by the national authorities, hounded by the police of their
countries of work, they are the most despised and denigrated lot
anywhere who provide the valuable foreign exchange with which we make
foreign trips as VIPs.

For them making a trip abroad is part of the survival strategy,
learnt over centuries. They have no option to make some decent money
except to leave home and return. They are not Chand Sawdagar but his
boat assistant who never gets mentioned in myths.

Unless you have seen them where they work you won't know to what
depth of indignity they are made to descend into to make money to
send home.

"I ran for few miles across the jungle to escape capture by the
police. Finally, I reached Kuala Lumpur after three months. I had
spent one lakh to reach there. I found work in construction site
carrying bricks a few months after I landed. It's black market work.
But police raided the site and I was arrested. After three months in
jail I was let go and deported. I went with a lakh and came home
empty."

This was Malaysia from where lakhs of working Bangladeshis are going
to be forced out because the Bangladeshi officials didn't bother to
cover the interest of these ordinary Bangladeshis. They are going to
be thrown into jails and then shipped home. Media will pick up a few
sob stories and then the episode will be over. Hopes generated will
be crushed and some hopes will never flower. Even as I write I feel
the silliness of my language, the inadequacy of words to express what
it means to have no future and no multiple visas to a western
country.

Our leaders and their children can't understand the meaning of this
despair because for them this country doesn't exist anymore.

Migration is all very nice if you can migrate. There is a huge
difference between guest workers and expatriates in the North. While
one group doesn't need the country and are basically escaping from
Bangladesh, the other group wants to make some money and come home to
Bangladesh. It's really long distance commuting. While we are proud
of our successful brothers in Europe, the others hide inside
construction site holes and pray. To put it mildly, one group is
close to us and we want to be part of them. They are educated, better
off and can read English.

The other group is full of the poor, ill educated, ill dressed, ill
speaking, ill and hundi cheated denizens for whom no one speaks.
Certainly not themselves. Certainly not us.

It's they who got and are getting thrown out of Malaysia. And if we
don't care, isn't it too much to expect that Malaysia will care?

We are the new backward people. Class also defines our migration
destinations. The rich go to the USA or Canada. The middle class go
there too plus to the Middle East to make money and then to the
States to get some extra education and finally settle there or in any
nearby zones where the weather is fine. And where does the poor go?

They go wherever God will let them go. And God probably has set
limits too. They go wherever they will be tolerated. You will
understand this if you have seen the vacant stare of a Bangladeshi
with a fake Pakistani passport who works in the fishing sector of
Karachi as the immigration officials fluently abuse him. Seating next
to a few of them at the Karachi airport I too have hated them. For
what they were and for what they had become.

We haven't provided any evidence that we care about the poor. We have
not even bothered to let them make a living in another land. By
denying this opportunity, we have basically taken their future away.
And we show no regrets about that.

We care about portraits and prefixes to names. We care about
elections populated by a large number of criminals. But we don't care
when people lose a chance to have enough to break the cycle of
poverty in the next generation. We care about what the FEER and Asian
Wall Street Journal says about us, and the Taliban, which we only
read. But I'm afraid we don't care about the poor.

But I must remember that this is the People's Republic of Bangladesh
and Miskins aren't people at all. Isn't this what is called
apartheid? How different is the colour of the skin from the colour of
poverty?

Afsan Chowdhury is a Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily St

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[M:MS]