Even prime minister Sheikh Hasina had sounded exasperated. Factory owners, she said, give garment workers ’not only insufficient but also inhuman’ wages.
Coming from someone who heads a government which, as Shahidullah Chowdhury, president, Bangladesh Trade Union Centre, points out, is ’essentially biased’ towards protecting and promoting the interests of the rich (like all previous governments in Bangladesh), her comment is quite revealing.
Back in 1984, when Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy and I were examining the history textbooks of Pakistan, it was possible for us to see the impact of the changes in curriculum being brought about by Ziaul Haq on the young minds.
How can a democratic country allow its army to dictate terms and make political statements on Armed Forces Special Powers Act revocation or troops withdrawal? It is only in a military dictatorship that the army is above all and above the board. India happens to be a constitutional democracy.
Instead of seeing Salman Taseer’s murder as an unprecedented act commanding utter shock and horror, it must be placed on a continuum of rising intolerance and vigilantism that has been given official protection
The debates around securing the right to health for all in India are at a complex and sensitive stage. In India, we have gross inequity in health-care delivery. The huge inequity is evident, on the one hand, in flourishing international medical tourism, and high-technology biomedical interventions done cheaply, and, on the other, minimum levels of health care being unavailable to those unable to pay.
