Editorial
Dutch Support
The Dutch Development Cooperation Minister Jan Pronk came, saw, and left conquering our hearts. Seldom has a dignitary visiting us spoken our developmental idiom with such a convincing effect on an audience wider than our domestic one as did Pronk during his brief sojourn in Bangladesh. He took the words right out of our heart, partaking of our innermost feelings largely kept to ourselves lest we sound self-advertising. This is what he said for us: the international community should 'honour' the achievement of the Ganges water treaty and come forward to assist Bangladesh in implementing the Ganges Barrage Project.
Underscoring the need for organising an international consortium to finance the barrage project, the Dutch minister led the way by committing full support of his government to such an effort with a decent monetary contribution to the undertaking. The minister was emphatic also in assuring financial assistance to projects for Meghna delta development and dredging of the river Gorai.
While their help in building cyclone shelters and the promise held out for bolstering rural electrification are appreciated, NGOs like BRAC and Proshika must have words of special thanks for the Netherlands government's standing them in good stead. The Dutch-Bangla relationship, let's place it on records, has been characterised by starry-eyed dreaming of a solid partnership as the tangibles lagged way behind aspirations in terms of utilising the Dutch experience with dyking against floods and reclamation of lands. Their evincing an interest in some of our water management projects where their technical inputs ought to be as prized as their funding is viewed by us as an appetiser to the main course of sharing their land-use know-how.
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