monumental inefficiency of the West Pakistan leadership in handling the relief operation is unforgivable. As early as 1937, Subhash Chandra Bose had suggested a 260 milc long coastal dam with a six-lanc traffic way for controlling floods, boosting trade and commerce, generating electricity and reclaiming land for cultivation. Such projects have been undertaken by mutually hostile powers in Europe and by West Pakistan and India. There is no reason why it cannot be done by East Pakistan and West Bengal.
The sub-continent is laced with mighty mountains. There is no dirth of rocks and boulders. Bengalis are eager to work. There is no dirth of labor; all that is needed is leadership. This can only be provided for by the Bengalis who from time immemorial have lived with the cruel sea and the uncontrolled rivers. The proposed dam will not only electrify the economy of the entire region but also generate hope for the future which poverty-stricken Bengalis are rather good at harnessing for their cause. Recently a Western diplomat in Dacca said: “If the civilization collapses, the process will start here in Bengal” The collapse can be prevented by the coastal dam. Nothing else can. The Bengalis have repeatedly been told by the West Pakistan ruling class that annual floods, it's devastating tidal bore and its drought are the acts of God whereas in the West the recent Indus Basin Project has made the deserted regions the most fertile lands, along with her fight against water logging.
Ninety per cent of the Pakistan army comes from West Pakistan. The huge national expenditure on the army maintenance adds about 75% to the advantage of the people there; its fall-out in West Pakistan and deprivation of the East has been unscrupulously maintained all these years. This is an avaricious policy of sacrificing the majority interest at the altar of the soldiers which has necessitated a policy of keeping some external problems alive such as Kashmir. It is an unwritten policy of the Pakistanis Defense Department that no Bengali should hold the office of C-in-C either in the Army. Air Force or Navy and the brilliant Bengali officers are forced to retire as Major or Lt. Colonel and given posts in the semi-Governmental institutions. All the three headquarters of army, navy and air force are situated in West Pakistan including major military installations which show that the West wanted a militarily strong Pakistan to the exclusion of East Pakistan. It is a blatant example of, keeping East Pakistan weak so that the West wing could rule it perpetually as a colony. To say that Bengalis are not a martial race is a travesty of truth. For the Bengal Regiment fought courageously and well against India in 1965 in the Lahore sector. Even now they are fighting the well-trained and. well- armed West Pakistani Army with hardly any weapons to fight with.
Lahore Resolution & the Six Points
In 1966 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the undisputed leader of Bengal, had produced his Six Point Programme, a detailed elaboration on the call for East Bengal’ autonomy first raised at the Dacca mass meeting in 1953. It was meant for emancipating the neglected people of Bengal and was actually based on the Lahore resolution of 1940 of the Muslim League which gets the credit for fathering Pakistan. The resolution was passed seven years before the partition of India. It endorsed that the constituent provinces of Pakistan should enjoy the fullest autonomy. The heart of his demands was a federal constitution that would give federal government control of nothing but foreign affair and defense-
