initiated on that day throughout Bangladesh, at the call of Bangabandhu, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Repudiated the political authority of the Pakistan government within the territory of Bangladesh. This political authority was never again restored. All subsequent attempts by the Pakistan government after March 26, 1971 to restore their authority were seen by the masses of Bangladesh as acts of usurpation by foreign military occupation power.
The totality of the success realized by the call for non-cooperation immediately created a crisis for maintaining essential civic and economic services within Bangladesh. Once the entire labor force, administration and law enforcing authorities had answered Banababdhu's call for noncooperation the writ of the Pakistan Government in Bangladesh quite literally ceased to run outside the military cantonments. This vacuum had to be filled if social life in the country was not to break down completely. Bangabandhu had therefore assumed both political and administrative authority throughout the country once Yahya had ordered the Pakistan army to withdraw into the cantonments on 6 March 1971, From This day on Bangladesh assumed self rule for the first time since the Battle of Plessey in 1757.
During this period, some of the economists of Bangladesh were thrust into the peculiar position of looking into the problems of keeping the economy viable. Such questions as the enforcement of exchange controls on remittances to West Pakistan, the limits on the stocks of Pakistani currency arising out of the cutoff of supplies of money from the mint in Pakistan, policies towards export consignments and modes of payment, import of essentials and raw materials had to be worked out.
The residence of Prof. Nurul Islam in Dhanmondi become a sort of economic secretariat for the government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman centered in Road No. 32 Dhanmandi. Dr. Kamal Hossain's residence in Circuit House Raw was the third center of administration. Some of us met daily at Prof. Islam's residence with some of the Bengali civil servants and bankers to review specific problems. Those were then incorporated into decrees or instructions which were passed on to the civil servants, bankers and for press circulation every evening by Tajuddin Ahmed and Kamal Hossain either at Road 32 or at Kamal Hossain's residence.
Apart from reviewing the state of the local economy, our other task was to brief the international press. Every day the elite of the foreign press crop came to these sessions. These included Tilmagn and Peggy Durdin of the New York Times, Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times whose coverage of the liberation war, had him expelled from Dhaka by the Pakistan military authorities and almost won him a Pulitzer Prize, Peter Preston, now Editor and Martin Adeney of the Guardian, Peter Hazelharst of the Times. Selling Harrison for the Washington Post, Henry Bradsher of the Washington Star. All these experienced journalist's were filling regular copy from Dhaka to their newspapers so that their readers were kept abrest of the unfolding drama in Bangladesh.
It was Peter Ilazlehurst who told me that he had recently interviewed Bhutto in Larkana and had been told by him that this agitation in Bangladesh was a storm in a tea cup led buy a few urban based politicians. A massive use of force by the army which killed
