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Get ready for your next true crime

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Ilse, called me and she just said,

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0:10

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0:12

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0:18

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2:43

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2:46

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2:48

it right. My name is Rebecca Delgado

2:50

Smith, and this is The Actorma.

2:52

Hey everyone, things are tuning into

2:55

this episode of The Aftermath.

2:57

Today we're speaking with guest

2:59

expert Professor Ahmed Mushfik

3:02

Mubarak. Dr. Mubarak is

3:04

a professor of economics at

3:06

Yale University and the

3:08

founder and faculty director

3:10

of the Yale Research

3:13

Initiative on innovation and

3:15

scale. He has several

3:17

ongoing research projects in

3:19

Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, and

3:21

Nepal, and conducts field

3:23

experiments exploring ways to

3:25

induce people in developing

3:27

countries to adopt technologies

3:30

or behaviors that are likely

3:32

to be welfare improving. Let's

3:34

hear what he has to say about

3:36

the Bola cyclone. Professor

3:38

Mubarak, thank you so much for

3:40

joining us today. Thank you for

3:43

having me. get to the Bola

3:45

cyclone. But first, for context, I

3:47

was wondering if we could start

3:50

off with with some history

3:52

on East and West Pakistan and

3:54

its history with India. I know

3:56

I know that this is a

3:58

lot to cover, but. Perhaps just

4:01

an overview of how Pakistan

4:03

became a nation. Sure. So

4:05

British India, which was

4:07

undivided, you know, the land masses

4:09

that are currently India, Pakistan

4:11

and Bangladesh, right? So that

4:13

was our colonial period. So

4:15

the British East India Company

4:17

ruled that South Asia, which

4:20

is India Pakistan, Bangladesh, for

4:22

a long time. And then

4:24

after a mutiny, it was

4:26

handed over to the British

4:28

government. And then after World

4:30

War II, the British were

4:32

pulling out of their colonies

4:34

in many different parts

4:36

of the world, including in

4:38

India. And that

4:41

was facilitated, precipitated

4:43

by a nonviolent

4:45

resistance movement led by

4:47

Mahatma Gandhi, who basically

4:49

had a campaign of trying

4:51

to get the British out

4:53

of India. And Mahatma Gandhi

4:55

tried very hard to keep...

4:58

India and undivided nation

5:00

so India Pakistan Bangladesh

5:02

would have been a single nation

5:04

and that required him to

5:06

him as well as allies

5:08

to negotiate with hundreds of

5:10

various princely states so imagine

5:12

small kingdoms that had to be

5:15

aggregated together into a nation right

5:17

but it's a very very diverse

5:19

country you know India today

5:21

has maybe 80 official languages because

5:24

every state has his own language

5:26

you know and The languages

5:28

of southern India are actually

5:31

a completely different language family

5:33

than the languages of northern

5:35

India which are Sanskrit-based Indo-European

5:38

languages. So this is a

5:40

hugely diverse country and one

5:43

important dimension of that

5:45

diversity was religion. So South

5:47

Asia had two major religions,

5:49

Hinduism and Islam, and that

5:52

history hasn't always been pleasant

5:54

and bloodless. So the

5:56

religious frictions have always

5:59

remained. Muhammad Alijinda,

6:01

who is often called the

6:03

father of Pakistan. So

6:05

he wanted a separate

6:07

nation for Muslims, thinking

6:09

that as a minority,

6:11

a pretty sizable minority

6:13

in undivided India, right,

6:15

that they would have

6:17

some disadvantages. And so that's

6:20

what the sort of the

6:22

concept of Pakistan came from.

6:24

Now what led to a really

6:26

strange birth of a nation

6:28

with two land masses. which are

6:30

two provinces with a thousand miles

6:32

apart with a lot of India

6:35

in between, that came from the

6:37

fact that simply that those were

6:39

the two regions with Muslim majority

6:42

populations, right? It

6:44

wasn't exclusively Muslim areas,

6:47

right? So both West Pakistan,

6:49

which is now Pakistan, which

6:51

is now Bangladesh, also had

6:53

a sizable Hindu population, and

6:55

vice versa, which is India,

6:57

which what became India. had

6:59

a sizable Muslim population. And

7:01

so this includes sort of

7:03

parts of India like around

7:05

Hyderabad, which is not contiguous,

7:08

right? And it would have been

7:10

inside India. So there were lots

7:12

of compromises being made on trying

7:14

to identify the provinces that would

7:16

have had Muslim majority population.

7:18

And that led to the creation of this

7:20

very strange country of West

7:22

Pakistan, East Pakistan, together forming

7:25

the nation of Pakistan, based

7:27

on religion and... and religious majority

7:29

alone, which is of

7:31

course a very strange

7:33

reason to have to define a

7:35

country. And after its formation,

7:38

the East and the West,

7:40

what were some of the

7:42

challenges and the strains that

7:44

they came across? I could go

7:47

on for hours on that. So it

7:49

was mostly about strains, right? I mean,

7:51

the... really quick and concise way to

7:53

say it is that look the only

7:56

thing that was common between the two

7:58

provinces of Eastern West Pakistan was religion

8:00

or religious majority, and

8:03

nothing else was common, right?

8:05

So if anything, everything was

8:07

a strain, except for the

8:09

religion, right? And so what made it

8:11

much worse is that within South Asia,

8:13

right, as you go further west towards

8:16

Pakistan, right, the population

8:18

is different, you know, this is

8:21

again, going back to my language

8:23

comment, northern European languages,

8:25

you know, are Indo-European,

8:27

these were. people who were coming

8:30

down from, you know, only recently

8:32

a paper in nature, thought that

8:34

there are people who are coming

8:36

from or originate from say

8:39

between Eastern Europe to Central

8:41

Asia that and they spread

8:43

both both westward and eastward,

8:45

whereas there was this sort

8:48

of native population of India

8:50

from thousands of years ago,

8:52

right? And so Bangladeshis or

8:55

East Pakistanis were sort of

8:57

a combination of the native,

8:59

you know, early populations with

9:02

the Indo-Europeans would come down,

9:04

whereas the Pakistan is much

9:06

more of like, sort of

9:08

northern South Asian descent, so

9:10

Indo-Europeans. So there are

9:13

physical differences. So for

9:15

example, our skin color

9:17

in Bangladesh is a little darker

9:19

than the skin color in

9:21

Pakistan. And, you know, height

9:23

and weight and body shape,

9:25

etc. They're all, you know,

9:27

there are ethnic differences, right?

9:29

And as it's happened many

9:32

places in the world, these

9:34

things probably loomed large, right?

9:36

And so, so something that, you know,

9:38

I have known growing up in Bangladesh

9:41

is that there was a

9:44

lot of internal racism between

9:46

West Pakistan and East

9:48

Pakistan. And that's not just

9:50

sort of Let's say, you know,

9:53

qualitative information coming from my

9:55

extended family and friends,

9:57

right, who had experienced that.

10:00

growing up in first Pakistan and

10:02

then in Bangladesh. It's also, you

10:04

know, things that are well documented

10:06

in history books about the

10:08

way that Pakistanis spoke about Bengales,

10:11

right? And it shows up in

10:13

the politics as well. So for

10:15

example, once Pakistan was formed, you

10:17

see that the center of power

10:20

always remained in West Pakistan, the

10:22

capital was Islamabad, which is in

10:24

West Pakistan, right? And then that

10:26

led to lots of other frictions

10:28

like... most of the investments were

10:30

happening in West Pakistan, right? And

10:33

what was, you know, sort of

10:35

rubbing salt on the wound is

10:37

that most of the foreign exchange

10:39

earnings were coming from jute exports,

10:41

which was one of the main products

10:43

of East Pakistan, right? So there was

10:46

a situation where, you know, the source

10:48

of funds was East Pakistan, but

10:50

the money was being taken and

10:52

reinvested in West Pakistan, right? So

10:55

I think that was a... big source

10:57

of the friction and there was

10:59

a group of economists who are

11:02

Bengali like from East Pakistan who

11:04

then proposed a six-point plan, right,

11:06

where they wanted a separate currency,

11:08

right? They wanted more autonomy, separate

11:11

governance for East Pakistan. And that

11:13

was one of the big sort

11:15

of, I would say, landmark events

11:18

that ultimately led to the birth of

11:20

Bangladesh, right, this six point plan.

11:22

And, you know, you can imagine

11:24

why the separate currency is going

11:27

to be useful if there's this

11:29

reinvestment happening, then a separate currency

11:31

and economies would have been useful.

11:33

And then another big landmark event

11:35

was our language movement, which starts

11:37

on 21st February 1952, right? So

11:39

only what six, seven years after.

11:41

the birth of Pakistan and that movement

11:44

started because mom of the legion

11:46

that you know that father of

11:48

Pakistan he declared that Urdu the

11:50

language popular in West Pakistan would

11:52

have to be the single unified

11:54

language of all of Pakistan right

11:56

that that would be the official

11:58

language but we spoke a very

12:00

different language again, you know,

12:02

we're a thousand miles away,

12:05

right? And people reacted

12:07

to that. Taka University

12:10

students went on the streets

12:12

to protest. And on 21st,

12:14

February, 1952, they were,

12:17

there were bullets on those

12:19

students, right? And that led

12:21

to, you know, a day

12:23

of remembrance, a language of

12:25

our language movement that

12:28

we still, you know, you know, I

12:30

celebrate is not the right word

12:32

because it's a day of death

12:34

and sorrow. And the

12:37

United Nations has now

12:39

declared 21st of February

12:42

International Mother Language Day

12:44

in recognition of what

12:47

happened in Tucker on

12:49

February 21, 1952. And

12:51

that just coincidentally, that's

12:53

just in two days. Wow. This

12:56

will be coming out, yeah,

12:58

a little bit after. So yeah,

13:00

we had the language movement

13:02

and we had this economic

13:04

six point plan that I

13:07

mentioned, right? So those those

13:09

were sort of the genesis

13:11

and the sources of some

13:13

of the frictions and the

13:15

start of our thinking about

13:18

more autonomy and

13:20

independence. Get ready for your

13:22

next true crime binge. It's all

13:24

a blur. My aunt Elsa called

13:27

me. and she just said get

13:29

to the hospital. The doctor came

13:31

in and told us that there's

13:33

really not much more that they

13:36

could do for her and that

13:38

we need to go say goodbye.

13:40

This doesn't happen to people like

13:42

me. A new true crime 10-part

13:45

series from the Makers of Sordan

13:47

Scale launches March 3rd. Subscribe

13:49

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up on the latest

15:17

episodes without the

15:19

ads. By 1970, President Yaya

15:22

Khan has come into power.

15:24

What does he like as

15:26

the head of state and

15:29

how... How does he set

15:31

the stage for this impending

15:33

disaster? Yeah. So, yeah, one

15:36

could say that the

15:38

impending disaster, the

15:40

Bola cyclone, which till

15:42

date remains perhaps the

15:45

most deadly natural

15:47

disaster in human history,

15:49

right? I mean, there

15:51

might have been earthquakes,

15:54

so I should say

15:56

most deadly. Definitely cyclone.

15:58

between an estimated. 300,000 to

16:01

500,000 deaths, right? So one could

16:03

say that that disaster was the

16:05

straw that broke the camel's back,

16:07

right? But obviously it wasn't a

16:09

straw. It was something a

16:11

lot bigger than that, right? And so

16:13

what happened is, so the

16:15

cyclone hits East Pakistan, coastal

16:18

area of East Pakistan was

16:20

now Bangladesh, right? And there

16:22

was a lot of devastation,

16:24

right? And it became clear

16:26

to the Bengali population, the

16:29

East Pakistani that the government

16:31

of West Pakistan just

16:33

didn't care. And that acted as

16:35

sort of a focal point

16:37

to all this other frustration

16:39

and anger that had been

16:41

building about language about economics,

16:43

right? And this was sort

16:45

of the final straw that

16:48

created a focal point that sort

16:50

of helped to organize people,

16:52

right? That ultimately led to

16:54

a movement. It starts with

16:56

the election. So just coincidentally.

16:59

the Pakistan general elections, right,

17:01

which Iyakhan called, I was

17:04

going to be the first

17:06

elections in, you know, because

17:08

of a series of military

17:10

governments, right, going to be

17:12

the first election in maybe

17:14

something like 16 years, I might

17:16

be getting the detail wrong. And

17:19

the Awami League, which is sort

17:21

of the party that had a

17:23

strong foundation and identity in East

17:26

Pakistan. So they were affiliated

17:28

with that six-point movement of

17:30

more economic independence and an

17:32

autonomy that I mentioned before,

17:35

right? So that Awami League

17:37

and their leadership when you

17:39

were Oman, right? So they were

17:41

campaigning on greater autonomy,

17:43

right? And once a disaster happens,

17:46

the army league actually responds

17:48

by providing, you know, some

17:50

relief, whereas the official response

17:52

of the Pakistan government was

17:54

severely lacking. Right? So there

17:57

are a couple of books

17:59

that detail some of the events

18:01

that happened around that time that

18:03

are worth reading. The one is

18:05

called The Vortex, which is a

18:08

fantastic read, where two authors,

18:10

you know, take those events and,

18:12

you know, create sort of, like, they

18:14

fictionalize a little bit,

18:16

but really they're using sources

18:18

in order to create the

18:21

narrative story, right behind everything

18:23

was happening. And Yaya Khan

18:25

happens to be one of

18:27

the major players in that book.

18:29

And of course another book which

18:31

is right sort of more academic

18:34

research is called the blood telegrams

18:37

right which were on the

18:39

written on the basis of

18:41

a Princeton professor history professor

18:43

you know takes the telegrams

18:45

that were sent between Nixon

18:47

Henry Kissinger Ya Ya Khan

18:50

as well as the US ambassador

18:52

station in Taka in in East

18:55

Pakistan. And Archer Blood was that

18:57

U.S. ambassador who had been sending

18:59

telegrams to the State

19:02

Department and to Henry Kissinger

19:04

and Nixon explaining, you know,

19:06

how bad the situation

19:08

was in East Pakistan and he

19:10

was being ignored. And that's the

19:12

sort of the source of all

19:15

the material in that book. So

19:17

that describes it really well.

19:19

In terms of the

19:21

telegrams, I'm curious about

19:23

the communication during... Actually,

19:25

before the storm, because

19:27

as the storm is forming

19:29

in the Bay of Bengal,

19:31

I'm assuming that the government

19:34

was receiving notice that there

19:36

was a very destructive storm

19:38

on the way, but these

19:40

warnings were not relayed to

19:42

the people. What do you

19:44

attribute to the lack of

19:47

communication? How did this mix

19:49

up happen? Yeah, so these

19:51

warnings were actually coming from

19:53

what is the antecedent of

19:56

the National Hurricane Center in

19:58

the United States, right? they

20:00

had put up a satellite called

20:02

Itos ITOS that went up in

20:04

orbit earlier in 1970, maybe February,

20:07

I might be getting them months

20:09

wrong. So they sent up a

20:12

satellite and the satellite was the

20:14

first sort of which a geosynchronous

20:16

orbit so it could send consistent

20:19

and constant pictures of you know

20:21

weather systems forming, right? And in

20:23

fact, one of the reasons why

20:26

the US government had put up

20:28

the satellite is because, remember, this

20:30

is the Cold War era vis-a-vis

20:33

the Soviet Union, right? And so

20:35

they wanted some predictions not only

20:38

for hurricanes forming around coastal United

20:40

States, which is obviously useful for

20:42

the United States of America, but

20:45

also hurricanes forming around the globe,

20:47

right, or hurricane cyclones, you know,

20:49

typhones, the source of... very transforming

20:52

because there was explicit mention of

20:54

how these could be predictive of

20:56

political instability, which was going to

20:59

be really important for the Cold

21:01

War calculations that the United States

21:03

had to make relative to the

21:06

Soviet Union. And so, I mean,

21:08

that sort of prediction came true

21:11

in that this particular cyclone in

21:13

Bangladesh precipitated the birth of a

21:15

nation and massive political instability. So

21:18

the US had this information, right?

21:20

And of course it's being relayed.

21:22

And there were receptors all over

21:25

South Asia that could have picked

21:27

it up. But this is actually

21:29

a surprise. And this one, this

21:32

is a puzzle that I won't

21:34

have a good answer for. I

21:37

don't think anybody has a good

21:39

answer for it. As to why

21:41

we just did not pay attention

21:44

to the warning signs, right? Because

21:46

the cyclone, you know, ultimately it's

21:48

called the polar cyclone, because pola

21:51

is an island. in southern Bangladesh

21:53

that is was home to lots

21:55

and lots of people who were

21:58

affected. In fact, there were some

22:00

other islands. smaller islands like Monpura

22:02

where the devastation was even worse.

22:05

It's just that Pola was much

22:07

more well known as a place.

22:10

And prior to hitting southern Bangladesh,

22:12

it actually, the cyclone came by

22:14

sort of the southern coastal areas

22:17

of India West Bengal, which is

22:19

the state, just to the west

22:21

of Bangladesh, right? And there was

22:24

no warning systems there either. So

22:26

it's I think, you know, the

22:28

best guess, I think if you

22:31

were to ask experts. is that

22:33

systems just weren't in place, right,

22:36

for systematizing the collection and relaying

22:38

of information. In fact, you know,

22:40

these types of early warning systems,

22:43

right, we're only, you know, like

22:45

that, that, that really we now

22:47

know helps to prevent mass deaths

22:50

from natural disasters. in South Asia,

22:52

they were only put in place

22:54

within the last, I would say,

22:57

20, 25 years. Wow. I mean,

22:59

we had a weather event in

23:01

1990 that maybe was one of

23:04

the, you know, after 1970, was

23:06

one of the most deadly events.

23:09

And even in 1990, right, we

23:11

weren't as well prepared, right? People

23:13

didn't have enough advanced warning to

23:16

move out, etc. as we should

23:18

have been. But in 1978, it

23:20

just seems like systems just worn

23:23

in place. Get ready for your

23:25

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me and she just said, get

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25:15

Ryan Reynolds here from it Mobile.

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I don't know if you knew this,

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but anyone can get the same premium

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taxes. So

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we ask all of

25:51

our guest experts this

25:53

same question. At the

25:56

end of the day, if

25:58

you had to pick a... person

26:00

or thing. It can be a

26:02

concept that you think is to

26:04

blame for the massive death toll

26:06

that was caused by the Bola

26:08

cyclone. Who or what would that

26:10

be? Yeah, I have so many

26:12

answers even though I've only had

26:15

like two seconds to think about

26:17

it. I would like to hear

26:19

all of your four answers and if

26:21

you want we can then whittle it

26:23

down to one. So okay, so let

26:26

me give you the answer that I

26:28

think other experts might nominate,

26:30

right? So one person that

26:32

many people would nominate is

26:35

Yahoo Khan, right? Because he

26:37

was the personification of

26:39

not carrying, right? So there is

26:41

a famous story of how, you

26:43

know, so basically he wasn't even

26:46

visiting East Pakistan,

26:48

Bangladesh, the site of the

26:50

disaster, right? For a couple

26:52

of days, the Pakistan. government

26:55

and army didn't do anything,

26:57

right? He was actually busy

26:59

with relaying messages between Nixon

27:01

and Chairman Mao Zedong in

27:03

China, right? So he thought

27:06

his purpose, you know, his

27:08

big achievement in life would be

27:10

to help re-establish U.S.-China relations,

27:12

which an excellent Kissinger were interested

27:14

in, but it had to be

27:16

really hush-hush, right, because you don't

27:19

want to be in a situation.

27:21

This is a period of really

27:23

complex global geopolitics, right? You don't

27:25

want to make a situation where

27:27

the U.S. makes an outreach to

27:29

China and gets rebuffed. And so

27:31

they were using Yaya Khan because

27:34

Pakistan was the only country that

27:36

had relations, you know, and had

27:38

direct access to both the U.

27:40

ferrying between Islam and Beijing. And

27:42

in one of those trips, he

27:44

just like takes a coming back

27:47

from at that time peaking capital

27:49

of China. He makes a stop

27:51

in Dhaka, then goes to the

27:53

south and does sort of a

27:55

helicopter ride above the devastation. And

27:57

note that this is a time

27:59

when other. eyewitness accounts say that

28:01

there were masses of dead bodies

28:04

flowing down the rivers, right? People,

28:06

I've now met people who were

28:08

there who were doing relief efforts,

28:11

including an American woman who lives

28:13

in Massachusetts who's been, you know,

28:15

involved in NGO work in Bangladesh

28:18

for many years, right? And the

28:20

stench, I mean, she describes the

28:22

stench as being overwhelming, right, of

28:24

just massive dead bodies and the

28:27

stench of death of death, And

28:29

Yaya Khan reportedly, you know, takes

28:31

the helicopter ride and just says,

28:34

oh, it doesn't look too bad.

28:36

And then he comes back to,

28:38

you know, where there are local

28:41

officials like who were trying to

28:43

organize relief efforts waiting for him,

28:45

but he just takes a flight

28:48

back up to Taka, which is

28:50

north of the site of devastation,

28:52

because there was a party being

28:54

organized for him by some social

28:57

like in Taka. So anyway, Yaya

28:59

Khan would be one. not nominee

29:01

for like the evil that yes

29:04

yes that cause all this that's

29:06

another nominee would be I think

29:08

you know a concept I think

29:11

racism right between West Pakistanis and

29:13

East Pakistanis or between Pakistan is

29:15

in particular what Pakistanis will tell

29:18

you today like more liberal Pakistanis

29:20

will tell you today is the

29:22

racism displayed by Punjabi is from

29:24

one particular province of Punjab right

29:27

which is relative to all other

29:29

provinces and it wasn't just towards

29:31

Bengales reportedly my Pakistani friends tell

29:34

me that similarly other ethnicities within

29:36

Pakistan like Balochi is like there's

29:38

other provinces like thin than the

29:41

logistan, right? They also feel and

29:43

experience the same type of sort

29:45

of like looking down being looked

29:48

down upon, you know, and And

29:50

so, you know, just not caring

29:52

about 300 to 500,000 deaths, that

29:55

requires a level of sort of

29:57

distancing yourself from another human, right,

29:59

which I think, you know, for

30:01

lack of a better word, I'm

30:04

calling that race alone. And surprisingly,

30:06

you know, even, you know, now

30:08

this is like 25 years later

30:11

when I came to the United

30:13

States and I first had interaction

30:15

with Pakistanis, right. who I met

30:18

in college here, right? And, you

30:20

know, I'm based on, I mean,

30:22

not everybody, like some of my

30:25

best friends are Pakistani, right? But

30:27

with one person, I, you know,

30:29

I kind of, it's finally struck

30:31

me, oh, now I understand what

30:34

my parents were talking about or

30:36

what my family was talking about

30:38

when they told me what situation

30:41

was like prior to 1971, right?

30:43

So that's, I think that's another

30:45

important nominee. And I would say

30:48

a third nominee is the fact

30:50

that like the lack of democracy

30:52

and this tradition of handing over

30:55

power to the military in Pakistan,

30:57

which has plagued that country even

30:59

now, like forget about Bangladesh and

31:01

East Pakistan, right? The fact that

31:04

Pakistan has become more and more

31:06

of a failure as a state

31:08

relative to peers, right, has to

31:11

has a lot to do with.

31:13

really complicated relationship between military and

31:15

politics and the and the primary

31:18

role the primacy given to the

31:20

military political decisions right when when

31:22

people in the past a very

31:25

good Pakistan economist out if Mia

31:27

and I she's a Princeton we've

31:29

had sort of online Twitter interactions

31:31

about okay what explains the fact

31:34

that Bangladesh has jumped ahead right

31:36

so it used to be the

31:38

case that Bangladesh was much poorer

31:41

right. back when we were back

31:43

in Bangladesh and Pakistan, East and

31:45

West Pakistan were together. But now

31:48

the Banglashid GDP per capita is

31:50

easily much higher than Pakistan. The

31:52

countries have had very different economic

31:55

trajectories, right? And then when you

31:57

talk to Pakistan... Pakistanis about that

31:59

and they say look it's because

32:02

of the army and and all

32:04

of that and the fact that

32:06

we've always been focused on defense

32:08

right rather than economic productivity that's

32:11

what pushed our country behind. So

32:13

I think that lack of democracy

32:15

could be another important nominee. So

32:18

now I'm asking you with these

32:20

three things up on the board

32:22

if you had to pick one.

32:25

Yeah I would not pick an

32:27

individual because you know I don't,

32:29

and the reason is, I don't

32:32

think that was pivotal in the

32:34

sense that if somebody else was

32:36

in power other than Iyakan, would

32:38

the situation have been different? I

32:41

suspect not, right? And so it

32:43

would, for me, it would be

32:45

between sort of the leadership in

32:48

general embodied by the army, not

32:50

just one person, right? It's either

32:52

that or the fact that, you

32:55

know, you can only have and

32:57

maintain such a relationship if your

32:59

citizens have shared those same beliefs,

33:02

right? which is what I mean

33:04

by race for them, right? Yes.

33:06

So I do think it's, so

33:08

my, if I had one vote

33:11

to cast, it would be sort

33:13

of the general perception of Bengalis

33:15

among Punjali. Yes, it's the leadership

33:18

backed by the people. Yeah. So

33:20

a lot of the story I've

33:22

been telling are based on sort

33:25

of historical accounts, narrative accounts, qualitative

33:27

information. And that are backed up

33:29

by good research, you know, a

33:32

lot of, you know, research using

33:34

telegrams and papers and, you know,

33:36

conversation and interviews with people who

33:38

are present at the time. This

33:41

is not ancient history. Many of

33:43

the important actors are still alive

33:45

and very much interviewable, right. Now

33:48

what we've been trying to do

33:50

is to see whether we can

33:52

generate any systematic quantitative information and

33:55

data. to test the hypotheses that

33:57

come out of these narrative accounts.

33:59

is it really the case that

34:02

the polar cyclone was a

34:04

pivotal event that led to

34:06

the birth of Bangladesh? And

34:08

to do that, you know,

34:10

I mentioned earlier the ITO

34:13

satellite, right? So that was

34:15

put in orbit sometime in

34:17

early 1970, right? And then it

34:19

fails, you know, some of the

34:21

tape recorders fail in I

34:24

think January of 1971, right?

34:26

very luckily, right? It was in

34:28

orbit exactly during the cyclone, right?

34:31

And therefore we have those images

34:33

on the data of the satellite's

34:35

observation of the cyclone, right? And

34:37

with some new scientific methods published

34:39

in Journal Nature, you know, just

34:41

a couple of years ago, which

34:43

is sort of allows you to

34:45

convert run algorithms to convert those

34:47

types of satellite images with cloud

34:49

cover, right? and the sort of

34:51

the lack of radiation that passes

34:53

through the cloud cover to make

34:55

inferences about how intense a cyclone

34:57

must have been at that particular

34:59

location, right? So once you have

35:01

all this information, what you can

35:03

do is reconstruct how intense a

35:05

cyclone was in every point in

35:07

Bangladesh across every single district, right?

35:09

So now we have a measure

35:11

of cyclone intensity and how it

35:13

varies across districts, right? We also

35:15

have information about voting patterns, right,

35:18

across districts. And so you can

35:20

correlate these things using this kind

35:22

of large sample data. And what

35:24

you find is that the areas

35:26

that experience more intense cyclone, the vote

35:28

share of the army league, that

35:30

separatist party, coming from East Pakistan,

35:33

the vote share for them was much

35:35

higher. The people more intently went to

35:37

the polls and voted for the separatist

35:39

movement when they experienced more

35:41

of a cyclone. even, and there's

35:44

another part of the story, which

35:46

is that we also have data

35:48

from a World Bank report written

35:50

in 1970, 1971, that tracks, in

35:52

fact, it was written in 1972,

35:54

that tracks like how much relief

35:56

effort happened in various districts

35:59

and in. East Pakistan at that

36:01

time. And what you find is that

36:03

in the areas where the site home

36:05

was very intense, but they did not

36:07

receive any relief, that's where the votes

36:09

were much more intense for the

36:11

army league. Right. So when people

36:13

experienced that, look, a big disaster

36:16

happened and our government did not

36:18

respond. Right. That led to. more

36:20

of the protest votes towards the army

36:22

league. And so that was, so

36:24

the cyclone, according to this sort of

36:27

large sample data, quantitatively it does seem

36:29

like the cyclone paid a really important

36:32

role in facilitating sort of the

36:34

political organization that led to the

36:36

birth of Bangladesh and the separation

36:38

of East Pakistan from West Pakistan,

36:41

right? And then we also observe

36:43

further to that now that we

36:45

have all this information about cyclone intensity

36:47

across districts. We also know the

36:50

names and birthplaces of the individuals

36:52

who took up arms against the

36:55

Pakistan army during our war of

36:57

independence, right? And you see that the

36:59

birthplaces, in the list of birthplaces,

37:01

the areas that were hit more

37:03

intensely by the cyclone, those areas

37:05

are overrepresented in the list

37:08

of birthplaces of freedom fighters. So

37:10

it not only led to voting, it also

37:12

led to people taking up arms. So

37:14

a direct correlation. between the cyclone

37:17

and the future of Bangladesh.

37:19

A direct correlation between

37:22

the cyclone and political

37:24

mobilization, voting and even

37:27

conflict, like taking apart.

37:29

Yes, wow, that's incredible. Thank

37:31

you so much for helping

37:34

us understand this in a

37:36

way that we just hadn't

37:38

thought of before. No, thank you.

37:40

This is a really important topic. I

37:42

think it, you know, even though it's

37:44

a historical event, it teaches us a

37:46

lot about global geopolitics even today. And

37:49

now we're going to head over to patron

37:51

to continue the conversation. If you'd

37:53

like to hear our post-interview discussion

37:55

and final verdict, head over to

37:58

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38:00

greatly appreciated. Check out

38:03

our show notes

38:05

for a link

38:07

or head over

38:09

to patreon.com/The Alarmist.

38:11

And stay tuned.

38:13

Next week we'll

38:16

be discussing The

38:18

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38:20

Composer Joseph Below.

38:29

Get ready for your next True

38:32

Crime binge. It's all a blur.

38:34

My aunt, Ilse, called me and

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she just said, get to the

38:38

hospital. The doctor came in and

38:40

told us that there's really not

38:43

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38:45

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