কলকাতায় CBI-র বিশেষ দল

আজ সকালে কলকাতা বিমানবন্দরে নামার পর CGO কমপ্লেক্সে আসেন CBI-র বিশেষ দলের সদস্যরা।

CBI-র বিশেষ দল

Published : Feb 8, 2019, 10:30 AM IST

কলকাতা, ৮ ফেব্রুয়ারি : কলকাতায় পৌঁছাল CBI-র বিশেষ দল। আজ সকালে কলকাতা বিমানবন্দরে নামার পর CGO কমপ্লেক্সে আসেন ওই টিমের সদস্যরা। আগামীকাল মেঘালয়ের শিলংয়ে চিটফান্ড তদন্ত নিয়ে কলকাতার পুলিশ কমিশনার রাজীব কুমারকে জিজ্ঞাসাবাদ করবে CBI। সেজন্য দিল্লি থেকে CBI-র বিশেষ দল আজ কলকাতায় পৌঁছেছে।

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Tehran - 7 February 2019
1. Various of crowds in grand bazaar
2. Wide of a butcher and restaurant
3. Close-up of meat
4. Man entering butcher
5. Butcher putting meat on a scale
6. Close-up of meat on scale
7. Woman receiving change and leaving shop
8. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Ghassem Badiozaman, butcher:
"Our sales have decreased because there is no purchasing power. I put a lamb leg portion on the scale and it costs 4 million Rials (34 US Dollars). Well, me or anyone else, can they afford this?"
9. Mid of butchers cutting meat
10. Close-up of meat being put into a plastic bag
11. Behzad Babaei, a cook, picking up chicken skewers from fridge
12. Close-up of a chicken skewer
13. Tilt-up from Babaei's hands to his face
14. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Behzad Babaei, cook:
"In the past from 11am to 4pm we were so busy we didn't have time to even have lunch or even a cup of tea, but now the situation is like this (points at his empty restaurant)."
15. Close-up of food on a table
16. Mid of a family having lunch
17. Various of crowd at grand bazaar
18. Tilt-down of the bazaar
19. Various of a man carrying boxes
20. Pan right of a man carrying boxes
21. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Haj Taghi (first name not given), Tehran resident:
"The people created the revolution and they are standing by it and supporting it. As a matter of fact, those who are suffering are the same ones who participated in the revolution. The same people keep supporting it."
22. Tilt-up of clothes on a shop's shelf
23. Mid of a shop's customers looking at clothes
24. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Haj Taghi (first name not given) Tehran resident:
"Here is the footwear market, wherever you go you can see that prices have been doubled or tripled. Nobody knows what has happened since last year. How did the sanctions affect this? They (the government) say we are still able to sell oil."
25. Close-up of a rug
26. Men folding rug
27. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Majid Hossein Nejad, rug seller:
"There is some anxiety in the market. The dollar exchange rate issue and the sanctions puts a little pressure (on people) and people who do businesses are looking to the future with some fear."
28. Mid of men talking in carpet shop
29. Wide of shop and pedestrians
STORYLINE:
On a cold winter afternoon Iranian cook Behzad Babaei looks at empty seats in his small restaurant in downtown Tehran.
Growing prices for meat as well as devaluation of the national currency have caused the number of his customers to plummet.
"In the past from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. we were so busy we didn't have time to even have lunch or even a cup of tea, but now the situation is like this," Babaei says.
His struggle represents the economic paradox that faces Iran as it marks the 40th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution.
Despite being a country that holds some of the world's largest proven deposits of oil and natural gas, its people now endure long lines for food aid once only seen when during the war years of the 1980s.
Inflation continues to rise as its rial currency depreciates.
Highly educated university graduates remain unable to find jobs.
Part of the economic challenges facing Iran stem from the re-imposition of US sanctions once lifted by Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers, a decision taken as part of President Donald Trump's maximalist policy against Iran's government.
But other problems remain far older, dating back to the initial decisions that followed Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
"There is some anxiety in the market. The dollar exchange rate issue and the sanctions puts a little pressure (on people) and people who do business are looking to the future with some fear," says Majid Hossein Nejad, a rug seller whose business has been harmed by a US ban on Persian rug imports.
That revolution wouldn't have been possible without the poor rising up against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
His land reforms saw the rural impoverished move to the cities and become fresh recruits for the revolution.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's calls for supporting the poor struck a populist tone among Iran's struggling masses, as well as the leftists who helped overthrow the shah, who spent billions on American weapons.
Immediately after the revolution, Iran nationalised its oil industry, its main source of hard currency.
They also seized industries tied to the shah or the companies of those who fled the revolution. Shiite charitable trusts, known as bonyads, also amassed vast holdings, as has its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Today, economists consider Iran's a "transition" economy, meaning it is shifting from state control to being driven by a free market.
However, some firms that shifted into private ownership have seen the businesses collapse, leaving workers without pensions, fueling some of the sporadic protests Iran sees today.
"No week comes to an end without the closure of 10 to 50 companies," said Masoud Khansari, the head of Tehran's Chamber of Commerce.
"Last year, 800 out of 1,500 contractor company in the oil sector collapsed."
Iran's oil industry never recovered after the strike that paralyzed it before the shah's departure. Prior to the revolution, Iran pumped around 6 million barrels of oil a day.
In January, it pumped some 2.7 million.
There are bright spots. Per-capita income has more than doubled in Iran since the revolution to 4,838 US dollars in 2018. Iran now has more than 100,000 locally trained doctors, 18,000 medical centers and produces 95 percent of its own medicine, according to government statistics.
Life expectancy is now around 75, as oppose to about 57 before the revolution.
Nearly every Iranian can now read.
But for the average Iranian, the only numbers they care about are the ones at the cash register at their neighborhood groceries.
"Unfortunately, high prices have become crippling for people," lawmaker Mohammad Reza Sabaghian said. "Some goods have seen up to a 200-percent increase in prices."
Food staples like meat in particular have grown even more expensive. Lamb meat has reached to nearly 5 dollars a pound, up from 3 dollars.
Chicken meanwhile is 70 cents a pound, up from 40 cents.
"Our sales have decreased because there is no purchasing power. I put a lamb leg butt portion on the scale and it costs 4 million Rials (equal to 34 US dollars). Well, me or anyone else, can they afford this?" says Ghassem Badiozaman, a butcher who says his sales have decreased by 70 percent since almost a year ago.
Analysts suspect part of the problem may be Trump's Iran sanctions.
As the rial falls, livestock breeders likely want the hard currency they can get selling their meat in neighbouring countries.
Iran produces nearly 90 percent of its meat needs domestically but imports related items like medicine and corn from abroad.
The meat crisis has become a cudgel in the hands of hard-liners with Iran's government eager to weaken the administration of President Hassan Rouhani, a relatively moderate cleric within the country's theocracy.
State television repeatedly airs footage of long lines at government-subsidised groceries, with those waiting criticising Rouhani's administration.
"The bones of the people are shattering under pressure of poverty," said Kazem Sedighi, an advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a dig at Rouhani, Sedighi added: "Economic problems exist but some officials are careless about the problems."
But part of Rouhani's problem comes from Washington.
The Trump administration last year pulled the US out of the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers that curbed Iran's nuclear program in return for lifting of economic sanctions.
The US re-imposed its sanctions in November.
Germany, France and Britain, which have worked to preserve the nuclear deal, announced earlier this month that they have established a new system so their companies can continue trading with Iran without incurring US penalties for doing so.
However, that system has yet to come into place and the strains on Iran are clear.
Efforts to import government-subsidised meat from abroad through the military saw a cargo plane crash in January, killing 15 people.
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