Spare a thought for the toiling rickshaw-puller.
Desperately trying to make ends meet in an unforgiving economic situation, he has little qualm about pedalling nonchalantly down the wrong way of a one-way road.
His answer to any query as to why he was doing so was laconic: “It saves me the effort of doubling back via the U-turn. Moreover, passengers ask me to do so.”
His two female passengers looked studiously away. The rickshaw-puller was just one from a society where laws and rules are flouted with innate ease growing worse with the passage of time. There was a time when he and his fellows-in-trade followed the vestiges of the law.
Community policing in Old Dhaka forces a semblance of order in Old Dhaka.
There was some sympathy when rickshaws were taken off the major roads and relegated to operate in alleys and side-roads but that too was fleeting. Public opinion was more concerned with the headaches such bans caused to the commuter.
A large number of these pullers are inexperienced, with a growing number of elderly and somewhat infirm persons having to take up the profession.
Without any training on road safety and rules, and more fake than genuine licenses, they have been all but ignored in the efforts to restore orders on the streets. There used to be some guidance and training during traffic weeks ages ago but that has slipped off the priority list since.
What of the two passengers then?
There are many more like them that have no compunction in their rickshaw going down the wrong way or breaking any other rule.
The chances are high, however, that if a TV camera appears and the microphone is thrust towards them they will acknowledge the wrong. Then once the cameras are gone, they’ll resume their journeys.
So much fuss and bother about the new Road Safety Act that was twice introduced and then stopped. Suitably blocked by the proposal of the transport scions that is “under consideration,” no one knows when or indeed if the act can be enforced as it is.
The transport sector, repeatedly pampered by governments, has grown into a monolith. Owners and drivers seem to be oblivious to the dangers posed by non-licensed, fake-licensed driving and the risk of unfit vehicles tearing down the roads in hideous competition.
Every life should count, but there is an eerie side to the nonchalance with which such deaths are brushed aside, almost as if of no consequence. Let’s also think about the exhortations of the police and volunteers for people to use the pavements where available, and foot-over bridges that are completely ignored.
Telling bus conductors not to board passengers on running buses is one thing. When passengers insist on doing just that, one has to question their conscience.
Ask the sweepers from our city corporations about the amount of garbage that they have to clear from the roads each day. In a country with a majority Muslim population, one would expect a cardinal principle, that of cleanliness, to have permeated through families.
Such expectations run up against the wall of frustration given the state of our lakes and ponds, parks, roads, and pavements strewn with a variety of trash.
What is of concern is the nonplussed attitude of those guilty, who aren’t even thinking of what they’re doing. And mostly, they are the educated ones.
Mahmudur Rahman is a writer, columnist, broadcaster, and communications specialist.