By all definitions, Bangladesh is not the same country it was back when I was a child, a time when accessing the internet was an expensive privilege preceded by an arcane ritual that involved -- of all things -- the telephone.
To go from those dark days to now when accessing the internet is as simple as pulling up your smartphone from your pocket -- truly magical.
However, I suppose even the most magical of technologies are conditional in nature.
Just when we were getting comfortable with the prospect of never having to carry hard cash in our wallets (or even wallets for that matter) all of a sudden, we are all collectively left scrambling to load credit into our phones -- devices which have been reduced to serving their singular, original purpose.
The national internet blackout has been, for all intents and purposes, a massive point of pain for everyone. It certainly has been for people within my vocation, which requires real-time access to information that we can present in a more digestible form for the wider public.
But singling any one group from other in these circumstances is not the way, as the internet has become an inextricable part of our everyday lives and having no access to it could very well mean life or death under certain circumstances.
Yes, the nation is going through abject turmoil at the moment, but the matter is made so much worse when you are not able to check up on your loved ones with any level of precision, which is an oft-overlooked necessity facilitated by the internet.
The democratization of the internet was always part of the government’s wider goal of transforming the nation into Digital Bangladesh. A goal which the government has reached, one supposes, since the term has been firmly supplanted by what is now being called Smart Bangladesh?
Smart Bangladesh has been the prevailing brand upon which the next wave of technological advancements is going to be made in our country, with every nook and cranny of our civil administration being said to be taking advantage.
However, in my experience, there has always been a distinct lack of coherence between reality and what has been promised. Back in 2020, I had a particularly hard time retrieving a tax identification number (perhaps the closest thing we have to proof of adulthood in the 21st century) using the official government website, which seemed rather adamant in letting me know that the same page that the website kept redirecting me to was, in fact, the next logical step of the process.
After the umpteenth attempt, I gave up and did what I suspect everyone else who wished to resolve just such a problem would have done: Hired a seasoned and wily tax professional to do it for me. Sadly, it seems, more often than not, the old, analog ways are still the most effective.
Government mechanisms not doing their job is nothing new. Smart or not, this is still Bangladesh, last I checked.
But it would be disingenuous to claim that the government’s efforts to give the nation a more modern makeup did not pay any dividends.
The fact that I have multiple disparate devices which all talk to each other and make my daily workflow that much easier, without much hassle, is a testament to that. Indeed, under the sitting government, the use of the internet has flourished, this is both undeniable and something that the government should rightly be proud of.
This is the point where usually I would provide some research into how internet penetration has reached a steady climb over a certain period of time, but alas my internet is down. The government giveth, and the government taketh away.
The blackout has already let its effects be known when it comes to our economy. According to one report, export and import operations are currently halted nationwide as they depend on the internet, while the digital commerce sector is said to be facing losses upwards of $5 million a day (God bless newspapers).
In times of mass uprisings and riots, the government has never been shy about shutting down mobile internet usage to limit communications.
But the situation behind the lack of any broadband service is unprecedented, and the official story is still that it is the result of a single data centre being damaged due to a fire that broke out on July 18.
Seventy-two hours later and counting, the country is still apparently crippled by this dastardly strike and unable to restore services. I really hope our external enemies are not taking careful note.
While reserving comment on the plausibility of this explanation, even accepting this improbable state of affairs leads the layman to the inescapable and devastating conclusion that our internet infrastructure is hopelessly weak and utterly unfit for purpose for a rising country in the 21st century.
Perhaps we should have read that terms and conditions notice in the fine print after all.
Rubaiyat Kabir is Joint Editor, Editorial and Op-Ed, Dhaka Tribune.
This opinion piece was first published in the print edition of Dhaka Tribune on July 21, 2024.