What good is the Padma Bridge?

How to measure how a country is faring? Experts must have many ways to figure this out. They would consider the economy, the law and order situation, the level of corruption, scrutinise the education system and analyse many other issues to issue a verdict. But there is a much easier way. Just ask someone from a minority group privately how the country is doing. If the answer is positive, you can be sure that the country is really well. But if the person shakes their head with a gloomy face, you may know for sure that the situation is not good at all. Even if it has ten Padma Bridges and a dozen satellites and the per capita income above $10,000, a country cannot be doing well if someone from a minority group says it is not. (We are all citizens of this state, and I feel embarrassed to use the word minority, but for what I am trying to say I have no choice but to use the term.) Now what will a Hindu, a Santal or a Pahari say if asked about the situation in Bangladesh? Hindu families living in Brahmanbaria’s Nasirnagar area were left homeless after their houses were torched. Police set the houses of Santals afire in Gaibandha - photos of which were published in the papers. All belongings of Pahari Adivasis in Langadu, Rangamati have been looted by setting fire to their homes. In fear for her life, a mother is running through the jungles and hills for miles, with her children clasped to her bosom, getting drenched in the rain, burned by the scorching sun, bitten by mosquitoes and shaking with fear every other moment. If I tell her that Bangladesh is a country of great potential, the proposed budget for the next fiscal year is worth Tk4 trillion, 40% work of Padma Bridge has been done, our own Bangabandhu Satellite will be sent to the space next month, would not the helpless woman stare at me in utter confusion? Would I manage to make her understand in anyway that the land we freed through endless suffering and a deadly war is a land of dreams? I would not be able to convince her or many others living in the hills. To them, the country is a nightmare, where thousands openly torch the homes of innocent people. Nobody stops them and the law enforcers watch from afar. Everybody knows that this could happen but nobody does anything to stop it. Putting myself in place of the affected hill people, I get frightened greatly by visualising the entire situation. It is not that crime is not committed in the world. We are witnessing such things happening around us every moment. A Juba League activist was found dead. Despite having no idea who killed him, a news was circulated that two Adivasi youths did it. Some innocent hill people were subjected to punishment for the murder. Not just one or two agitated persons; thousands appeared with petrol and tractors. Houses were torched by pouring petrol while tractors were used to transport the goods looted during the rampage. It is credible when a few people do something crossing the line. But, how do we believe that several thousand people get united to commit a dangerous crime? But we have to believe it, because we have seen it happen over and over again. How did we become so heartless?2Until even recently, there were terrible things written in our children’s textbooks about indigenous people. Conscious people brought them before the public eye one by one, and those things were corrected. But we can ask – it is not as though uneducated, half-educated, hateful and unintelligent people write those books. Noted educationists author the books. After they are done, some even more important personalities, especially university teachers edit the books. Then how are these baseless communalist lies written in textbooks? How can we demean the Adivasi people so much? We can guess the answer. Those who we consider highly educated, have very narrow minds. Those who are not like us, are apart from us and this difference means they are unacceptable. Difference means being bad, it means you can look down on them. But the truth is exactly its opposite. If I have learned anything in my entire life that would be the realisation that diversity is beauty. If a human or a community is different in kind, it is called diversity, which is the beauty. There are a number of countries in the world where people from different states live together. They are different to look at, their language is different and so is their culture, food habit, religion or even costume. From this perspective we are unfortunate. People of our country do not embody such diversity. Wherever we look after coming out of home, we see similar people. Their language, faces and clothing do not differ. The Santals or Garos or the hill people are a bit different in the country. We are supposed to hold these very people tight to our chests. But we neglect them instead. Our next generation has to be taught that the world’s beauty lies within diversity. And, diversity is the most important word across the globe. The more diversity a country has, the more potential it is. The world is new and modern. The people of the modern world do not create any division among themselves. The people not only do not go for disunity, but firmly believe that it is a big world with trees, flowers, animals and birds and all has the right to coexist. But with shock, we see several thousand people, instead of one person or two, are setting fire to villages one after another. What is their fault? Being a bit different from us is their offence.