The government, in these dark and troubled times, ought to get its priorities straight and right where handing out monetary relief packages is concerned.
It must look to the poor, those whose meagre means of sustenance have come to a sudden, rude end because of the coronavirus pandemic.
It can certainly help the ready-made garments sector, but before it does that, it must look into the record of those garment manufacturers who have not repaid their loans and have systematically deprived their workers of their financial dues and other rights.
The men and women who have presided over the garments sector over the past four decades have earned enough for the country and enough for themselves. Let them now provide the country with proof that they have helped their workers enough as well.
The government can, of course, come to the aid of the media, for there are many owners who are waiting for state largesse to come to them in order for them to pay their journalists and other staff. But here too the government must tread carefully, for there are media houses, print as well as electronic, that have for months made their journalists work without salaries.
If now media house owners wait with bowls for money to pour into them from the coffers of the state, they must first need to explain why in the pre-coronavirus period they deliberately refused to clear the monthly salaries of their staff.
In simple terms, before it doles out money to those hungrily waiting for it, the government should be satisfied that the wages and salaries which ought to have been paid earlier by garment and media owners and others like them are first cleared. Dishonest and insensitive rich men do not have to be indulged by the state. Their record of exploitation does not entitle them to any service from the republic.
That takes us back to the issue of the poor, the toiling masses who the government and the state have a responsibility to lift out of the bind they are in today.
When an old woman tells a journalist that she has not been given any food aid but the men who distributed the food in her area gave it away to their favoured people, it becomes necessary for the government to come to her assistance. This woman must be permitted to live.
When an old man weeps on an empty street because he has no means of work and no food to quench his hunger, the government has a moral responsibility to bring him into its network of economic assistance. He should not die.
When rickshaw-pullers and CNG-run autorickshaw drivers are wracked with worries over the future of their wives and children in these days of all-encompassing darkness, it should be for the authorities to go swiftly to them, to initiate measures that will help them get by.
When owners of small neighbourhood shops run the risk of going hungry because the lockdown has closed off all avenues of earning for them, the government ought to reassure them that it is there to look to their welfare.
When men and women, young as well as old, who have lived by begging on the streets but are now faced with the dark possibility of not only dying from coronavirus but from hunger as well, a social safety net ought to be in place for these hapless citizens of the country.
Governments are put to the test when a crisis threatens the welfare of the people whose destiny they are expected to shape. States are jolted when the have-nots of society observe, in deep dismay, the privileged in society stretch out their hands for more privileges, pushing the deserving ones on to the wayside.
To be sure, our resources are few, our capacities are strained. Even so, there is today that economic strength we did not have earlier. It is strength we need to employ in the service of the teeming millions for whom the state, in a very constitutional sense, is the saviour, the reservoir of all their hopes and dreams.
The message is obvious. In this People’s Republic, at this moment of rising despair brought on by an all-consuming malady, it is to the doorsteps of the people that the government should be going.
And all those carpetbaggers, all those profiteers, all those money launderers, all those affluent owners of enterprises, having traditionally exploited their workers and their staff and now coming out in droves with begging bowls in their hands for state largesse, must be kept at arm’s length.
Look to the poor and the needy and the deserving. Everything else will then be in order.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
