If you look closely, we in Bangladesh are religiously focused on profit-making mechanisms in this holy month. The fact is, we have graduated further and further into money-making schemes.
Interestingly, a great number of people are absorbed with the greatest show on earth (the football World Cup), while another majority is busy counting undue profits by way of carrying out illegal trade and sale of adulterated food.
The perturbing point is, these illegal traders have now teamed up and find themselves sturdy enough to challenge law enforcers and the bona fide government officials who challenge them in accordance with the law of the land.
Scenario one: TV channels were airing a scene of the roving magistrates checking food at the iftar stalls of the city. Most of the food items were found to be prepared with oil gone bad and musty edibles.
They were fined instantly, and the owners happily paid off the bills in cash. There was not a sign of remorse on their smiling faces for they knew business will go on as usual once these government elements left the place.
So frustrating was the situation in these selling outlets that a lady magistrate was heard commenting that “only small fines are not enough to arrest the trend of immoral trade, there should be a harsher penalty for this …”
Scenario two: In a narrow alley of an old building in the city, fftar items were being sold. The stinky passageway and the visibly sickening surroundings of the makeshift shop were simply inconceivable for a normal mind. No one would even think of using that dark passage as a toilet.
When challenged by the mobile teams of BSTI and magistrates, the shop owners challenged them openly, saying that it was not the job of the BSTI and magistrates to challenge us, that they were working with the permission of the police. God save this nation.
Scenario three: Look at the state of traffic and the roads in the city. See the rain-clogged lanes and dangerous pot holes, the water-logged surfaces we call “roads.” Add to the misery by watching the sweating and dehydrated commuters huddled inside a vehicle, waiting to reach their destination.
Scenario four: In the midst of the unbearable traffic and broken roads, the pavements of the city have come under the full control of small traders and motor-bike riders, and are sometimes even convenient public toilets.
You can’t challenge the motorbike riders because they think they have the legal right to plough through the pavements. Rather, pedestrians have to give way to them while they honk their horns with great agitation.
Scenario five: The education minister and his colleagues have a go at Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB). TIB was at fault for bringing up the irregularities of the private universities registration, their operations, selling of certificates, and many other areas of dissipated practices.
Even before the TIB could come up with such reports, I believe we all knew what is happening in the majority of the private (so-called) universities. The minister, the VCs of the universities, and other vested quarters have teamed up and challenged the TIB to prove its survey report or apologise.
So you can’t say anything against the law breakers. Strange isn’t it?
Scenario six: The banks are at it endlessly. The branches, regional offices, and HQs are all hit by the gang of predators from inside their own ranks.
The directors are now quite valourously involved in the fray of minting money. A director of a bank in Chittagong was allegedly caught stealing only Tk140cr. He was quite at ease when he was being taken away by the police from his office. Shame and morale have long left these souls.
We are likely to be fed up with news of such scams in banks, NGOs, ministries, and any public or private enterprise. On the one hand the government is absolutely impatient and intolerant to any type of criticism, local or global, and on the other, the people are also becoming self-declared community leaders who do they wish.
So the nation is wedged between the claws of thieves and murderers. Whether you steal money or life, you still manage to get away.
When rulers rule with a totalitarian mindset, all wrong becomes right. When society is taken for a ride, the eventual outcome is always disastrous.
In the process, we are either dying a slow death or becoming inhabitants of a dead community with cold minds and lukewarm bodies.
