Mohd Siddiqur Rahman :
Most news encircles homicide, rape, missing, disappearance, rescue of dead bodies and many other scuffles continue to soar and hog the headlines of the leading dailies and TV channels of the country. What we have observed during the recent Mayor and Union Parisad Election: bloody conflict, murder, abduction, shooting and many frightful occurrences all over the country. People seem to be edging gradually to the kingdom of fully filled with conflict, jealous, envy and violence and hellish situation. Criminal activities have been increasingly rising outstripping and breaking the previous number and records respectively. According to the social scientists and conscious citizens, the root cause of tendency to returning to the barbaric age could be attributed to degradation of moral values in our society. Anyway, overall situation is alarming, great concern to the populace and challenge to the administration. Obviously it is in the cognizance of the law enforcing authorities that have been making efforts to maintain peace and amity in the society as best as they could.
With the growth of population, we experience growth in crime, even more in proportion. Many opined that it is due to heavy erosion of moral values in the society. Criminal activities are too much to be controlled by the social leaders. There has been polarization in the local leadership system, they review the cases , pass judgments on the basis of party affiliation or amount of bribe received defying justice. As a result most leaders have become criminals and made the system vulnerable . In default of the strong leadership, the members of the society are in frustration and have unleashed them to committing unethical deeds.
Men live in community following the social convention and learn many things to lead peaceful and joyful life. Men learn to offer services beneficial to the public. On going dysfunctional local leadership seem to be failing in giving the instructive lessons to the public affecting the social life badly. Leaders have become busy in the pursuit of personal gain by adopting unfair means.
Now-a-days we observe a great change on social tie in relationship . In the past people used to live In a specific community for a long time with strong community feelings maintaining close and cordial relationship. Connection with the relatives was very strong. Friends and relatives lived in best spirit honoring and respecting each other. With the passage of time, social relationship has been loosened, cordiality and closeness is hardly found in community life. Many farmers left villages for towns and foreign countries for work dismissing their own professions. Development of roads and communications helped them move from one place to another and shift from one profession to another. Country’s big political parties that are mainly featured by conflict, collision, hatred and intolerance, have been deeply rooted with far flung rural areas and engaged to establishing supremacy on one another and obtaining some personal gains by unleashing nefarious activities. All these foregoing factors have created multifarious cracks in the foundation of community life and pushed it to an upheaval situation. The society, the foundation of which was based on love and affection, sympathy and fraternity has been becoming gradually insignificant.
Nevertheless, It is admitted fact that the moral values in the society are degrading. Dysfunctional politics and political culture are one of the main factors of social upheaval throughout the country. One can see great deterioration in moral values while millions of people are living under poverty line and young boys are either unemployed or under employed. The youth are in utter confusion about their future. As result, the prospect of the country, dependent on whom, has been caught in moral degeneration . Most educational premises have created heavy erosion of moral values in the student community. Traditional ethics , no longer, carries value to them. Some people including students, gradually losing their trust in morality since it could neither provide safety nor livelihood for them. Smugglers, some business magnets ,have been making stockpile of wealth by indulging in foul ways showing disrespect to the moral values.
Both too much illegal earnings and too much poverty have been producing criminals in the society .In addition, Intrusion and aggression of foreign culture also have contributed a lot in degenerating moral standards.
We are in the know that moral values are concerned with the distinction between right and wrong, concerned with accepted rules and standards of human behavior. Unfortunately we have distanced us from the conventions and basic principles of life . Polite nature has been overpowered by aboriginal instinct resulting in dreadful incidents like mothers kill her children, brother kills his brother ,son killing his father, husband murders his wife and children and so on and on .
As present reaction in mind , we wonder whether we are going to the right direction ?
From the beginning of civilization, the problem of men in his environment has been mainly that of immortality in all its antihuman segments. Man has destroyed himself and nations have collapsed for lack of moral strength or enthronement of various unethical fraudulent problems. History reveals that cultures of both Greek and Roman had a high point of education, morality, knowledge , virtue etc and then fell into a moral decay which destroyed them . So value systems are the essential precondition of a civilized society.
There has never been a golden age ,but our nation has definitely been in moral decline for decades. As a result the country is not progressing at the speed it should have been .Industrialization and many other economic activities both in private and public sectors who need various capitals for investment like capital from the bank ,from the share market, capital from the society, i.e. human resources and natural resources like rivers and forests but what we have experienced about the capital markets in recent past : embezzlement of banks money, collapse of share market, shortage of well educated manpower and inadequate supply of resources from forests and rivers .Besides, there is huge transfer of capital to foreign countries through money laundering and evasion of taxes resulting in dearth of capital in the capital market. So committing crime has been a social malady and it is spreading its greedy clutches all over the country . Each and every government sector is impacted by corruptions. Economic progress is being deterred and image has been tarnished.
It is known that Bangladesh has topped the list of corrupt countries five times. A developing country like Bangladesh cannot afford to tolerate the perpetrators to committing crime and mischief causing great harm to the country men. When moral decadence has been figured out as the root cause of all social ills as asserted above, moral standards to restore, have to be focused on priority basis. Eroding moral values got to be resisted otherwise whole nation is likely to be pushed into the abyss of darkness.
This article has been louded with enormity of ethical problems in Bangladesh society, and though this make one think that there is no solution to these depressing problems, attempt will be made here to proffer possible solutions . According to Bertrand Russel, “the things that make human life miserable, are preventable, and the ways of preventing them are known”. Considering all the above discussion on moral degeneration, it is clear that entire Bangladesh Society has a role to play as it is concluded to have been the creation of the society itself.
In summing up, with due respect and honor , I would like to call upon all the people in authority, all leaders in civic life, educators, social scientists and all other people of good will to come up with actions , expertise and recommendations to get us out of the moral slumps that we are in . May Allah (swt) bestow us wisdom, strength to respect and obey moral principles that have been passed to us, to human beings of the universe, from the scripture- The Holy Qur’an for enjoying peace, prosperity and happiness here and hereafter.
(From New York, Mohd Siddiqur Rahman, ex Country Manager of Biman, Bangladesh Airlines in Frankfurt, Germany.)
