“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” – Haile SelassiSomehow I get the feeling that he wrote these words to remind us in Bangladesh that the blame is to be borne by us for the perilous situation affecting the life and property of us all, even of those shortsighted ones who are gaining the most.What makes me so restless and sad is that those who could have acted to make this country safe and beautiful have remained inactive. They remained not only inactive but indifferent as if the evolving situation is of no concern to them.In a desperate move to hide the wrongs and failures of the government, the special interest groups have come up with the scheme of mega billboards to make the people believe about the mega development and mega leadership we are having in the country. The quality leadership or progress cannot be a matter of mega billboards put up in the sky, but even then the government’s propaganda machine is working on that basis. The government is not appreciating that the responsible press cannot be enemy of the government. The free press is anything but a builder of good government. The press by its very position is not to be a rival of the government. Even then the present subdued press cannot suppress publishing stories of incompetence of the ministry after ministry.The greatest anxiety of the nation is safety in public life. But our police are being asked to maintain law and order without the freedom of stopping crimes of the privileged ones. So we see the police presence is increasing in the streets but public life continues to be unsafe. The police are also being targeted to be killed. Only the other day an ASI of police was stabbed to death. The police are to be seen as friends of the people, but they are also now becoming victims of violence and anger. It must be disturbing for the security in public life. Those who want to blast bombs they find their way to do so and kill people. On the occasion of Holy Ashura despite all police arrangements three grenades were exploded. Killing one and injuring quite a few. So the law and order situation is getting worse in Bangladesh. The law and order situation in Bangladesh is viewed as too dangerous. When the government is in the midst of serious crisis flowing from all fronts, its supporters are in search for enemies of independence among the people who sacrificed most for the independence of the country. To be in power is not a guarantee of one’s love for the country.Recently, some clever moneyed men came up with the idea that it should be legalized for them to invest their money abroad. Perhaps, they now wanted to tell the government that they are ready to conquer the world economy.But what they are now openly demanding is that their illegally earned money already laundered outside the country should be legalized.They can also be understood to be saying that the country is so unsafe for investment that as businessmen they are asking the government to legalize investment overseas.Such an idea has been floated at a time when our young men and women in hundreds are fleeing the country in search of jobs in other countries. They die, they are killed for ransom money and they are degraded like anything because they need jobs for their mere survival.The “unstoppable development” going on in the country as claimed by the propaganda machinery of the government, is such that the question papers are leaked regularly and the Minister is not held responsible because the corrupt forces are more powerful than any Minister. That is the success story of our education sector.The indifference found in the public health sector is more painful from the point of human considerations. The worst examples of mismanagement in hospitals and health centers are being exposed on daily basis in the press and the government does not have anything to say by way of challenging the truth. A news item published on Saturday in a national Bengali daily is a shocking exposure of negligence with life and death questions of patients at the National Institute of Heart Diseases. The finding is that for the last few years a wrong technician has been helping in the operation theater of the critical heart patients.The robbing of the banks went on easily enough but the bank managements are very tough with genuine loan defaulters. The Anti-Corruption Commission is immediately invited to take up the matter criminally. The functionaries of the ACC accordingly show their agility by asking the concerned persons to appear before them to be grilled by them. It is no concern of anybody that failure to repay a loan is primarily a civil liability. But their compulsion to show criminality is to create opportunities for the blackmailers.Even the commonsense view is that if the business is shut down and the owner is kept in jail then the repayment will be more difficult in the absence of source of earning. This is nothing but an easy way of destroying our industries. There is no need for assessing how best to save a sinking industry to the convenience of both sides. But how to save private sector businesses should be the main consideration of the country’s economic policy-makers and the banking system. But not in our country. We are good at how to make a difficult situation impossible for solving. We are also losing foreign purchase orders for garments. India and other countries are gaining. What is evident is that we are in a big crisis and there is no leadership to find a way out.Just because we are not in politics actively, we cannot remain indifferent or inactive to be helpful to our people and the country.
