–Mainul Hosein
The British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke’s so correct saying : “Only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
The country is in a political void and the civil society will not play its part. Most of them prefer to be selfish, having no concern with the miseries of the people.
The governance now comes to mean sending people to jail without trial. The police are sending people freely to jail merely on suspicion. The courts are also obliged under pressure of the police and government lawyers to send people to jail like other convicts, though they are innocent in law. Otherwise their fear is that the government will be told the court’s are not cooperating with the government in dealing with the crimes. But jailing on suspicion is not dealing the crime.
The country is not only in serious crisis with the pandemic, but also with various other miseries for arbitrary use of power.
Lockdown could be necessary to keep people from spreading the virus. But sending in hundreds to jail is not the answer. In other countries also short time lockdown is announced and army deployed. But not for creating another opportunity for imprisonment of people.
Officially more than five hundred people have been thrown into jail a day as if their families can survive happily with government checks. The country’s dire economic condition is not important a consideration. The government’s own failures are everywhere though its failures are not be discussed.
The drug business is flourishing, yet everyday hundreds of young people are sent to jail. Nobody seems to have any concern about survival of their families, deadly pandemic notwithstanding. Drug business is booming nevertheless. How these drugs enter the country is known but it is not wrong that the government have no check on that.
There are too many agencies for dealing with crime and corruption. But the people are suffering as the helpless victims of corruption and crime. When ordinary people are suffering from joblessness and hunger the corrupt and the criminals have no fear to show of their power of money. They are prospering. Anti-Corruption cases are also called corruption in another name.
Despite the subdued press with a docile existence, facts of high level crimes are not unknown to everybody. The Amnesty International expresses anxiety but our sovereign government is unmoved.
The police are overworked for dealing with the problems that are to be solved with political skill by political leaders. The problems in every sector are aggravating.
Traffic on roads is dangerously chaotic all over. Some 80% of the traffic police suffer from breathing problems. The weather so polluted.
Jailing people has not stopped the rising rate of Covid patients. It has reaches the highest level. We do not think people go out for easy time. They have to deal with the financial crisis most of them face. We do not know during lockdown in other countries authorities sent people to jail as solution.
It is nobody’s concern that when the government at this time of calamity should raise its activities and efficiency, it is at its most dysfunctional stage. As people have no part in the government, their vote is not needed so the public functionaries have no problem with accountability. The people are nobody to serve. The government-people relationship is snapped off from the root.
The migrant workers have been sent back by many countries for the economic downturn due to the pandemic. Those who still have jobs face all sorts of difficulties in getting their papers ready to return. Extra payment is normal.
The problem of yaba or other drugs is seen as solvable by sending young jobless carriers to jail. Their joblessness and poverty are worsened by sending them to jail the easiest way. Like in Pakistan days the government serves group interests for continuing in power.
Huge numbers of lawyers are spending time in hardship. Something could be done if planned. The court cases are mostly about bail and for disposing of bail matters involve no law. The court’s discretion is supreme.
We are becoming a heartless country with no time for woes of others. That is the general picture in public life. The private offers of help are available. But they are not able to organise effectively. There is disconnection everywhere.
Despite all the frustration for perpetrators of wrongs and injustices the nation finds a great deal of humanity among the doctors and health workers. They are working devotedly without essential facilities.
The people are dying not only for delay in getting vaccines, but also for shortage of oxygen and hospital beds. Our health system has exposed its hollowness and collapsible conditions.
Now dengue is taking an endemic form. 194 dengue patients had been hospitalised in 24 hours according to a official report published in the press day before yesterday.
When a person is arrested on suspicion of crime the law provides him two alternatives. One jail custody which means imprisonments. The other is judicial custody. He is punished like convicts though he is innocent in the eye of law. When a prisoner is in court to cry for justice but crying has to be controlled so that others don’t feel uncomfortable. A person on bail is not free but under custody of the court. He must obey the terms of bail.
For self-propagated personal pride objective successes are not necessary. But to any sensible person to live in a country where educated people have no concern to see the government itself is disorderly causing the people to live in the fear uncertainty in a gaping political void, the civil society finds no role to save the country is most shocking.
Where the people must turn to for making their country their own.
