People are like dirt. They can either nourish you … or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.-- Plato.
It is characteristic of philosophy that even its most obscure and apparently perplexing ideas, suitably interpreted, can sometimes be perfect clues to understand the twists of certain situations. And while philosophy doesn't always provide clear answers to our questions, it often reveals what it is we are looking for. What the Athenian master-philosopher Plato implied in his apparently skewed statement by referring to people has both subjective and objective connotations -- depending on the context in which it is placed.
At the moment, in one of the most impoverished countries of the world, the people are no better than inanimate objects with nothing in their hands or heads to decide things for themselves, let alone for others. Still, it is they, the people, who occupy the hearts of the politicians! It is the people the politicians speak of most and can scarcely complete a sentence without mentioning them. And indeed it is they who are routinely being hounded and held hostage, lest they vanish in thin air.
The wanton cruelty, vandalism, loss of lives that depict the life of citizens day in and day out have two things to say: the politicians consider the people as dirt; and the people not refusing to believe they are so, consider the politicians anything but humans. This has been aptly demonstrated not just in the ongoing state of hysteria, but has been repeated time and again in rotating cycles by those in power and those not in what may be termed sinusoidal.
Looking at the picture simplistically will not help. The entire scenario is about a political culture -- a handiwork of the politicians who, despite their apparent hostilities, have helped develop it collusively over the past decades as a starkly clear means of grabbing the state power. Vandalism, hurling of petrol bombs and the like have not gained currency in a day. Tracing the ancestry would reveal how the collusive pattern has been at work, and how the people at large were made hostage in gratifying their lust for power. And still, it is the people who continue to lodge in their hearts -- the dirt that the latter use when an opportunity offers.
Given the state of things in the country, it is difficult even for an incorrigible optimist to find tiny glimmers in the thick cloud overhead. The political impasse has already claimed billions in taka, besides many innocent lives. Businesses are reportedly losing over Tk 22.77 billion daily due to the ongoing blockade. The garment sector is the most hard-hit with delayed shipments, exorbitant air freights and cancellation of export orders. The Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) has estimated the figure calculating the losses in the garment, agriculture, real estate sectors as well as other important segments of wholesale and retail markets. The daily loss is estimated at Tk 3.00 billion in transport sector, 2.88 billion in agriculture, 2.50 billion in real estate and Tk 2.10 billion in tourism. The wholesale and retail markets suffer losses of Tk 1.50 billion while the manufacturing sector, Tk 1.00 billion.
The damage done is done, and recuperating remains far too distant. "The losses we are now incurring can never be recovered. How will you get back the lives lost and assets gutted?" said DCCI President Hossain Khaled, sharing the survey results at a press conference. Shocking of all, the waste in the past weeks has been estimated to be close to an unbelievable 3.0 per cent of the country's gross domestic products (GDP).
The reason why a faint glimmer of light is not in sight is because both the ruling party and the largest opposition party have resorted to their open-ended agendas. The spokespersons of the ruling party seem quite at ease when they say talks on elections are not at all a subject of dialogue. This has fuelled the opposition's stand on blockades, which they declare would continue, as though unsuspectingly, until the fall of the government!
All that the people are left with is the endless charade of bickering in the long lingering spell of, well, doom. Plato, however, has his own way of defining things when he says, "Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."
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