Land suitable for children\\\'s living

Two reports in total contrast with each other carried in this newspaper on Sunday give a glimpse of the hard reality facing children here and an ideal situation society ought to strive for. The first report concerns the arrest of four child traffickers and rescue of 10 children between ages six and nine. First, the police need to be commended for promptly responding to the SOS call or the children could be in danger in case the men in uniform failed to rush in so quickly. Luck also played a part in the abducted children's favour. The four held in connection with the 10 children's abduction are not the only child traffickers. There are many more and not all of them get caught.
The fact, admittedly, is that the country cannot be called a hospitable place for its young population. Death of a number of teenaged boys at the hands of cruel and fiendish elders in recent times says it all. If this extreme is not the general rule, the day-to-day treatment of young ones at the family level in a broad segment of society cannot either be considered ideal. But how well children in a society are taken care of is often a determinant of that society's progress. Emotional attachment, love and affection are not the only measure of childcare. If the young ones' welfare is at the top of the agenda, they must be taught discipline, self-dependence and moral virtues.
It is exactly against such considerations, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's expectation of a future Bangladesh - one that will be judged as a great place for its children, comes more as a wishful thinking than a reality. But there is no reason to doubt her sincerity. To materialise her vision of a child-friendly Bangladesh, there is a need for a radical transformation of the mindset of the majority of the population. Why this cannot happen overnight lies in the process of evolution. Like the evolutionary process of animals, including man, society also evolves from within. However, there is no straight line for this to happen. Sometimes civilisation retreats or takes on a retrogressive journey.
At a time of materialistic preferences, the issue of fellow-feeling, care for the young and the old, integrity of character and moral virtues has been relegated to the back burner. In a situation like this, even those boasting that they are giving the best possible education to their children are quite unaware of the damage they are causing by turning the young ones into robots. In fact, children have little scope of pursuing their own dreams. They are swallowed what their parents could not digest or get at when they were young. This in fact is serving the cause of materialism. At one time or another, society gets unbalanced because of the continuous running after the artificial and resorting to the manipulative means. There is need for allowing the young ones to have the freedom of making choices of the field of study and acquire knowledge accordingly.