People are worried and unhappy

Shamsher Chowdhury While the establishment is upbeat about its many successes, people continue to be burdened by many issues that adversely affect their lives and living. This scribe wrote about some such issues on earlier occasions, also. The present write-up, is however, of a different nature and focus. The miseries and helplessness of the people know no bounds. The list of issues causing people pain and deprivation is getting longer and longer. Worst of all, the administration seems to be least worried, except for making empty promises and well choreographed lies. Frankly many of us believe that things cannot go on like this for too long. It appears that the establishment's priorities are purported to facilitating, aligning and realigning its relationships with our big brother, India, and self-preservation -- more than attending to issues of public concern. People find it rather bewildering. The Teesta water sharing and transit issues with our neighbour are of considerable importance for the country but attending to the welfare of the people and their day-to-day concerns are of no lesser consequence. It is our impression that the establishment, time and again, is failing to take the matter into cognizance. No administration worth its name can function effectively keeping the people disillusioned, dissatisfied and in a state of deprivation and want. The establishment needs to be transparent in all its interventions at all times. The least people expect from its leaders is a clear understanding of what is being done and why, in no uncertain terms. The way this administration goes about its business, it looks, as though, that it views itself as the monarch of all it surveys and is accountable to none. Ever since the ruling party took the reins of administration, it has systematically ignored the interests of the common man. The issues: In recent times, some of the measures have sent shock waves across the country particularly amongst people belonging to the middle income class and below that. This relates to hiking of fuel prices of all kinds, including the price of compressed natural gas (CNG). What hurts most is the fact that this has hit the people below the belt and has come as a bolt from the blue. People are yet to have any clear understanding about the rationale and logic behind the increases; after all, it is the consumers who have to bear the brunt of it all. With the hiking of prices, the retailers, too, hiked their prices. What was once considered as food for the common man is now beyond reach of even people belonging to the middle class. Go and visit a kitchen market, you will see where it is hurting the people. Despite government's umpteen promises to control prices, the 'business syndicates', along with the retailers' and the small traders, are having a field day at our expense. No wonder the establishment calls itself "business friendly"? Dark clouds are still hovering over our stock market. Peoples' confidence in the market is yet to return. No one knows to this day the details of the enquiry into the great crunch in the market that took place in late 2010. The other day the head of the Enquiry Committee had said that many of the people who were identified as the main architects of the scam "continue to run the affairs of the stock exchange even to this day". Besides many stock market specialists believe that lack of liquidity is not the real cause behind the prevailing situation in the market. It is our impression that no lasting stability in the share market is possible without implementing the recommendations of the Enquiry Committee. Let us not forget that the fate of millions hang on proper functioning of the stock market who invested millions and lost millions. Least the establishment can do is to provide a credible explanation as to what really went wrong and how. Meanwhile, the horrific state of the traffic jam and traffic management continues. Despite much hue and cry from all sections of the population, there is no visible sign of improvement in the situation whatsoever. So many people have written about the pitiable state of our traffic jam and mismanagement of traffic movement on the roads. But there is yet no sign of any real effort on the part of the ruling alliance to improve it. Even under the given circumstances, people's sufferings could be lessened to some extent simply by regulating the traffic movement on the streets on a day-to-day basis. To this day, traffic signals are violated at random, right under the very nose of the police on duty. Footpaths continue to be occupied by all kinds of vendors. Wherever and whenever there is a gridlock or otherwise, rickshaw pullers and motor cycle riders get onto the adjacent footpaths and keep moving at will. Parking on both sides of many major roads have reached alarming proportions. All that is required is the adequate number of police to be on the road and assert themselves against violators of the rules. Is this very difficult to implement? All that is required is the will and the commitment at policy levels. Frankly, people are so disheartened with the situation that they are now of the conviction that the traffic jam is here to stay forever, no matter what comes. The future is bleak. Already the monorail project has hit the snag and God alone knows as to when the project will take off, if at all? In the meantime, many experts have opined that proposed flyovers may not ease the traffic jam substantially. People are extremely worried about the outcome of our "friendly relationship" with our brotherly neighbour, India. So far it has given us some consolation prizes only to play with, and kept us guessing as to what is to come next. There is no respite in killing of the Bangladeshis by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) on the borders. No one really knows about the gamut of treaties Bangladesh is going enter with India. People need to know the details of each and every contractagreement signed or to be signed in the future. In yet another recent development, eight of our people living in Saudi Arabia were beheaded for being involved in some murder case on its soil. Such capital punishment happens to be a part of the law of the Kingdom of Ssudi Arabia (KSA) and applies to its own citizens also. Capital punishment exists even in America and many other countries of the world including Bangladesh. However, unlike in the KSA, death-row victims in other parts of the world are executed in different ways in closed doors. This very business of capital punishment has been debated for decades. Be that as it may, our sympathies lie with the families of the victims. As the bigger picture unfolds now in the media, it is sad that neither our authorities in the centre nor our missions abroad tried hard to prevail upon the Saudi government to refrain itself from the executions and pardon the condemned, despite the fact that they knew about it for quite sometime. Such inaction on the part of the establishment is nothing new. This, too, adds to the unhappiness of the people and certainly damages the image of the government in the eyes of the people. No matter what the prevailing state of affairs in the country is, we do strongly need to have a government that is truly a government of the people by the people and for the people; nothing more and nothing less. The writer can be reached at email: chowdhury.shamsher@yahoo.com