Review of acidic views
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Qazi Azad
WHEN two diagnosis centers offer radically different opinions on the ailment of a seriously sick patient, the victim's relatives go for the third opinion at an additional cost. Surely, we are in a similar situation.
Two individual write-ups on the environment for lower level democracy in this country by two prominent persons, both doctorate degree holders, which ran concurrently on the same page of a major Dhaka daily on a day last week, came up with diagonally opposite views about the political conditions at the grassroots level.
One of these articles, which maintained that democracy without a support structure was unsustainable, said, "If we are now to put our derailed democracy back on track, we must, among other things, urgently initiate the important task of democratic decentralisation using local government as the instrument". The other, which asserted that democracy's trouble lied at the grassroots, said "The true grassroots support base of a political party or parties at village level has completely disappeared and has been replaced by the cadre roots of the godfathers".
The second article suggested some immediate corrective measures for the political parties to take in the interest of the nation. The writer stated, "I would like to put forward to the reformist parties a simple proposal to begin with a genuine damage control. In my view, the political parties should observe a self-imposed moratorium under the close eyes of the EC on operating a party branch below the upazila level over the next two terms".
It would, he hoped, certainly bring peace and harmony among the millions of rural people and help restore the age-old social capital by putting back the village elders in the informal positions of authority in their respective areas. "This would also help make the youths in the villages good citizens instead of turning into preys of political masters", he maintained.
His other conclusive views are that "Like the mafia, the godfathers in politics through their cronies and cadres destroyed the age-old non-partisan, non-political co-existence of rural Bangladeshis" and that "Tens and thousands of political cadres have turned almost all the villages into dens of terror." He expressed his fear that when normal politics would be restored "these cadres would surface again with ruthless vengeance against the people who oppose them".
The publication of these two articles coincided with four reports in some local newspapers from four different rural localities, which are wide apart- one from Ashulia near Dhaka, one from Joydevpur, one from Sylhet and one from Chittagong. The reports from the first and the last places alleged that two local union parishad (UP) chairmen have driven away some families in their respective area using terrorising tactics with the involvement of their musclemen. They have forcibly taken possession of lands of their victims. In the report from Joydevpur, it was stated that a Dhaka-based leader of a partisan professional group has dispossessed a relative of some acres of his rural land through fraudulent means and raised wall around it to formalise his illegal occupation. The one from Sylhet involving 100 acres of land had a dirtier story to tell, where power created ploys to establish questionable hold on the land, unleashing privation to many destitute people.
If these four news reports of the same day are read together with the aforesaid two articles, the critical acidic opinion of the second article may appear more agreeable with their contents. These may be also reminders about why Confucius-the legendary Chinese wiseman, said "A bad government is worse than a ferocious tiger". If villages have really turned into dens of terror, as contended in the second article -- an acidic view that is partly established by the said news reports -- local government bodies at the basement level in the rural areas are actually being run broadly by people many of who in their behaviour have similarity with ferocious tigers. The exceptional ones may be islands in the ocean of loneliness. Rural individuals who are not strengthened by belonging to any big platform, social or political, and are on themselves may know it better with their painful experiences, as the family in rural Chittagong which has lost a son in the vain fight for defending their land right against the alleged onslaught of the powerful offenders, the subject of one of the aforesaid news stories.
It is not that rural politics has become bad in the last 15 years. It has been contaminated from long since. A family in rural Feni lost some of its land to a long illegal road, constructed forcibly using the terrorising tactics in 1987 by some village musclemen in spite of having an alternative but a bit longer road, with the active support of the then local UP chairman and one of its members. They even placed fabricated papers in the court to prove that the disputed road was not illegal. The goons lost in a lawsuit involving this illegal road in the lower court and also in their appeal to the higher district court.
Even subsequent UP chairmen and local UP members were not upright. They tilted to the musclemen in upholding their alliance with them, which now broadly characterises local government and the rural society. The matter now lies, on appeal by the offenders, with the High Court in Dhaka for hearing and disposal. One man's active life has been virtually consumed up by those illegal occupants of land who have been abusing the legal system.
Democracy by people having no enlightenment about enlightened self-interest -- the coveted all-round security offered by a society on attainment of the higher social goal of conglomerate well-being, can actually degenerate into a rule by gangsters. At its present level of educational attainment and concentration of its educated people primarily in the urban centers, a degenerated democracy in Bangladesh at the apex level may not exist and operate for a long time. Angry and articulate protest of the conscious section of citizens, who know how to assert themselves, will bring it down. But rural democracy, represented by local government bodies, still remain highly vulnerable due to the absence of the critical mass of educated voters in the villages, without which democracy can be neither meaningful nor stable.
"Can the person, who is for-ever happy, feel, even by mistake, the pains of a sufferer? The torment of what pains will cause him to feel the agony of the one who has been bitten by a snake's venom?" That's a huge question raised in an old Bengali poem, which has no relevance with democracy. For the city dwellers having no strong link with villages, it may not be easy to grasp the actual rural situation.
How many of us, who are city centric, go to the villages frequently? Whenever we go, we do not stay long enough there as ordinary people having no strong connections for pulling at the time of need to be exposed by the local goons to and realise the painful under-currents straining the rural society.
People who wear bullet-proof vests never actually suffer bullet wounds. The protective shields granted to many of us by their relative social prominence are their vests. Some thorough studies need to be done on the rural political conditions while defining a reformed approach to local government. After all, we cannot play with our country and do things relating to important national affairs based barely on our assumptions.
WHEN two diagnosis centers offer radically different opinions on the ailment of a seriously sick patient, the victim's relatives go for the third opinion at an additional cost. Surely, we are in a similar situation.
Two individual write-ups on the environment for lower level democracy in this country by two prominent persons, both doctorate degree holders, which ran concurrently on the same page of a major Dhaka daily on a day last week, came up with diagonally opposite views about the political conditions at the grassroots level.
One of these articles, which maintained that democracy without a support structure was unsustainable, said, "If we are now to put our derailed democracy back on track, we must, among other things, urgently initiate the important task of democratic decentralisation using local government as the instrument". The other, which asserted that democracy's trouble lied at the grassroots, said "The true grassroots support base of a political party or parties at village level has completely disappeared and has been replaced by the cadre roots of the godfathers".
The second article suggested some immediate corrective measures for the political parties to take in the interest of the nation. The writer stated, "I would like to put forward to the reformist parties a simple proposal to begin with a genuine damage control. In my view, the political parties should observe a self-imposed moratorium under the close eyes of the EC on operating a party branch below the upazila level over the next two terms".
It would, he hoped, certainly bring peace and harmony among the millions of rural people and help restore the age-old social capital by putting back the village elders in the informal positions of authority in their respective areas. "This would also help make the youths in the villages good citizens instead of turning into preys of political masters", he maintained.
His other conclusive views are that "Like the mafia, the godfathers in politics through their cronies and cadres destroyed the age-old non-partisan, non-political co-existence of rural Bangladeshis" and that "Tens and thousands of political cadres have turned almost all the villages into dens of terror." He expressed his fear that when normal politics would be restored "these cadres would surface again with ruthless vengeance against the people who oppose them".
The publication of these two articles coincided with four reports in some local newspapers from four different rural localities, which are wide apart- one from Ashulia near Dhaka, one from Joydevpur, one from Sylhet and one from Chittagong. The reports from the first and the last places alleged that two local union parishad (UP) chairmen have driven away some families in their respective area using terrorising tactics with the involvement of their musclemen. They have forcibly taken possession of lands of their victims. In the report from Joydevpur, it was stated that a Dhaka-based leader of a partisan professional group has dispossessed a relative of some acres of his rural land through fraudulent means and raised wall around it to formalise his illegal occupation. The one from Sylhet involving 100 acres of land had a dirtier story to tell, where power created ploys to establish questionable hold on the land, unleashing privation to many destitute people.
If these four news reports of the same day are read together with the aforesaid two articles, the critical acidic opinion of the second article may appear more agreeable with their contents. These may be also reminders about why Confucius-the legendary Chinese wiseman, said "A bad government is worse than a ferocious tiger". If villages have really turned into dens of terror, as contended in the second article -- an acidic view that is partly established by the said news reports -- local government bodies at the basement level in the rural areas are actually being run broadly by people many of who in their behaviour have similarity with ferocious tigers. The exceptional ones may be islands in the ocean of loneliness. Rural individuals who are not strengthened by belonging to any big platform, social or political, and are on themselves may know it better with their painful experiences, as the family in rural Chittagong which has lost a son in the vain fight for defending their land right against the alleged onslaught of the powerful offenders, the subject of one of the aforesaid news stories.
It is not that rural politics has become bad in the last 15 years. It has been contaminated from long since. A family in rural Feni lost some of its land to a long illegal road, constructed forcibly using the terrorising tactics in 1987 by some village musclemen in spite of having an alternative but a bit longer road, with the active support of the then local UP chairman and one of its members. They even placed fabricated papers in the court to prove that the disputed road was not illegal. The goons lost in a lawsuit involving this illegal road in the lower court and also in their appeal to the higher district court.
Even subsequent UP chairmen and local UP members were not upright. They tilted to the musclemen in upholding their alliance with them, which now broadly characterises local government and the rural society. The matter now lies, on appeal by the offenders, with the High Court in Dhaka for hearing and disposal. One man's active life has been virtually consumed up by those illegal occupants of land who have been abusing the legal system.
Democracy by people having no enlightenment about enlightened self-interest -- the coveted all-round security offered by a society on attainment of the higher social goal of conglomerate well-being, can actually degenerate into a rule by gangsters. At its present level of educational attainment and concentration of its educated people primarily in the urban centers, a degenerated democracy in Bangladesh at the apex level may not exist and operate for a long time. Angry and articulate protest of the conscious section of citizens, who know how to assert themselves, will bring it down. But rural democracy, represented by local government bodies, still remain highly vulnerable due to the absence of the critical mass of educated voters in the villages, without which democracy can be neither meaningful nor stable.
"Can the person, who is for-ever happy, feel, even by mistake, the pains of a sufferer? The torment of what pains will cause him to feel the agony of the one who has been bitten by a snake's venom?" That's a huge question raised in an old Bengali poem, which has no relevance with democracy. For the city dwellers having no strong link with villages, it may not be easy to grasp the actual rural situation.
How many of us, who are city centric, go to the villages frequently? Whenever we go, we do not stay long enough there as ordinary people having no strong connections for pulling at the time of need to be exposed by the local goons to and realise the painful under-currents straining the rural society.
People who wear bullet-proof vests never actually suffer bullet wounds. The protective shields granted to many of us by their relative social prominence are their vests. Some thorough studies need to be done on the rural political conditions while defining a reformed approach to local government. After all, we cannot play with our country and do things relating to important national affairs based barely on our assumptions.