Shutdowns and the political classes

On the 26th day of countrywide shutdown and blockade, a retired police officer, along with three members of his family, sufferred burn injuries as shutdown and blockade supporters threw petrol bombs/Molotov cocktails at a public bus in Dhaka last Thursday. Political violence during opposition protests demanding a fresh polls under a non-party caretaker government continues unabated, claiming forty lives so far.
Such shutdowns serve nobody's cause except that of the wily politicians. The devastation and suffering of the general public due to a shutdown are at times more severe and widespread than the cause for which they are enforced. The 'success' of a shutdown is proportionate to the quantum of fear its organizers generate. Hence, 'success' does not really demonstrate sympathy for its cause, nor is 'failure' indicative of the absence of sympathy.
The frequency with which shutdowns are called in Bangladesh does not so much signify concern of political actors with the stated issue, as much as a way of displaying a whole lot of emotions. They are meant to convey the impression of sympathy when they are actually a stratagem for self-glorification.
A shutdown is presumably called when a political organisation wants to draw attention to a long-standing grievance. But the protagonists of a shutdown are only interested in displaying how concerned they are instead of buckling down and doing something which is useful in the situation. An adequate institutional response would be to look after the victims and their families, and to trace out and arrest the perpetrators. But the shutdown activists had none of this on their minds. They declared that the shutdown was a success. Success in this case was measured by the number of shops that were forced to close down, by the number of buses that were damaged, and by the number of trains that were stalled by agitators.
In none of these demonstrations of political power were the victims even remotely taken into consideration. In not one instance of stoning of trains, damaging of transport vehicles or forcing commercial activities to close, did we get any closer to tracking down the culprits. It is hard work indeed to apply the healing anodyne in a constructive and caring fashion such that the victims and their families are actually rehabilitated. It is also very hard work to track down the culprits and seal off all reservoirs of sympathy that they may have among the population. This is a job that the security and the paramilitary forces cannot accomplish alone. They need the support of all political parties and the citizens.
In fact, there should be a political taboo on shutdowns. If people have time and energy on their hands they should help relieve public distress without adding to the strain on national resources. Unfortunately, wasteful activism of the shutdown has been condoned for all these years because the public too is largely uncaring when a tragedy befalls not on themselves but on other people.
When shutdowns are called in times of national crisis, they are planned by people who are supremely callous of what citizens really need. This leads one to wonder why our political system tolerates such behaviour time and time again. What we must realise as concerned citizens is that political demonstrations of grief are often a smokescreen to avoid performing public responsibilities. As citizens, then, we must also let our political classes know that we have seen through their game.
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