Vacancy announcement: Enlightened citizen required
BANGLADESH is a country with great prospect; one of the fastest growing economies of the world which has transformed itself successfully over the last few decades from Kissinger's “Basket Case” to Ban Ki-moon's “...model for the world”. This is a country which has prospered in spite of periodic natural calamities, political chaos, international crisis and many multifaceted challenges. As the country plans to take the next big leap towards becoming a more developed nation, both economically and politically, there seems to be ample vacancy in the enlightened citizen category. While many educated people do exist, recent thuggish and goon like behaviour by students of the 'highest echelon of academic excellence' on unarmed citizens left such belief in the educated mass in tatters. After all if this is the output from the famed Oxford of the East, one has to right-size their expectation regarding the rest. Furthermore, distressingly, there seems to be an ever increasing pressure towards further politicizing of educational institutions, the rationale for which is lost among intellectuals, ordinary citizens and pretty much everybody and anybody living outside the cocooned world of political parties. It is therefore no surprise that in some occasions even professors pay the ultimate price. Such situation leaves one depressingly cynical about the prospect of drawing enlightened citizenry from output of such educational institutions. However law of large numbers dictates given the sheer number of people entering the system, some good must come out. But then if we look at our middleclass countrymen treading the streets of big cities, one is bound to feel a tad bit depressed at the overall mentality. A rickshaw or CNG bumps in to a car, even if there is a hairline scratch on the car, the characteristic response from the educated owner of the car is often to drown the other driver in a volcano of putrid verbal abuse and if given sufficient time to escalate, physical ones. Resorting to violence to address a difference in opinion is so ubiquitous that it is not so uncommon to see feast fights erupting out of petty issues such as addressing fare of a rickshaw ride! And if you are political parties then you have carte-blanche to use your goons to destroy, maim, burn people and property indiscriminately, simply because you disagree. Leave it to their educated supporters and you shall find the finest use of sophistry and mental jousting to defend their actions. Our country needs enlightened people who put country's interest before their petty politics and self interest.
The writer is a student at Cambridge University
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