40 years on
December 16 comes with feelings of mixed emotions. For a nation, nothing can be more joyous than the realisation that we are the masters of our own destiny. But with the attainment of victory comes the acute pain of loss of all those whose blood helped ensure that the Bengali nation has a state, that we have a flag we can call our own, and that we have a country that we can nurture and help blossom in fulfillment of the pious intentions of what we fought for.
We were a nation well before we had a country of our own. And indeed, in a nation's life forty years of statehood is but a small speck in the continuum of a country's history. But, depending on how one chooses to look at it, it can be used as a good excuse for all that we have failed to achieve, yet to many it is a long enough period that merits taking stock of our performance of the last four decades. We choose to belong to the latter.
Thus, it should be a day for some introspection, for, a nation cannot go forward unless it looks back to look at the mistakes and the follies that it has committed in order not to suffer the consequences of their repetition in the future. There are a few things whose loss cannot be recompensed. The blood of the martyrs for one thing cannot be compensated by whatever we do. At best, the sacrifice of those valiant sons and daughters of the soil can be sanctified by living up to their dreams. Have we been able to?
Our achievements have been many and we can rightly take pride in those. For one thing our development index is better than many South Asian countries, and we are managing to feed double the mouths that we did in 1971, and that too without serious disruptions in spite of the many natural calamities that we had to weather, no mean achievement.
But while we boast of being a proud nation, one cannot help wondering whether we have really congealed as one, or are still suffering from the birth pangs. Why are we divided, as we stand today, in two distinct groups, led by two parties, whose efforts to outdo the other is fashioned by the worst form of animosity? Their differences have nothing to do with policies or even principles, but which stems from a loathsome mutual hostility of the two party leaders. Our political culture has degenerated to an appalling level and democracy, which was delivered a severe blow by the military interregnum, has at best been dysfunctional in the last twenty years.
There cannot be a more ridiculous situation than that after 40 years we are still grappling with the actual number of freedom fighters. With every new government there is a renewed effort to draw up a fresh list. And as a leading daily has frontlined in its yesterday's issue, there has been a continuing number game ever since President Ershad decided to draw up a list of freedom fighters. Would it not be easier to draw up a list of Razakars?
This year, the eve of our Victory Day was sullied by the death of nearly 30 garments workers in a factory fire. And it is the plight of the workers, particularly the RMG workers, that predominates current discussions on our economy.
The garment sector has put the country in the commercial map of the world. It has done quite a lot to address the issue of poverty by providing employment, particularly to women. Yet the workers here are a little better than bonded labourers. There have been more deaths in the last ten years of workers in the RMG sector due to fire than in all other industries combined.
The RMG workers remain the most underpaid, and even when a new pay scale is agreed to by the owners, the workers have to pay through their blood to have it implemented, as we saw happen last week. And those who espouse their cause are branded as rabble rousers. And there is always a readymade excuse with the leaders of BGMEA in support of the defaulting owners, who invariably get away because of their political links.
As for poverty, it has been used as a commodity rather than a problem by some of the NGOs, a commodity that has been traded to make financial windfalls. But even those that are seriously working to address the issue are coming under the severest criticism, particularly from those who perhaps feel that they did not get the international accolades they think they richly deserve, and also from those that have not done an iota of work to redress the plight of the poor in Bangladesh.
The political divide has, unfortunately, been reflected in the foreign policy front too. There has been no consensus on national issues, particularly those relating to India. Thus, there has been lack of continuity in policy implementation.
There have been achievements in equal measures as our failures. One has to be an inveterate pessimist to say that we are where we were on December 16, 1971. And by the same token one has to be an incorrigible optimist to bask in the glory of the achievements.
However, one must assert that all that we have failed to attain or accomplish may not have to do entirely with our failings per se; there might have been factors beyond our control that came in the way of attaining the aims. But the greatest impediment has been the abrasive nature of politics in Bangladesh that has affected good democracy and governance, the cornerstones of national development.
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