It's all in the family . . .

Photo: Getty

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has asked her ministers and ministers of state to stay away from pushing forth their relatives or family members at the upcoming municipality elections. By any measure that is a good gesture. The question, though, is whether her directives will throw up the kind of response we can all be comfortable with. Family, after all, is something we have not quite been able to shake off in public life.
Much as the prime minister would like to convince us that her exhortations will work, the truth is that the family of the powerful and the influential is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. A measure of that is to be spotted in the recent sighting of the prime ministerial son at state celebrations of Victory Day. Of course the offspring of heads of state and governments have the right, like everyone else, to celebrate the country and its ethos. But for the electronic media to focus on such offspring is somehow not comforing.
If you recall, only a few years ago another prime ministerial child, this one the much talked about and much controversial elder son of Begum Khaleda Zia, was observed on stage as a special guest on a day that was a celebration of the nation's air force. No one was able to explain what this young man, a joint secretary general of the (then ruling) Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was doing there or why the air force was pampering him in such obsequious manner.
It will be a long time before we can put our families behind us, and not just in politics. As recently as two decades ago, we did not faintly consider the notion of the children of musicians making their way into the world of melody only because they happened to have been sired by reputed singers and song makers. Now, no one is even remotely suggesting that these children ought not to have been there. What does concern us, however, is that these wonderful young people have rather had an easy time of it considering that they have had behind them famous parents to promote their cause.
Some of these children sing well. You do not question their ability. But should they not have come to centre-stage like any other struggling artiste of the country? When you listen to the songs of a large number of these second-generation musicians, you somehow know that quality is what they do not have in satisfactory measure. That, ladies and gentlemen, is one more instance of how some families have imposed themselves on the country.
In the world of movies and drama, much a similar strain is to be perceived. There are fathers who have been remarkable, if not exactly powerful, actors in Bangladesh's film industry. Memories of the movies they played varied roles in are part of our sensibilities. We still relish going back to those days of black and white, of innocence as it substantiated the romance in the tales coming our way. And then turn to what their children have done in later movies. The acting has been mediocre to the point of being inane.
Did these children of the old-timers have to be pushed into Bangladesh's filmdom? Are we expected to believe that in this country of a hundred and sixty million people there is truly a dearth of talented young men and women who could give us some world class movies? The answer is no. But these young men and women do not have the advantage that those children of the famous have. We are speaking of connections here.
If you have been keeping tabs on the world of Bangladesh's theatre, you will have had cause to spot the influx of the family into our drama. And you will have been disappointed, for the cerebral, incisive role-playing you have observed in an earlier generation of artistes is what you do not come by in their children. Yes, those children are there on the screen all right. You do not see the sparks in them.
Ah, the family! Not even the media world is free of it, especially when the matter is one of owners keen to pass on the torch to a new generation, which in this case means their children. Once that is done, all sorts of confusion come up as a consequence. There are gross instances of the children of newspaper owners-editors cheerfully leading the organisation to extinction through inexperience once their parents have passed from the scene. There are children of newspaper owners who have plunged the organisation into chaos through an intensification of feuding in the family.
The family, you see, is part of our lives today. Count the men and women in the Jatiyo Sangsad. You will come away a touch surprised, a dash shocked. Cousins mingle with one another, brothers sit close to each other. And so it goes on.
And it will, despite that prime ministerial admonition to ministers and ministers of state.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
E-mail: [email protected]