Three cheers for Kansat

The occasions for such hurrahs are indeed few and far between in this country. But Kansat was truly something worthy of note in our politics -- against the backdrop of a despondency syndrome that persisted for long, ever if the episode had been totally apolitical.

The oppressed people of a somnolent Kansat, subjected to a syndicated skullduggery of the REB (Rural Electrification Board) could, through a heroic struggle, put an end to their exploitation and uphold their rights.

The posse led by party cadres and employed by the establishment to quell the peasants' uprising had to be finally on the retreat, signaling victory for the people's power.

The whole drama was reminiscent of 1971, both in term of excesses and cruelty meted out to the hapless villagers and the resistance they offered with an unbelievable spontaneity and tenacity. Indeed, a new history was created at Kansat, but at the cost of the lives of at least twenty villagers who fell victim to police atrocity.

Why did the establishment behave in the manner it did in Kansat? This is how the powerful behave whenever their moral authority atrophies. Then they face their challengers only with the crude physical power endowed by the state, but to no avail. Because the state-endowed power lacking moral content rings absolutely hollow.

In Kansat, the government's calculations went hay-wire and even with adequate reinforcements the revolting villagers could not be browbeaten. Finally, they held their moral high ground.

In the meantime, many more Kansats have brewed up across the country demanding affordable prices of the essentials as well as the supply of water, power, and fertiliser. The establishment's apparent response is to brand them trouble-makers bent upon sabotaging the country's developmental surge.

The authorities seem to have gone berserk and been seized with a paranoia of spotting development and its saboteurs everywhere. The fact of the matter this that the claimants of such a "developmental surge" cannot meets the farmers' basic needs and ensure its citizenry a society free of hardships.

The country's elite, which subsumes in it the politicians, burgeoning business entrepreneurs, and even the members of civil society, a well established segment of the society, have apparently joined hand with the establishment in one way or other with their fingers already stuck in an ever-shrinking national pie.

As a result, the people's power is now poised to determine the future course of the country's politics under a new breed of leaders who are now in the making in the obscure hamlets where problems brew up and new dynamics of our politics grow. In that sense, Kansat is both a turning point and pioneer of sorts.

It is high time that our crass politicians changed and adapted to a new outlook now shaping the world with a pro-people stance. The World Social Forum first held on the Brazilian city of Porto Allegro in 2001 and quickly followed up elsewhere as a counter to World Economic Forum (where the world's business and political elites assemble to plan further pillage of the world) is a pointer.

The world has moved far beyond the antiquities pursued by the politicians in our country. Henceforth, the world may not be able to sustain its neo-liberal stranglehold fostering the elite's corporate pillage in individual countries. The trend is bound to impact domestic politics in the vast swathe of Latin America and Asia.

We have indeed, traversed a significant distance since the world -- albeit the Western world -- proclaimed only fifteen years or so ago the "end of history" and the "triumph of capitalist democracy." Even our Khaleda-Hasina will not be able to sustain the old familiar mould of politics.

When the conflicts become inevitable in the society and polity and the battle-lines are drawn, it is immoral to sit on the fence and not to take sides. While taking sides, one has, however, to go the whole hog in embracing the challenges it entails.

Golam Rabbani of Kansat did that which entitles him to be a role-model of sorts. The time has come to cast aside an inconsequential pattern of leadership confined only to speech making and issuing statements.

Instead, it is the time for mobilization -- mobilization of the country's poor -- the marginalized peasants, slum dwellers, pavement squatters and destitutes swarming around our flashy cars. From now onward they ought to be the staple of politics in this country.

A small but powerful syndicate, capable of manipulating the country's politics, always calls the shots. To effect a qualitative change in the pattern, we must be able to break their strangle hold. Kansat could do that. Long live Kansat and its intrepid heroes!

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.