Wrong side driving is wrong, even for ministers

The founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, has said that both men are wise when one says something and the other listens. This saying fell on deaf ears when the road transport minister announced actions against ministers, MPs and VIPs driving on the wrong side of the road, and the LGRD minister readily rejected it. The former minister claimed that the wrong-side driving of important persons was one of the main reasons behind traffic jams. The latter argued that ministers sometimes have to breach the rules and take the wrong lanes for security reasons. Waheguru, wise men in this country are seldom in agreement. 

It has been a struggle to understand where some of our politicians get their ideas. The LGRD minister surely didn't think before he spoke, because our ministers aren't the only ministers in this world. There are ministers in other countries and, I am sure, they also have their security concerns. But nowhere in the civilised world are ministers ask for the carte blanche to drive on the wrong side of their roads.

It's hard to fathom why the LGRD minister said what he did. Every minister is given police protection and his security men are there to take appropriate decisions. If the minister's convoy encounters an impediment, it will be for the policemen escorting him to decide how that should be negotiated. If the minister's car has to speed up or run in the wrong direction during an incident, I don't think anybody is going to be a stickler for rules. Besides, the security men will be there to explain why they took exceptions.

Hence, it would have been right if the security agencies had given their observations on the road transport minister's decision. Since these people have to handle security of the heavyweights, they have the right to ask for certain privileges or dispensations. Only God knows why the LGRD minister got involved and wasted his precious breath!

We definitely want our ministers to be safe, but we expect them to think about our safety as well. If ministers use wrong lanes as shortcuts to go somewhere, it has to be because they failed to plan ahead. They already have an advance car, police siren and eager-to-serve on-duty traffic policemen to clear the way for their motorcades. Asking for more privileges is as unreasonable as looking for two yolks in every egg.

At times a minister's motorcade has to slowdown in Dhaka's traffic like fingers moving through sticky rice. It happens at certain chokepoints of the city, which is a fact of life as much as the pollution in the air, the stench from the gutters, and the garbage strewn everywhere. The ministers, MPs and VIPs have the choice to take detours to avoid checkpoints, or their assistants may ask event organisers for more time. 

But where does the security issue come here? True, MPs and VIPs don't always get police protection while they are traveling on the roads. Yet in a congested city like Dhaka, who is safe in the event of a serious untoward incident? Using the wrong lane of a road might facilitate escape from the ground zero, and, if needed, that's going to happen anyway. Who is going to harp on traffic laws when saving life is more important?

Is that why our ministers, MPs and VIPs drive on the wrong lanes though? The answer is no. They take the wrong side of a road because they have to rush before anybody else and they don't have the time or patience to suffer delays. Above all, it's the audacity of power that screams through a procession of vehicles rudely going against the flow.

In the short story The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, Sherlock Holmes deduces a man's intelligence from the size of his hat because, he believes, a man with a large brain must have something in it. He calls it the cubic capacity, which for some people resides not in their hats but houses, cars, bank balances, and high-power positions. These people don't mind breaking a few eggs when it comes to making an omelet.

The more important amongst us don't understand that openly flaunting cubic capacities in any form creates public scorn. It's more so when hundreds of people indignantly watch that somebody is thumbing the law in the nose and riding past them. It shocks them as a disgusting road show, demonstrating abuse of power in its most flagrantly abusive form.

Just as an aside, the road transport minister last Monday took responsibility for those killed in road accidents during the Eid holidays. If you ask what he has done to show that responsibility, this wise man too sounds hollow like a firearm firing blanks.

The writer is Editor of the weekly First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. 

Email: badrul151@yahoo.com.