A land where promises were kept
How many times in your life do you stumble upon a story that encourages you? Boosts your spirit, makes you believe that there is still hope for us and a light at the end of the tunnel? For us the answer is not as often as you would want it to be. This is such a story though it talks about mundane things like the broken streets of Dhaka city and the sufferings of its regular citizens; but it has a nice ending because someone kept his promise.
Two days after we lost our honourable Mayor Annisul Haq, we were travelling with our colleagues to a factory where we are implementing a project for female workers in the RMG sector. We eventually started talking about our late mayor. Everyone was sad and saying good things about him, that he was a change-maker and how he has taken good initiatives. These were the generally nice comments that we made after we got the news of his death. But then one of my colleagues shared her personal experience with the late mayor.
This colleague of mine lives in Mirpur and a major road to her house was in extremely bad condition. She was telling us that pregnant women, while passing that road, would get down from the rickshaw and walk that part to avoid the risk of miscarriage—and it was like that for as long as she could remember. So one day in frustration, she wrote to Mayor Haq on his Facebook page explaining the sufferings of the regular people and requesting him to fix it. What she did not expect was that the mayor would reply by saying "it will be fixed after the rainy season." My colleague was really happy to hear that from the mayor. But time went by and nothing happened. After waiting a month or a two, with great despair she wrote back again to the mayor, reminding him of his promise. For two-three weeks there was no reply. As usual, my colleague thought, "ok another politician making empty promises, there is nothing new about that, we are used to it." But three weeks later, Annisul Huq replied to her saying, "budget allocation has been made and the road will be fixed within a month." To her greatest surprise, exactly within a month the road was fixed—he had kept his promise. My colleague was ecstatic, she could not believe that the plight of a regular citizen will be heard, will be taken seriously and acted upon. She wrote back to him with jubilation, thanking him for his service and for keeping his promise. The story doesn't end here, a few days later he replied again saying, "just give me some time, I will fix all the roads." It is a great misfortune for this nation that fate did not give him that time.
Solving the problems of Dhaka is a mammoth task. I wonder what would happen if we had asked Alladin's genie to do it using three wishes, he would probably quit. But our late mayor did not. We all know about his amazing initiatives like starting the Dhaka Chaka bus service in the Gulshan area, installing bins all over the city to keep it clean, clearing out the Tejgaon road and his various other plans for the future. He proved after a long time that he is a leader with a vision, not just another politician with empty words.
We did not know him. We grew up watching him on television and the ingenious ideas he would come up with to create amazing shows. When we first heard this story, it seemed to us that it needs to be shared not just to pay respect to our late mayor but to encourage others to follow his example and follow the path that he had created. He was an outsider to politics, but he dared to enter the labyrinth of our political domain—we believe, because he thought he could make a difference, and he did. He made us believe that you can still demand something from your politicians and expect it to be fulfilled. He lit a light in our hearts and we would sincerely like to believe that someone will step up to hold that candle, and not let that flame burn out.
Nadia Afrin Shams and Israt Biju are development workers.