Is our perception of fear greater than the reality?

What do these contradictions mean? Is our perception of fear greater than the reality?

We did not use to worry about pollution in the Buriganga before, now we do. We did not use to worry about vanishing greenery in Dhaka, now we agonise about chopping down trees in Osmani Udyan. The media are continuously feeding us with more worries about the extinction of Bengal tigers, the deforestation of the mangrove forests, the civil rights of our aboriginals, and even the miseries and pain of superior court judges who got their careers shattered by political malice.

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It is hard keeping things in perspective when not a day goes by without some motivated faction telling us about a failing state and how better the Moguls, the British or the Pakistanis were at ruling us. It looks like any group that ruled before is now looking better than the succeeding ruler.

Are the intensifying rates of socio-political, cultural and economic transformation in the country and world enough to create escalating levels of anxiety in millions of Bangladeshis? Combining that with the abundance of unique pressure groups eager to prey on those fears, and a media hungry for thrills, is it any surprise we're upset?

In addition, each bit of news is over-hyped and oversold by the Bangladeshi media. I have trouble deciding what presents more danger to my family members in Dhaka -- being robbed at home, being hijacked on the street, stabbed at a Bus Terminal, injured in a road accident, or being fed adulterated halim, oily chicken breasts, half-cooked cheese burgers, contaminated carbonated drinks and fat-drenched french fries. If the burger shops and the outlaws do not get them then the earthquakes will, because we are in frantic need of seismic upgrading in the sub Himalayan region. If the earthquakes fail, then mobster mosquitoes will inject them with virulent pathogens.

If any of the above happens, I think we can relinquish any hope of getting cured in our current heath care system, as 70 percent of our doctors are always absent at work (God knows what they do at home all day), hospital premises are even dirtier than Kawran Bazar, our pathological laboratories are contracted out to provide misreadings, and the electricity always goes off as soon as the surgeon will open us up in the operation theatre.

Have you not also heard that our government is reducing health-care spending and downsizing the public education system and siphoning all the money to our olive-dressed, stone-faced protectors of sovereignty (from whom I have no idea, I wish they themselves had any clue)?

Don't you sweat worrying about what might happen to your children's future at school, given that so many reports suggest that two thirds of our students are failing to pass their higher secondary exams? Does not your heart miss beats when your daughter is approaching 18, and you come to know that your finance minister advises public university administrators to stop recruiting new teachers and learn how to charge higher tuition fees?

Hold on, you must stop worrying about how 300 million people will be accommodated in this tiny delta by 2050, as by then your country may be, submerged by the elevated sea level due to melted arctic ice. If enough ice does not melt by that time, India might turn us into a desert diverting all the inland water to its western front. So our country has an equal chance of turning into a reptile-filled swamp or a scorpion-filled desert, the worry is yours.

You must stop feeling as lucky as you thought you were after the godfathers of the past regime escaped two years back, as we have learned lately from our verbose opposition leader that there are now godmothers, godwives and godsons in the new regime. The present godfathers have indeed improved conviction in family values! If you hang on, you may soon meet some godgrandsons during the next regime.

Authenticity does not have a prospect when the promotion of apprehension is so overwhelming in our country. It is our media that promote the names of Sweden Aslam, Subrata Bain and Murgi Milon. Our youngsters know more about Kala Jahangirs (he is not any more a singular number as there is 1 original and 149 fakes, according to a recent DMP press release) than who is scoring the highest GPA in the MBA programme from IBA or who is standing first class first in Electrical Engineering from BUET.

We love to create excitement in our lives to make them interesting. Likewise, Bangladeshis are regularly encouraged to live in a state of inflated agitation. It is a sort of modern-day emotional mugging. The question is who is mugging whom?

Hasanat Alamgir taught Business Administration at North South University, Dhaka. He is now a doctoral student in British Columbia.