Tragic episodes denigrating values

The prices of essential consumer items have, it seems, little or no chance of going down. The spiraling of prices commenced with rice, wheat, edible oil and very soon it engulfed every item including vegetables and fish. Among onion, garlic, ginger etc the last item has been till now very gingerly, true to its herbal feature.

Many meetings were held with the businessmen to arrest the upward trend of prices of all the commodities. One commerce minister lost his job or rather, had to step down reportedly. His successor, having achieved hardly any success in his previous portfolio, has been busy with the business community to get the prices down. Between the period the versatile Finance Minister, expressing his natural sympathies with the rice cultivators, publicly opined that the price of rice could be higher to compensate the hard labour of the farmers in the field. He did even hint that the benefit of price hike was not reaching the actual producers. He stopped here, perhaps not to have any confrontation with the middle men, brokers etc. Nevertheless, his sympathetic opinion on the price of rice was enough to grant additional fillip to these middle men, hoarders etc for its being positive thrust upwards.

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In a couple of days later the honourable Prime Minister appeared equally sympathetic with the 'poor' farmers and repeated that it was a pity the farmers didn't get the prices of their hard labour. Here too, her sympathies didn't reach the farmers but it was intercepted by the middle men, again. The Prime Minister's public statement provided yet another upward thrust to the already insidiously erratic price index of the essential commodities. It is not to suggest that there was no realisation of the hurdles standing in the way to reach the benefits of the physical investments made by the farmers. The ultimate beneficiary of such genuine words of sympathies has been the notorious middle men.

Only very recently the Consumers' Association of Bangladesh (CAB) gave a statistical account of the hideous role being played by the aforestated middle men. On the face of the allegations about the mischiefs being perpetrated by these literal gangsters it is natural that they shall be condemned. Yet, some of their representatives would counter the allegations stating that the bandits like extortionists on the highways take away much of their anticipated profit margin from the merchandise they carry to Dhaka city from different parts of the country. So, if those hoodlums could be beaten back their price index would be less to benefit the general consumers. Even though the policy makers are aware of such intriguing interceptions on the highways and the water ways they are yet to evolve remedial and preventive measures to contain such devils.

From the consumers' point of view it is often argued on the other hand that the traders are in fact interested to enjoy the better of both the ends. They are exploiting the farmers at the grassroots level, share the initial booties under compelling circumstances, some times at gun point, with the extortionists having patronage of the so-called god father and crude politicians. And in order not to sustain loss in business they manipulate prices at their sweet will. On imported items they take the advantage of recess in duty but they do never fulfil the expectation of the government or of the consumers at large. They have many pretexts to put up but wouldn't say anything about the deliberate hoarding of the imported goods. Sugar can be cited as an example, so also edible oil.

Against such stark realities the government will have to moot out some effective measures to solve the problem once for all. All such measures will have to be for the greater interest of the general consumers where the tiers of middle men will have to be reduced to a minimum. In this some stringent control mechanism will also have to be worked out and implemented. It must be realised by the policy makers that sitting in meetings with the representatives of the traders have been proved to be pitiably infractuous. So, in its place direct, methodical intervention of the government will have to come immediately.

Now, lets have a look at some other episodes occurring in the national scenario over the past months. The massive arms haul in Chittagong kept the administration literally at buy for quite some time. Prior to it the haul of arms at Kuril had been considered as the mischief of the political opponents of the government. Sooner upon investigation it was proved otherwise. Likewise, big haul of arms and ammunitions in the port city was considered to have been a vicious play of the main opposition party to unseat the present government through armed insurrection. Such wishful allegation was also eventually found baseline. The CID has recently submitted its chargesheet against 39 persons apparently having no political connections. More particularly the initial observations of some of the high ups have not been corroborated at this stage which could implicate Awami League.

The brutal murder of Ahsanullah Master, MP, Tongi-Gazipur came on the heels. Some of the over-enthusiastic party men dismissed the assassination of such a popular personality like Ahsanullah Master as a mere sequel to internal rift of Awami League. Here too, the CID was about to tell an altogether different story. Someone having linkage with the party in power was reportedly the mastermind behind the hideous act of brutality. The process of investigation was slowed down after the investing officer -- a superintendent of police and known as a brilliant officer of the department -- was withdrawn on some mysterious grounds and put behind bars at the personal initiative of the State Minister of Home Affairs. Mr M A Beaten, SP is now awaiting his turn to fight out his case in the court of law and till then he languishes behind the bar in utter uncertainty. The investigation of the killing of Ahsanullah Master, some newspaper report suggests, has been consigned to 'deep freeze'. The actual culprits are yet to be arrested and brought under legal proceedings.

Further addition to aforestated abhorring incidents has been the tragedy at Sakharibazar in Old Dhaka. About two dozens human being were buried alive under the debris of a heavily dilapidated building collapsing past mid-night when all were asleep. Most of the buildings at Sakharibazar and adjacent areas are totally unfit for human habitation. They are to be demolished in no time and the inhabitants there will have to be suitably rehabilitated at the initiative of the government or of Dhaka City Corporation. This must be done on topmost priority basis before another disaster of even a bigger magnitude befalls on the hapless people there. Hopefully, the efforts on the part of the government shall not be abortive or end half way leaving the crisis unresolved.

Kazi Alauddin Ahmed is an industrial consultant.