Help! This is a Dhakabashi talking!

In Calcutta or Bombay or Islamabad, the feel is of a vibration that is to be found in cities where gold has been discovered. Gleaming buildings, green parks, and large islands, flyovers direct traffic with order that resemble the locomotion of the cities themselves, not quite there yet but soon to reach destination. People do not have the time to look at one another as they commute in buses and other vehicles in relative discipline. There is laughter to be heard, and older people glance at younger people to gauge the changing faces and trends of the young and the upwardly mobile, the feeling is of welcome wave to the coming times, people happy with the assured security of life and even more prosperity to come. The later two cities, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, give you a vision of where the former three cities would want to go. Compact roads and managed traffic, beautiful green spaces dotted with flowerbeds, traffic police and lawmen on display keeping the order and discipline as well fed and comfortable citizens walk or rush by in new branded cars to schools and office places. There is widespread prosperity and riches on display. The economy is strong and the basics, living and breathing in peace, having been met.

It is 11 a.m. in Dhaka, and the day had not even begun when a certain someone says: "The Eastern Bypass was supposedly stopped for lack of funds and inertia and gridlock or plain apathy and of course corruption had to have played a part." The furtive verbal challenge belongs to someone I would like to call a Dhakabashi. Listening to this outburst was like listening to the collective sigh of all the Dhakabashis, the sucking sound of their collective breath of intake before letting the sigh go, like the screaming of a man in a deathbed, asking why there is no hope left. Is it possible that my reaction is a little on the dramatic side. I do not know the answer to that, and of course the answer could lie with others who read this, but please allow me to say that, living with danger, plainly willful and borne out of neglect and not of some unjust but plainly obvious catastrophy, is leaving a big psychological imprint on the faces of people who live in this city.

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Dhakabashi who do not know other cities, are plain and simple but smart and observant. The access to television has given the urban a clear idea of what is going on in many other cities. This is not only in Dhaka. Talk to your driver or the man who is driving your cab. You will probably hear a man speaking from the experience of living in a Middle Eastern country. Watch outdoor interview programmes of Bangla satellite channels and you would probably share my own surprise at the tremendous insight people have about politics, good governance, and the apparent lack of it. No doubt that the people are getting smarter. They are able to distinguish the lie from the truth.

Look at the people passing by you in rickshaws and cars or buses or just walking. There is always someone staring at you. We are a nation of people with the habit of staring at people passing by. I have often asked myself the reason behind this. The answer is borne out of my own read of the psychology of a Dhakabashi. We are in collective sigh, we stare at each other because we want to see how the other person is looking today, to see if the other person looks better than his or her own beleaguered self. We also want to reach out and talk to each other because we are a friendly people. Just to share the frustration that has set on at the very start of the day. Is there any reprieve from the myopia, neglect and degradation? The answer of the person passing you would most likely be in the negative. That may well be unfair because things will improve, but that just tells you how far the morale of the people has come down to.

Things will change because there is consensus for the need for change. But we need a catalytic change and that change is a change of work ethic in the private sector that resembles the work ethic of the private sector of other cities in Asia. That change will also will come automatically. Progress will come. There is just one precondition, the law and order situation needs to improve. Honourable Finance Minister: Sir, please make law and order a finance issue and include it in your next budget.

Ershad Khandker is a freelance writer.