Eid in the time of monga

Understandably, the Eid festivities remained out of reach for the monga-hit people of the vast swathe of northern districts. Even in the rest of the country, Eid was an exclusive affair for the affluent few, and shorn of its universality. The economic inequality has never been wider in the country and seldom exhibited so nakedly.

As the poor, the deprived, and the underprivileged, already lashed by the unaffordable prices of essentials, went through the agony of hunger, even during the day of Eid (as widely reported in the news media), particularly in monga-hit areas, the privileged few gave way to reckless consumerism, ostentation, and wastage.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Ironically, it all began with the month of holy Ramadan. Supposed to be the month for restraint to acquire the higher values of life, the fasting was awkwardly accompanied by feasting in the name of Iftar which was celebrated more like a neo socio-cultural event. Our clerics participating in them, although they preach the virtue of austerity and restraint from their pulpits in the mosques.

Ramadan fasting and hunger were at times indistinguishable for the monga-hit people. But the perpetuity of monga could hardly be broken by Eid, because this hunger and poverty and the tribulations that go with them are permanent features of their life -- thanks to the kind of politics pushed in this country.

Haven't you seen the glittering shopping malls stacked with designer brand and lehengas with fantastic price tag? Who can consume them in a country where fifty per cent of the population live under the poverty line? So there has to be arrangements of piling up money in a few hands through patronization, political favour or largesse, and even sheer graft -- suitably covered with legality of sorts -- so that the designer brand lehengas worth over one lakh taka can be disposed off. What a cruel joke in a country where our mothers and sisters are, more after than not, seen in rags!

Bangladesh has long since been up for grabs. It seems it has already been grabbed by a caucus comprising pseudo-politicians, the top brass of bureaucracy, and freshly emerged class of industrialists and businessmen, who make up the country's de facto ruling elite, of course, with the blessings of international financial institutions. We are in one way or other subsumed in it. With a little ingenuity, conformist disposition, and right connections, you can always stake a share in the ever-shrinking pie. "The more the merrier" is the maxim encouraged by our rulers while the donors also are after creating more and more brown sahibs from among us. It is through them that they wish to promote their agenda.

It is difficult to break the stranglehold. The predators have already unleashed the brute force of avarice, exhibitionism, arrogance, wastage, and consumption -- Oriented hedonism. We seem to have been swept away by these forces after having lost our moorings and with no recovery in sight.

In the meantime, the Pied Pipers of Bangladesh politics easily win over the voters at election time with their mesmerizing tunes and syrupy promises. Once catapulted to power, they give a damn to the ordinary folk and abandon them. They are left in the lurch for their folly and forced to endure the mediocrity of the former's governance. The politicians bare their fangs menacingly when in power, and treat their benefactors, supporters, and the members of the electorate as a bunch of morons without any qualms.

There is no way of coming out of the cycle in the merry-go-round kind of politics of this country. Everybody takes his turn and stands a chance in this game of musical chairs. Some resort to election engineering -- a terminology we now come across. There is also something called social engineering to restructure the society to make it workable. Has our respectable civil society thought of it?

It must be realized that ours is a society which is only good enough for routine and not for a festival of Eid. How can there be a festival in a country of the dirt poor, the squalid squatter, the slum dweller and the destitute, living literally on scraps, without being accounted for and with no defined occupation.

Purposeless poverty alleviation exercises conducted in cozy meeting rooms by the "experts" on the subject might have brought accolades to themselves but no succor to the poverty-stricken. Poverty alleviation is more a matter of arithmetic, a package of actions to be carried forward as a strategy for nation-building which encompasses the granting of space in the society for the millions now unaccounted for.

Only then can an Eid festival based on its universality perhaps be considered. It is a long haul, and whether or when any political dispensation of this country will undertake that task is, of course, another debate.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.