In the face of evil syndicates …
THE CNG-driven auto-rickshaws are perhaps becoming still costlier for the hapless passengers. Their owners are pressing the government to agree to another bout of increase in the auto-rickshaw fares. The CNG-owners and drivers have their reasons to charge higher fares. But the users of the service (!) provided by these motorised, freewheeling three-wheelers do not enjoy any such privilege to get a better deal. They are, as it were, destined forever to be at the receiving end. They may flail about in despair, they may protest, curse and cry! It would be a cry in the wilderness. And at long last they will have to take it all lying down -- and literally so!
But it is not only the fares charged by the CNG-driven auto-rickshaws that are driving them mad. The rickshaws, the taxicabs and even the bus transport operators are also no exception. One experiences the power of the bus transports, especially those plying between the capital city and the districts, during the two major Muslim religious festivals. Whatever they decide, the travellers have to accept. That is because they always have the arguments in their favour! The government, too, more often than not has to listen to them.
The common people have to put up with the tyranny of the wheels, be those operated manually or by engine. Their logic passes for that of the market, which has deprived all categories of service users their rights. The power of the syndicate is everywhere -- on the road, in the kitchen market, in the lobbies of powers, you name it. Sad to say, such state of affairs is often termed the upshot of a free market economy. But is it really so?
Free of course the syndicates are to make free with their spoils. It is rather a kind of free syndicate-controlled market where the consumers have no choice. Here it is the not the buyers or consumers, who are spoilt for choice; quite to the contrary….
In the present case, too, the CNG-owners and drivers seeking to enhance their charge for service will have their way. For there is presumably no alternative in the government's hand. Moreover, the arsenal of arguments or excuses on the side of the purveyors (of the purported transport service) is too strong to be challenged! The public? Oh, those wretched ones, always in the habit of complaining and grumbling without having any inkling of the reality of the market!
Those in the seat of power appear to be helpless before the organised power of the various clans and the syndicates. All the interests groups have their own pressure groups. The traders have their organised bodies. The professionals of umpteen brands have their societies. The labourers of the industries have their unions. Even the porters at the bus, train, steamer and launch terminals have their powerful associations. It is by dint of this group power they dictate terms in the market and with the government. But the rest, the common people, on whose ability to pay hinges the existence of the various organised groups and quarters, have no body (for they are but nobody) to turn to.
What then about the power of the people that politicians and intellectuals alike are so fond of saying all the time? If the masses are the source of all power as they say, then why have they (the people) to suffer at the hands of the transport operators, market syndicates and even face the wrath of the armed goons of the powerful quarters?
Oddly though, the power and wisdom of the public become all too important at times when those in the seat of power want a change in the rule of the larger political game. In the election time only, the politicians recognise people's power. So they cajole, beseech the same, the almost forgotten amorphous mass of people for their support for another term in office. And once in office, the masses become a faceless nobody. Their existence, if at all, is to be found in the harangues of the demagogue, in the abstract prose of the academician, or in the sombre lectures of the intellectual. So the story of their day-to-day suffering on the roads, in the markets seems too abstract to be dealt with in a real life situation.
The general public, so long as they will remain a mere tool of the political game, their cries will remain unheard in the corridors of power. The power peddlers under various syndicates and groups hardly produce anything. They are but a bunch of middlemen, though they wield a lot of power, especially over the produces and services generated by others. And these others are but the real masses of the people. Unlike the middlemen, the professionals and the various interest groups, they have no organised forums to fight for their rights as customers at the marketplaces run by the whims and caprices of wholesalers and retailers and at the bus counters or street corners as users of transport service.
Should then the general public stomach all this tyranny of the forces manipulating the market silently and take it as something fated?
Since the administration, especially its executive organs, is inextricably linked to various power lobbies and interest groups, the public as producers and consumers will have to exercise their right to a fair deal through their own forums. Some consumer rights groups are already working for the public's cause. They have meanwhile pushed through a number of legal measures to protect consumers' interest. But the problem is, those can be useful only when the implementing authorities, which are again the executive organs of the government, are serious. The truth is, in Bangladesh context, to solve this most intractable issue through government intervention is still a pipe dream.
However, that does not also mean that the work of these various rights and consumer groups are not necessary. They, of course, are. But they have to be buttressed with the strength of the organised power of the consumers and the producers. Once the consumers of different goods and services begin to build their own associations, that would act as the countervailing force against the power of the interest groups and the vested quarters tinkering with the genuine market forces.
Syed Fattahul Alim is a senior journalist.
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