Ground Realities
Who said anything about Shaista Khan?
FINANCE Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam appears to be quite irritated about our worries. We, the people, have been getting into ever deeper tunnels of gloom where managing a decent living for our spouses, children and siblings is concerned. And we have found ourselves in that precarious position because of all the food that we cannot afford to buy any more, because of everything that is fast becoming memory owing to all those happy traders sinking their avaricious hands into our pockets and taking away all we have.
It is prices we struggle against, for these prices have pushed us all into a corner. You cannot be certain that the high cost you pay for your rice today will not go even higher tomorrow. And you pray that some miracle will happen, that the Lord of the Universe will in the infinity of His wisdom cause these traders to pursue their business of selling and buying with the human face morality expects them to wear.
But miracles are hard to come by any more. We understand that, for life is never a wish list. But what we do not comprehend is why government must treat us badly, why it should begin telling itself that citizens do not have to be consulted on matters that affect their welfare. Take the matter of the recent increase in the prices of fuel. When the budget was presented before the nation, the fear was that it would include a new tranche of fuel price rises. That did not happen and we were all happy. But then came the shock. The authorities, in a manner that can only be described as brazen and less than gentlemanly, informed us on an unsuspecting evening that, come next morning, we would have to cough up more wads of currency notes if we meant to keep our vehicles going. That was hitting below the belt. Or it was catching a sleeping citizen unawares.
You do not expect government, any government, to shine a light in your eyes and terrify you with the glare. You are not deer on the highway. And government ought not to spot lesser beings in the form and shape of citizens. But that is what has been happening over the last three years, and especially in the last eighteen months. Our advisers tell us, in manner that borders on hauteur, that it does not matter whether or not some parties take part in election-related dialogue with the government. Oh yes, it does. And any administration that decides that ignoring politicians, or undermining them, is normal activity and will be taken lying down is simply tripping over itself.
And then, do not forget, there is the very serious question of public sensitivities, those that a government can ignore at grave peril to its reputation. The finance adviser tells us that it will be unrealistic to expect a fall in the prices of food. If that is the way a government thinks, if that is how worried citizens are to be given short shrift, we need to raise a new question about those who presume to govern us: since when have etiquette and caring gone missing in the public pronouncements of our government functionaries? As far as we can recall, the finance adviser has not in the past admonished traders about their wicked deeds, and has never told them that increasing prices is unrealistic and immoral. Are we now to suppose that it is far easier berating citizens over their legitimate worries than handling a bunch of traders in whom conscience has simply gone comatose?
Mirza Azizul Islam reminds us that we do not inhabit the times of Shaista Khan. We never said we did. In this summer of our discontent, in this season of marketplace nightmares, lessons in history have been far from our thoughts. The finance adviser ought to have focused on these ground realities. He and the government he is part of would have done us all a huge favour if they had focused less on the fact of global price rises and more on the diminishing purchasing power of the citizens of this impoverished country.
The food outlets opened a few months ago by the Bangladesh Rifles do not operate any more. Which leaves the poor in a situation where the hope they once entertained about coming by relatively cheaper rice simply vanishes into thin air. The government says not a word about this sudden disconnect in the lives of those struggling for bare survival. People in authority would have us know that they do not expect the fuel price rises to fuel an enhancement in the prices of other commodities. What do they take us for? It is a matter of simple economics here.
The truck driver bringing vegetables all the way from Narsingdi to Dhaka will charge more for his ride in the night. That man at the wayside tea stall will buy kerosene at higher prices. Why should we then expect him to serve us tea at the old price? That one sudden step by government can lead to a chain of events, to ramifications of a most terrible kind, has been proved by the rise in bus fares. The poor commuter howls in distress. The equally poor ticket man shrugs in manifest despair. How much of that pain reaches the corridors of power is a question you can go on asking until the end of time. Power shields those who have it from contact with reality.
Mirza Azizul Islam now tells us his Shaista Khan comments were quoted out of context. But we all heard him, did we not? We know what he said; and we know too that the media did nothing to present the adviser in bad light. All that we expect is for men and women responsible for steering the country to newer pastures (we will not speak of shores here, for that would be asking for a little too much at this point) is that they respect those already suffering.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments