Do I Dare!
Changing Mindset and Creating Common Wisdom
It happened in 1989. I was not in the country then. My younger colleague Dr. Ainun Nishat related the story to me. President of the country has called a meeting. Politicians, professionals, local leaders, journalists, bureaucrats and technocrats were invited, albeit selectively. Dr. Ainun Nishat a young professional of BUET, specialising in hydrology and water-resources, was also there. The subject, how to cope with periodic national disaster. The immediate context, the floods of 1988.
President gave his usual opening statement - upbeat and I am afraid a little self-aggrandizing. Then he opened up the subject for fair and free exchange from the floor.
Late Mr. Pratapuddin Sarker, a transport labour leader stood up. After the normal courtesies, he asked the President a few unnerving questions. "Mr. President," he said, "I have seen on the television screen that you are distributing sarees and lungis to distressed women and men in the affected area. But why sarees and lungis?"
The President was taken aback. "Why not?" he asked. "Those unfortunate people do need some minimum clothing".
Late Mr. Sarker said, "Yes Sir, that is very true. But the flood has not swept away the only clothes they had, if any. They had no decent saree or lungi before the floods. They do not have it now. They will not have it tomorrow unless they have employment and income-earning opportunities to procure their minimum needs of food and clothing. Without providing for the same, when you dole out such gifts to the fortunate few, aren't you ridiculing their poverty? Aren't you denying their entitlement in the name of charity?"
There was pin-drop silence. The President fumbled a bit but had no answer.
The second question was yet more blunt. "Mr. President," said Mr. Pratapuddin, "at the height of the flood, there was an announcement in my area that the Hon'ble minister would come to the local hat to distribute relief materials. Large number of listless people gathered. Local enthusiasts were busy making the list of the eligible. I was also there. The Hon'ble minister came two hours after the scheduled time and he went away. No relief was distributed. Why?" The questioner volunteered the answer himself. "Because the television camera was not there". Why should a minister dirty his hands by giving away little bags of goodies to miserable people when there is not public display of such noble gestures for the privileged people to watch in the comfort of their homes"?
A related question. "Every evening when I watch the television, I see important pillars of the society doling out rice and bread, even hilsha fish to women and men who have no hearth and home. But I have never seen the struggle of the farm women and men-old, young and adolescent - depicted on the TV screen. They have lived with floods, fought against the elements and will continue to rebuild their sub-human lives when the water recedes. Their resilience and their solidarity - aren't those the bases of our pride in human nobility and human compassion?"
Continuing he said, "What does such mindset of our leadership and their obedient disciples in electronic media reflect? It reflects the colonial mentality. Well here we are, the kings and the potentates. We dole out little charities to our subjects when they are starving and in misery. We open up gruel kitchens, so that they can scramble for some food, almost like throwing out chewed bones to street dogs".
Late Mr. Sarker gave another example of this gruel-kitchen mentality. "When the '88 flood was at its height, you Mr. President eloquently invited the distressed to go the gruel kitchen in the nearest relief-centre for food. But how can one who is surrounded by water on all sides and has no way to cross the turbulence, go to the centres in convenient locations where ministers and leaders can go by car or speed boat?
In that context, I recall a case study done by Dr. Zafrullah and a few young people. A lower middle-class family was residing on the second storey of a house in the outskirts of Savar. The windows were grilled and there were no stairs to go up to the roof. When the water-level was still low enough for the man in the house to go out by the main door in a boat, he went to buy some food and other essentials. By the time he came back water had submerged the door and came up to the second floor. It was nearly impossible to break open the grill. Anyway, the people from far and near, particularly the young ones rescued the family. This story of the young peoples' social responsibility, of helping each other, of a communal ethos that cares and shares never attracted the attention of camera persons and reporters of TV or the radio.
Furthermore, those who are struggling to survive with the meager income of a lower middle class family still have clothes on their back. How can they be subjects of sensational news or a sophisticated documentary? News must focus on the royalties and their splendor, the poorest of the poor and their deprivation.
Now that the wind of democracy is breezing through in soft murmur, will not this slavish mentality change?
Change, there has been. After the 1998 flood we have seen the inspiring endeavours of students, of different NGOs, of business people and local activists depicted on the TV screen along with hilsha fish being distributed by compassionate national figures. But even there the tradition of the aristocrats and the lower class - the Ashraf and the Atraf continues.
Allow me to relate an incident narrated to me by my friend Mr. Faruque Chowdhury of BRAC. It happened in a relief-centre of BRAC. An old woman came one afternoon. Her saree was dusty with the faded colour of Shalik Pakhi. Barefoot as she was she was carrying a small bundle of puffed rice with great care. She came not to beg, but to give. All that she said was, "My sons, I have brought this little amount. Will you give to some one who is more famished than me?"
This motherhood of humanity is, I believe, our heritage. The pride of being a Bengalee is in what the old mother taught us. Undaunted by adverse elements and man's inhumanity to man, a proud Bengalee stands above petty self-interest and joins with her/his fellow beings in a glorious intersubjectivity of human relatedness.
The story that I just related reminds me of a video-documentary made by Tarek and Catharine Masud. In a turbulent water-body a bare-bodied helmsman steers the boat. The boyati (folk singer) is singing a song - jarigan - about life with nature, with rivers plants and the fragrance of alluvium soil. Young boys and girls and their parents are wading the water sometimes swimming, with food in earthen jars, and drinking water in pitchers held high above their heads. A young boy is spreading the net for fish. In the homestead land, men are busy fixing up the bamboo pillars for holding up the roof over their heads. Some women are working in the yard for growing vegetables. This to me is the song of life, the song of freedom.
New dawn has given us courage
Flags of hope are fluttering in the wind
In our veins the lighted streaks of red sun
Dark night will disappear.
We go forward, we go forward,
We shall never stop - never!
But now the unfortunate epilogue. BTV never agreed to film this documentary of ordinary people - their courage and their resilience.
Another recent example of the colonial mindset. I am sharing it with my readers in the hope that our leaders are informed about what a few of their underlings in the administrative machinery considers as showing reverence to the authority.
First, I must admire in unequivocal language, the handling of the recent long-standing floods by the government and all segments of civil society together. An elaborate and excellent monitoring mechanism was set up at the behest and personal supervision of the highest leadership. One morning, the BBC correspondent wanted to prepare a television reportage on the mass of information charted on a daily basis in the operation room. She had to send the cassette by the British Airways flight that evening. When she arrived there, the whole room was in disarray. All the charts, graphs and maps had been taken down from the walls and stored in a heap somewhere. The wall was being distempered, the floor and the room, spruced up. Why? Because the head of the government would come for an inspection visit. So the BBC correspondent came away disheartened. She could never send the cassette to BBC in London.
The moral of the story is obvious. Politics in Bengali is 'Rajnity'. In this version, there is the nuance of the king and his/her subjects, the land-lord and tenants, the master and the servant. This nuance, unfortunately, is sometimes reflected in our governance, particularly at the level of the functionaries. I therefore, feel that instead of Rajnity, we should call it Loknity. In a truly democratic governance, that is the appropriate parlance.
In the end, a different issue related to the floods. Ours is a land of flood-plains. One-third of it is generally inundated including the wetlands. Farmers, through generational experimentation have evolved deep-water rice or flood-recession rice varieties for those areas. Unfortunately, our scientists have not given much attention to that in their quest of high-yielding varieties. During high floods another 18-20 per cent of the protected land are breached. The loss is enormous as those are the high potential areas. But when we present our figures of loss to our partners in development, we provide an average of the entire 50 per cent of the land. Naturally our credibility is questioned.
Historical truth about inundated flood-plains and flooded lands are well known to our experts. The window for flash-floods in wetland area is normally April and May. High floods that visit us periodically happen between July and August, as happened in 1954, 1974, 1987, 1988 and 1998. The question is preparedness for both. We have lived with inundation and flood and we will continue to do so in future. Various measures like dredging of the rivers, rehabilitation of water-sheds etc., are necessary to mitigate disastrous loss. In that context, our main strength comes from our farmer-researchers and farmer experimenters. Is it not possible for our frontier science to coalesce with local knowledge and create common wisdom?
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