The Independent
November, 2012
M.
Serajul Islam
When
I open my morning news paper, as part of a very old habbit, I can’t help being
disappointment. Often I see half and sometimes more than half of the front page
of the paper I read given to advertisements! The more well circulated the
newspaper, the more is the inclination towards using as much as possible of the
first page for ads. I have lived a good
part of my life as a diplomat that was spread over 30 years, overseas. Both by
habit and professional requirements, I had to read as many newspapers as I
could lay my hands on. I have not seen anything like this anywhere in the
capitals where I have lived and worked.
It
is not that the newspapers in other world capitals have no need of
advertisements or that there is no demand for space in the papers there for
advertisements by the business communities of the countries concerned. In fact,
these countries are much more advanced and hence the business much more vast. So
is the latter’s need for paid publicity or advertisement. Yet they rarely use
their front pages the way our newspapers do. The reason for this strange
difference in the front page of our newspapers and those in other capitals is
of course the urge for making money. Our newspapers have an extremely high rate
when an ad is carried in the front page. Hence, they allow such an unusually
high proportion of their front page to make money. Newspapers abroad do not do
so because they do not think it as decent.
Our
independence has not just established us as a sovereign country; it has also
given us the freedom of expanding ourselves as a nation on all aspects of our
lives. We have expanded in many ways and the signs are visible for all of us to
see. Yet today, talk to the vast majority of the people; they will tell you
that their lives have become more complicated and problem ridden. However, for
a small section of our people, independence has been a boom for they have been
able to acquire riches and pleasures of live that they could not have dreamt
when the country was not free. The life style of this small section of our
people would be the envy of rich people abroad in the way they enjoy their
riches.
In
contrast, those who are directly involved with building the society and the
country, the civil and public servants, have a different life style for whom
independence has come with a heavy price. Take for instance the case of the
civil servants. In the Pakistani days, they were in the centre of development
of the country. A civil servant was a respected member of the society. His
respect was backed by the government paying him a salary and providing him with
other perks that allowed him to maintain a decent standard of living; most
importantly to discourage him from corruption. Only greedy civil servants were
corrupt those days.
Today,
the honest civil servant has lost his/her respect while the salary and perks
he/she receives are so low compared to the price line in the market that
honesty comes with almost starvation. Unfortunately for the country but
fortunately for the civil servants, the law of nature has worked where the
government has been oblivious to the needs of the civil servants. Many of them
have liberally used their power and position to make the shortfall in their
needs that the government should have provided. In fact, those among the civil
servants in powerful offices have used their power to compete successfully with
the rich but for a price. They have sold their morality as the price and
society has been the worse off as a consequence.
The
same is the case with public servants, the elected officials, like the
Ministers, Members of Parliament, etc. In the Pakistan era, getting elected to
public offices was not a costly affair as it is today. Therefore, when an
elected official became a Minister or a MP or was elected to the other elected offices;
he did not have the compulsion to make through his office, the crores of Taka
that he has now to spend for his nomination and then for his election.. Therefore like with the civil
servants, the public servants also have fallen into the same predicament; they
have been compelled to use their offices to make money by corrupt means. The
recent report of TIB on the parliamentarians thus should not have raised any
eyebrows. If you allow a pond full of fitly water, you create the conditions
for mosquitoes to breed for natural reasons.
Thus
in Bangladesh, the sectors in which people work to build the nation have been
placed in a position where the temptations of corruption are great and often insurmountable,
conditions created not by these individuals themselves but by the type of
country we have built upon our liberation. Those who do fall to the temptations
of corruption are in a predicament from where they can hardly contribute
positively to nation building. Corrupt people do not build a healthy nation.
Those who are not part of this endemic corruption are in no position either to
help themselves or the nation. This is why we are engaged in the process of
destroying institution that we have inherited in 1971, institutions that were
perfectly poised for nation building waiting only for political direction in
which we have failed so far.
As
a consequence, we are today still looking to become a middle income country
where the head start we got by becoming independent in 1971 should have already
made us one and taken us beyond. Instead we are hovering in the realm of
countries close to failing. This is why we see things happening in Bangladesh that are
peculiar to us only, like the newspapers devoting almost all of their front
page to advertisement in a naked expression of commercialism where the Prime
Minister has to compete with an ad model and lose in terms of space allotted.
This is why we have in Dhaka so many newspapers that no one really knows how
many. This is why we have 25 odd (or it is 35?) TV channels in Dhaka with many
more applications for more TV channels; TV stations whose main national duty is
news/talk shows and propagating their own credentials. Talk show guests and
hosts are claiming they are an alternative to the parliament and the Prime
Minister by her attack on them seems to be agreeing!
These
are all symptoms of a society in poor health. Of late, when we are watching
thousands of crores being defrauded out of the nationalized banks, the Finance Minister
and the Bangladesh Bank Governor are exchanging blames without either showing
the sense to realize that they need to take joint responsibility because they
are responsible for the banking sector and answerable to the public. These
symptoms of ill health notwithstanding, it is the private sector that has
somehow managed to remain out of the grip of bad governance in the country and
the 7 million expatriates most of whom
have gone abroad despite the government that are keeping Bangladesh
floating and even showing glimpses of succeeding. Unfortunately even in the
private sector where the RMG sector is dominant, we see serious problems in the
context of low wages paid to the garment workers whose sweat earns these RMG
owners earn their huge profits. As for the expatriates, their saga of
misfortunes, despite their contributions to the economy, is one of the major
untold stories of Bangladesh.
The
writer is a retired career Ambassador
and Secretary to the Government
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