A public hartal on formalin
treated fish/fruits
M. Serajul Islam
When
I was growing up, I used to accompany my father sometimes to the fish market in
New Market in Dhaka. That was in the
1950s and 1960s. I hated going there because of the smell and the flies. The
unhygienic conditions of the market and the fact that a lot of the fish sold
there those days were decaying brought the flies to the Fish Market like pins
to the magnet. Those flies started to desert the fish market not just in New
Market in Dhaka but also in all the fish markets in the country at first slowly
and before the people realized why, totally. The fish markets became spic and
span like someone had waved a magic wand.
There
was however no magic in what happened in the fish markets. There was no drive
by the authorities to make the markets clean so that the flies would go away.
In fact, the traders were as merrily selling decaying fish as they were in the
days when my father used to go to the fish market in New Market; only the
Market has now become more crowded and bigger with many times more fish sold than
when my father’s days. Therefore something strange was happening in the fish
market. But neither the authorities nor the buyers were concerned why the flies
had suddenly left the fish markets of the country because the traders had found
the way to keep them out, keep their fish looking fresh and not decaying and
fooling the buyers.
The
magic later started to visit the people in their homes. The fruits that they
were buying were not decaying for long period of time. Bananas that had to be
eaten as quickly as they were brought home could lie on the table for days with
little signs of softening or decaying. Other fruits, many imported from abroad
like the apples and the grapes were likewise remaining fresh for unusual period
of time, like Nature had forgotten to act upon them. They were not decaying
even when they were left uneaten in the open for a long time. The fish and the
fruits in Bangladesh seemed like they had found the way to fight Nature!
Then
the magic was revealed. It was not black magic or that Nature had suddenly lost
its power. It was formalin doing the trick. Pure and simple formalin that is
used to keep the dead bodies from decaying so that their burial could be delayed
so that their close relatives could come
from a distance and see them for one
last time before they were buried or cremated. Used in fish and fruits, the
traders could sell their perishable products without any wasted by Nature.
Formalin
is of course poison. It sends people to their death as surely as they keep dead
bodies fresh for a while. Consuming fish/fruits treated with formalin is a slow
process of death by poisoning. The dishonest traders who are involved in using
formalin are therefore as guilty as those who commit murders in cold blood. In
fact, these dishonest traders are worse than those who come before the law
accused of killing at the heat of the moment. There is no ambiguity in what is
happening here. Traders are selling products and are using formalin in full
knowledge that they are poisoning their customers. What is absurd and totally
unbelievable is the response of the other stakeholders in this deadly game,
namely the authorities and the customers.
The
authorities have now known the truth about formalin for quite sometime. Yet the
only actions that they have taken so far is burn and destroy some of the formalin
treated products. Not one of the traders who are poisoning their customers
systematically and in cold blood has been brought before the law. Any country
where such acts of cold-blooded slow poisoning of consumers would have come to
public attention, capital punishment would have been served on the traders and
the issue would have become history almost instantly. Not so in Bangladesh. The
more the media exposed the extent of such public poisoning by formalin, the
less the authorities seemed interested to bring such a dangerous matter to an
end. In fact, using formalin on perishable products has come to stay. It
appears like the traders using formalin have won their fight with the
authorities by befriending them!
That
points to where Bangladesh is going these days. Everything is about making
money. Laws and legality are there to help dishonest people make money provided
of course they share their money with the political leadership in power and the
authorities. The use of formalin and the trade that goes with it involves
humungous amount of money conducted under the table where the guardians of the
law are those who sustain the breakers of the law that explains why not one of
these “formalin killers” have been punished. The recent murders in Narayanganj
therefore should not surprise anyone; it is a public proof of the nexus of the lawbreakers
and those in power, including the law enforcing agencies.
That
leaves the consumers in Bangladesh as the sacrificial lambs in the deadly game
of formalin. They are accepting death by formalin without protest. Their
silence is either sheer stupidity or perhaps it underlines the new reality
about Bangladesh; that the people have lost their ability to react to the array
of lies/untruth in their public domain even when it threatens our own lives.
However, it is not just their lives that formalin threatens; it threatens the
lives of their future generation and therefore, the consumers must wake up from
their slumber and act. Clearly, the authorities would not end the slow
poisoning with formalin. The nexus of corruption is too deep and the money
involved is too much to encourage them to act in the interests of the people.
Therefore they cannot go into denial over formalin anymore. Denial over what is
going on in politics has led to the loss of the most fundamental of all their
rights, namely their right to vote, that has been taken away from them. If they
go into denial over formalin any longer, they would now lose their lives and
those of the future generations.
There
is a simple and easy way for the people of Bangladesh to end the formalin
threat. It is in their hands if only they deice to act. They should simply refuse
to buy fruits and fish that are not essential for their survival. They should do a reverse hartal by refusing to
be victims. If they show such a resolve, they would undoubtedly have the media
by their side to spread the message of the boycott. If the people could keep
the boycott going for a reasonable length of time, they would be able to put
these dishonest traders out of business. Of course there would be a flip side
to such a mass effort. The producers, all honest people who are from the
masses, would be hurt. But then the producers are hurt anyway because they get
only a small part of their efforts for their products. The nexus of the
traders, the middlemen and the authorities take away most of their profit leaving
just a pittance for them.
Therefore
although in the short term the producers of
fish/fruits would suffer from a people inspired hartal against the
murderous formalin traders and their partners in crime in politics and administration,
in the end they too would be the winner. The people have suffered a great deal
from hartal by the politicians. It is time they do a hartal in reverse and use
it to their advantage and instead of becoming the victims of hartals; use it
for a good cause and become the victors.
The writer is a retired
career Ambassador and his email id is
ambserajulislam@gmail.com
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