For long three days Bangladesh was cut off from the rest of the world. Why, it was cut off from itself. The 72-hour blackout of the fourth estate would inflict a bad injury on a nation that has started converting itself into a caring society of informed people by taking to newspaper reading — but only too slowly. One who can go without a newspaper for three days at a stretch, would soon find that he can do so for thirty days — without much tangible loss to himself. What he wouldn’t know is he would gradually cease to be a caring citizen. Collectively, this would spell doom for the nation.

Such long newspaper shutouts are nonexistent elsewhere in the world. For the simple reason that no nation can afford this. The services of radio and television cannot quite make up for the absence of the newspaper. Even in societies where television has become a mania of the masses, newspapers, because of their unique and distinctive role, tend to rise in overall circulation.

How can we reduce this press holiday? The newspapers themselves can, of course, bring out issues of a reduced size on even all three days of the Eid closure. The problem is with the distribution system. The hawkers almost wholly belong to the villages, as do even some of the agents. The hawker associations go into vacation. So? We are confident newspaper managements can take care of this too — for limited circulations.

We urge upon the BSP and hawker samities to appreciate the national interest, as also very solidly interest of the readers, involved in this holiday question and take measures to shorten this long absence of newspapers.