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CROSS TALK

The Muhith Doctrine

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan
Time has come to give it a name. Ignore a scam enough number of times and it will go away, because public memory, like waves in a sea, crashes as quickly as it swells. One man who understands it is our finance minister, who knows that a few scams aren't the end of the world. So, Tk.4,000 crore swindled out of a bank isn't a big deal, but a vicious invention of the malicious media. Give it a name to the man's credit. The Muhith Doctrine is the inverse of the Goebbels Doctrine: Deny a truth hundred times, and it doesn't exist.
If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Muhith is muddling. Penny wise and pound foolish, he has been bad with numbers. The country is desperately looking forTk.240 billion for a dream bridge, so much so that some of us even offered to sell their kidneys to raise money. Children offered their tiffin money. Government employees came forward to give their one month's salary. So many others wanted to make so much sacrifice that for a while it seemed each and every one of us lived for this country.
Meanwhile, much more money went missing under the minister's watch. At conservative estimate Tk.315 billion has been swindled from banks and people of this country in last couple of years. Some people claim four Padma Bridges could be built with theTk.800 billion skimmed from the stock market. But let us stick to the Tk.200 billion estimated in the probe report. Hall-Mark Group swindled Tk.36 billion from Sonali Bank. Unipay-2 had earlier defrauded its members out of Tk.60 billion. Destiny Group cheated its clients out of Tk.15 billion. Add them up, there's enough money to thumb our nose at the World Bank and its entire ilk.
The irony is that while the finance minister was busy scrounging up money for the bridge, our banks were throwing money in the air. That does not include yet unknown sums the state-owned banks must have given away to scurrilous borrowers. Suddenly, there is urgency in our greed. It's no longer satisfying to swill from the bottle. Some are heading straight for the brewery.
Thomas Nixon Carver was an American economist, who wrote in 1920 that dumping money into the sea is better for society than spending it wastefully. We are a society that does both. We are a wastefully wasted nation that now operates at an advanced level of greed. It's too tedious to cheat people for small small amounts. More fun to cheat banks and make a killing. The minister is fanning that fire.
Given that economy of scale in cheating, one must admit that defrauding billions out of banks is not as easy as defrauding billions out of people on the street. It couldn't happen because a branch manager or couple of DMDs wished to act in cahoots with their client. The MD, chairman and rest of the board in order of that hierarchy had to have some inlding of it.
Unless all of them did what they were told. Political influence can have the same stupefying effect as drunk driving. One can go through red lights or cross speed limits without thinking.
The Victorian-era English author Samuel Butler wrote: "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." Likewise, Muhith knows that the government is only a scam's way of making another scam. So the investigation into the Hall-Mark scandal is showing cracks. The hurricane has been downgraded to a disappointing mist.
If the government meant business, it should have started with the top layer of Sonali Bank. The managing director of Hall-Mark Group should have been thrown in jail much earlier. The man should have had no time to brag he has assets worth twenty times the money he plundered from banks!
As always, our finance minister comes as icing on the cake. Every time there is a financial scam, he hems and haws, mumbles and grumbles and gives his outbursts in incoherent speeches. This minister with his words of mouth is as threatening to our common sense as a child with crayons in his hand is for the walls of a freshly-painted house.
The three-and-a-half years of this finance minister are comparable to the last days of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II, who had no authority beyond the city of Shahjahanabad. The minister pours all his authority into the microphones held before him because his writ of mandamus is limited to his mouth. A classic Freudian example, he deals with his contradictions not by eliminating them, but by getting into accord with them.
The minister makes an example of it every time he opens his mouth. Only the Muhith Doctrine can explain why he still doesn't have the decency to quit.
The writer is Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.