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Hope under strain

MUHAMMAD NURUL HUDA
UNBRIDLED violence and horrendous bestiality that hapless Bangladeshis have been witnessing in the run up to the national election have caused deep despondency, and many citizens are distressed at the defiling of the norms of civilised life. As usual there is no dearth of prophets of doom and gloom who are predicting the demise of whatever is left of democracy in this part of the world.
The question is, is the present socio-political scenario unique, and the ominous forecasts
unprecedented? If we look back we will be amazed to see that even great men have been proved by history to have been unduly despondent about the future. William Pitt bemoaned: "There is scarcely anything around us but ruin and despair." William Wilberforce would not get married because the future was so dark and unsettled.
There is more. When Will Durant was asked what he thought of the world situation, he said: "The world situation is fouled up. It has always been fouled up. I see no reason for change." Even so strong and courageous a man as the Duke of Wellington said one day close to his death in 1852: "Thank God, I shall be spared from seeing the consummation of ruin that is gathering about us." And yet the decades which followed these gloomy predictions of Pitt, Wilberforce and Wellington saw Britain rise to the height of her glory.
In undivided India, G. Rajagopalachari, who correctly grasped the meaning and implications of freedom, bemoaned in his prison diary on January 24 1922 in the following words: "Elections and their corruptions, injustice and the power and tyranny of wealth, and inefficiency of administration, will make a hell of life as soon as freedom is given to us. Men will look regretfully back to the old regime of comparative justice, and efficient, peaceful, more or less honest administration."
Gan our discerning citizens be unmindful of all that we have accomplished as a young republic? Don't we need to stress that our innate potential is far, far greater than actual achievement. This is not to ignore the sad reality that a good number of our politicians are only occupied in maintaining a system which is poisoned by collective bad faith and polluted by individual avarice. There is no doubt that many of them are served by deception and craftiness, instead of vision and imagination.
If the lifestyle of our politicians is one of single-minded pursuit of money impoverishing the mind, shriveling the imagination and desiccating the heart then the blame must be shared by the people along with the government. It is the public who elect politicians to power, and because private initiative of the citizenry could have gone a long way towards counteracting the deficiencies of the government. After all, the government is only one part of the society.
The immediate future might appear to belong to the doomsayers rather than to the cheer mongers. This may have been caused by the persistent malady of the degeneration of conscience; and the gradual deterioration is perhaps the result of our inability to build the institutions, particularly the educational institutions that would generate excellence.
The staying power of democracy varies from country to country. The timing of political breakdown depends to a large extent upon the strength of political institutions. This is so because economic under-performance will not herald the collapse if political institutions acquire durability through time and practice. Regrettably, we have fragile institutions and a constitution bent by the whim of the ruling class.
It's a pity that upon independence our leaders were enamoured by the colonial administrative system and continue to enjoy exercising power and authority, oblivious of their own demand for far-reaching administrative reforms. In specific terms, we have failed to introduce changes in tune with the provisions of our republican constitution.
Despite the pervasive pessimism and the frustrating non-delivery from the system, hope lay in the resilience and determination of ordinary folks whose aspirations of democratic and prosperous Bangladesh cannot be brushed aside. Once such do-gooder is ProbirDebnath of South Surma of Sylhet who, undeterred by lack of education, achieved self-sufficiency by working very hard as a mason and carpenter. He learnt to repair electrical appliances to supplement family income. An admirably public-spirited character, Probir's main preoccupation now is to compose motivational songs for voter awareness.
In recent times, Limon Hossain of Jhalokati and Abdul Kadar of Dhaka University did not cower in the face of establishment brutality and insensitiveness and held their ground despite all odds. They have fought the systemic rot and kept their heads high. It is time to lend societal support to such ventures in the interest of democracy. The writer is a columnist of The Daily Star.