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The bell tolls for Jihad

Syed Mansur Hashim
Millions across the country were glued to their TV sets for nearly a full day over the drama of Jihad's attempted rescue after the boy fell down a deep well in Shahjahanpur Railway Colony. That this was a four-year old boy, a helpless child whose plight remained unknown, moved a nation. The fire brigade tried its best to locate the child. Live footage on the scene informed us that witnesses had heard a voice from below and oxygen was apparently pumped into the shaft to help the boy survive. There were varying statements by officials who put the boy's location at a depth of anywhere between 300 to 600 feet.
As the day wore on and the situation became more bleak, authorities sent down a tool called "catcher" to pull the boy out. This decision was reversed and a high-tech borehole camera was sent down to pinpoint the specific location. The equipment was sent down to a depth of about 250 feet and could not go down further. Footage from the camera revealed nothing and at this point we were informed by none other than the state minister for home affairs that "there is no one down there." Now what possessed the top boss to make an utterance like that, especially when the locating equipment had failed to travel down the full length of the shaft? We will never know. What is even more astonishing is that another high official comes out with the theory at about 2.45 pm that Jihad had actually not fallen down the shaft (despite numerous witnesses who stated to the contrary) and it was a malicious rumour. Is it any wonder that at that point rescue attempts took a serious downturn?
It is at this juncture that the incident takes a sinister turn. The boy's father is hauled off to the local police station for a 12-hour interrogation. It is alleged that he received mistreatment and the focus of the missing boy seems to have shifted one from falling down the shaft to something else. Talk about insensitivity! Here is a man who is bereaved beyond comprehension about his missing son in a shaft and he is being treated as a possibleperpetrator, an inquiry the police and ministry of home affairs claim was conducted with "honest intent." The Jihad saga could well have ended in yet another case of a "missing person" had it not been for the joint effort of five private individuals, none of whom have any professional training in rescue operations. They used what was available locally to construct a cage made of iron rods outfitted with a CCTV that was lowered down the well. Not only did they detect the boy, but managed to make modifications to bring back his corpse at 3pm on December 29, a full 23 hours after he fell down the 17-inch diameter shaft.
Now where does that leave us? More precisely, where does that leave the bigwigs who make bold statements in media having neither an inkling of what is truly going on nor how to go about solving the problem at hand? This culture of unprofessional behaviour has today become a national pastime. We have seen another bold and unabashed minister make similar statements that the oil slick in the Sundarbans wasn't that serious and would hardly cause any damage to the ecology of the forest. Then of course there was the case of the gentleman who used to head the ministry of home affairs educating us on why we shouldn't shake a building too vigorously lest it falls down, and such statement coming within hours of the Rana Plaza collapse.
Who picks up the pieces of the shattered lives of Jihad's parents? Perhaps a cheque worth some few hundred thousand Takas will be forthcoming to "compensate" for the loss of this boy's life. In every single incident cited here, it was the ordinary people, on site, who made a difference. It was too late for Jihad. Could things have been different had the experts been called in? We will never know will we?
The fact remains that we have become a nation of people left to fend for ourselves. As the Shahjahanpur incident merely reinforces the notion that the state agencies entrusted to look after us are made dysfunctional by incompetence of senior management. Until the day comes when right people are placed in the right position who can and will give decisive direction, this sorry state of affairs will continue. All we can do is pray that the country is not hit by something in the magnitude of an earthquake high on the Richter scale. As studies have shown, such an event would flatten at least 70% of the structures in the city. With our present performance in rescue operations, the results of the manmade disaster that will follow the natural disaster is rather plain to see.
The writer Is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.