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What was once a game that gave us hope of becoming an Asian powerhouse, if not a global one, is now besieged on all sides with reports and allegations of massive irregularity and favouritism. Yet after the appointment of a new coach and a relatively long practice time fans of football began to spin hopes around the upcoming four nation-tournament in Myanmar and the more important SAFF football tournament. Unfortunately, when all things seemed to be moving smoothly, the Bangladesh Football Federation turned out to be the centre of controversy once again when Kazi Salahuddin, arguably the best footballer this country has ever produced, resigned from the posts of vice-president and chairman of the National Team Management Committee (NTMC) over the appointment of the manager of the Asian Youth Championship.
   Now, the decision Salahuddin took might be regarded as impetuous and emotional by certain people. But footballers who think about the game and not its politicisation have backed the former player because the questionable appointment of an individual to the position of manager, an undoubtedly respectable perch, can only harm the game, which as we all know and can see through empirical evidence, is languishing with very little hope of a revival. In fact, the FIFA ranking of Bangladesh is 168, the lowest it has come to; and if we just look back at our performance in the last few years we see that apart from winning the SAFF in Dhaka our international presence has been one dogged with ignominy. So much has gone wrong in football that we are now forced to play games to even qualify for the qualifiers of the World Cup. Then, there has been much talk about the present president of BFF whose actions have been debated and questioned quite often; and the facts speak for themselves – under him our ranking has suffered, there has been no international tournament in the last few years and even George Kottan, the coach under whom Bangladesh won the SAFF, before leaving lambasted the authorities of the federation for lack of foresight, absence of a coordinated plan and a professional approach.
   Time and again we have seen that the national team is ill-prepared before participating in a tournament and we can only blame the federation for this because, unlike many other countries which have national team schedules for a year, we make our moves on whims. Be that as it may, the resignation of Salahuddin and the solidarity shown to this move by other former players demonstrate that our football administration needs to go through a massive revamping. Maybe cricket is popular, but even now, if Bangladesh manages to retain soccer superiority in south Asia, the glory of the game will come back and the regime under which this will happen will obviously benefit politically. Perhaps on this account the highest political authorities of the country will intervene and put qualified people in charge of the game who will think twice before appointing literal philistines and rogues to responsible positions.

Hazardous hospital waste

A lot has been covered in past years by the media, both print and electronic, on the mismanagement in disposing hazardous hospital and clinic waste in the country and the empty promises given so far by the city fathers regarding streamlining the system to ensure the good health of citizens. The media continue to shed light on such a serious issue from time to time, but the authorities concerned have done little, if at all, in this regard. The apathy of the hospital and clinic owners as well as the municipal authorities towards this grave issue is manifest, to our peril, in the disposal of waste by the side of the roads, including those in the residential areas. The bacteria-filled waste then gets scattered around by scavenging animals, such as dogs, cats and birds, and also by people, the latter kind being employed by a section of unscrupulous traders who recycle some of the waste and sell them to unsuspecting patients. There is graphic evidence of used bandages and gauze being washed in canal water and sun-dried before being sold to shops for repacking.
   Though years have gone by since the first generation stories on the careless disposal of hospital waste like bandages, gauze, blood-soaked clothes, blood and stool samples, transfusion bags, IV fluid bags, needles and syringes have been published in the media, nothing tangible has been done till date. We, however, were caught by surprise learning about the Hospital Waste Management Committee of the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) suddenly jumping into action to ask the hospital, clinic and diagnostic centre owners to dispose of hazardous waste materials in a proper manner and not to sell plastic waste materials illegally. This DCC committee has decided to send letters to 40 clinics and diagnostic centres located in Dhanmondi (a residential area) under ward 49 and areas adjacent to the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital under ward 57. Some more steps are to be taken to make the clinic owners abide by the rules and regulations.
   But the questions that are being asked by worried citizens relate to the matter of why all these steps were not taken years ago by the relevant authorities in a bid to improve the environment of the cities and towns. What kept them from taking legal action against the owners of hospitals, clinics and diagnostic laboratories when they threw dangerous waste on to the roads day in and day out? Very naturally, with abundant tales of corruption and transaction of bribes floating around the DCC, cynics are prone to comment that there is more to this sudden surge of patriotism in the blood of the DCC men weeks before Eid. It remains for the DCC authorities now to prove the cynics wrong.

Life has not been treating us fairly. Of late there have been all those rumblings which have boomed into our ears the bad news that we the people do not really matter in this people’s republic. That is such a shame, considering that when we waged war for freedom all those years ago, the predominant idea was to give ourselves the kind of dignity and respectability the British and then the Pakistanis always deprived us of. Who would have thought that, thirty four years into freedom, we would find ourselves in a sticky situation where we would truly feel demeaned and unloved? The government has ordered, to our intense outrage and considerable amusement, that such a fine place of everyday business as Karwan Bazar will remain closed for the duration of the SAARC summit. The first thought that strikes us is one of what all those SAARC heads of state and government have against our quotidian struggle to make ends meet, even if the markets we shuffle through with our hangdog expressions constantly send our blood pressure shooting up because of the ballooning prices they tag on to almost everything we have set a mind to buying. We will come to that later. For now, though, it is quite an imponderable situation we are in when we hear that the four-day ban on Karwan Bazar is being slapped for reasons of security. That is a most amazing thing to hear. Since when has the pursuit of everyday life by citizens ever posed a threat to the security of politicians, be they homegrown or come from beyond our shores?
   Many of you might now be tempted to applaud because of the good, logical nature of the question. But if you are expecting any kind of response to come your way, all the way from the corridors of power, forget it. The beauty of politics, in our times and in this country, is that power generally comes without responsibility. Translated, it means a very simple theory: power is what politicians enjoy, while the responsibility is all ours to bear. It is power that clamps a ban on our vegetable, meat and fish shops in the SAARC season. It then becomes our responsibility to fend as well as we can for ourselves, which may mean making long and painful detours to travel to other markets to bring the groceries home to our families. What is happening here is simply a reassertion of the idea that government knows best. And government, knowing what it does, is clearly in little mood to have anyone come in the way of all the measures it takes, again in the public interest. It matters little that when the move to keep Karwan Bazar closed for four days in a row was made, no one thought of asking the public, the huddled and humbled masses, how they felt about it all. Things have really reached a pass where the people have been served marching orders by the republic. The people and the republic may thus have reached a point where they do not see eye to eye any more. If that is a reality we are unable to come to terms with, who cares? In the annals of Bengali politics, it is always the state that matters. The people are really a sideshow.
   We choose not to argue with the notion, for we have lately been in danger of becoming immune to whatever iniquities are foisted on us. When you watch all those ministers telling you that there really is nothing so wrong with the prices of the items you need to buy in the markets, you wince a little before coming round to the thought that perhaps you are essentially sleepwalking through it all. Either you have a convoluted view of the world, indeed the nation you are part of. Or those powerful people in government truly have it in them to mesmerise you into an acceptance of their explanation that even if the price of onions goes beyond your purchasing power, it is no big deal. The moment of truth, dubious and tragicomic, comes in for you when something tells you that the minister on the television screen happens to be watching the world from the heights of glory. Everything from the top of a mountain looks gorgeous. But those of us who inhabit the lowlands, the swift approaching deserts that were once green valleys, know the pain of living in dangerously comical times. The commerce minister does not visit the market. No minister will be back in the market haggling over prices until the day comes when he or she is no more a minister. So why should all these good, hardworking souls worry about the perfect agony that eats into our souls? For the millions of us who inhabit this land —- and we will inhabit it till those last glazed moments of life arrive to tell us that life will be no more —- there are really few prospects of climbing all those glittering steps to pomp and power. We are a body of citizens condemned to slouch, every day of the remaining days of our paltry existence, to the grocer’s and the butcher’s and the vegetable seller’s and negotiate, if we can at all, a compromise over the concessions the two sides are ready to come up with. In the end (and this we know from raw, crude experience), the grocer and the butcher and the vegetable seller always win. We the people come away, almost crawl our way back home with a fresh slice of our self-esteem stripped away.
   But all of this, you might try consoling yourself, is the stuff of high drama. The Bengali, if you recall despite all this darkness your soul has plunged into, has historically lived in dramatic moments, times that today appear to be getting increasingly closer to eternity. He has survived through genocide and has seen the constitution, that sacred document speaking to him of his fundamental rights, being turned into a plaything for both politicians and periodic coup makers. The Bengali has been a cynical witness to presidents, prime ministers and chief martial law administrators climbing the little hills of authority, staying there making promises, doing nothing to keep them, eventually crashing in long, heart-breaking silences. Truly and honestly, how many nations can you name in the world who can share such intensity of life’s pains and pleasures with you? In a country which endlessly persuades itself that it seized the sun fifteen years ago and forged democracy out of its hot, steaming rays, where has democracy gone? Ah, well. If you speak to the partisan political party workers, the really poor ones, those who have gained little and stand to lose nothing by marching behind the men and women they think are their heroes, you will hear them giving you a lesson on how far Bangladesh has travelled in the times of the two women who have had the good fortune never to be challenged for the leadership of their parties. That is quite an achievement, one might suggest, one that is as dramatic as the spectacle of General Ershad yet being a player on the national political stage when the lessons of history whisper that he should have been sent into retirement ages ago. Speaking of history, though, the less said about it the better for us all. A nation that happily rent the heavens with the ennobling slogan of Joi Bangla in the year it sent the Pakistanis packing was soon, through malicious politicking, led to back to the stagnant Zindabad pool, a frightening apparition we have not yet been able to shake ourselves free of. Legacies matter, for they come with an appreciation of history. When history goes awry, anything bad and malevolent can happen. We who live have seen it all. We watch our legacy writhe in mortal agony before our eyes.
   These are times when it is all right for workers in the garment factories to be clubbed into humiliation and not a soul protest the outrage. These are days when it is the politically correct thing to depict women political activists being dragged, their dupattas flying and the blouses showing signs of being torn open, into police vans because they have had the gall to march on the streets in processions that were not exactly power-friendly. Universities multiply in the private sector and so does mediocrity, in teachers as well as students. The whole edifice of education, sliced as it has been into a western-oriented English medium, an intellectually-arrested Bangla medium and a heaven-inspired madrasah medium, promises to produce citizens who will lose their way in their first moment of coping with responsibility and will likely stay that way all the remainder of their lives. But why condemn them for what they go through? With some of your diplomats, those you think have been speaking for Bangladesh in the councils of the globe, regularly making plans of settling in America and Europe; with ambassadors and high commissioners putting up epic struggles to stay on in their jobs even when the government orders them back home; with the old bureaucrats who once made life miserable for us now planning to do more of the same through rebirth as politicians (and then as ministers); with businessmen contributing to party coffers and so finding a way into Parliament (see how the real, grassroots workers scamper away in trepidation), such national trauma cannot but be.
   Life is not just. The gods have never been fair. And we the people, for all our patriotism, are always taken for a rough ride. Think of those onions again. Your future will rise and fall on how the cost of an onion flies up or slides down the scale. Isn’t that interesting? How many nations are there which can measure the quality of life by the price of their onions? Think, think. You just might come up with something profoundly philosophical.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk