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The departure of Mir Nasiruddin from the government should have come a whole lot earlier than it actually did. Indeed, when he lost the Chittagong mayoral elections in May this year, his standing as a politician was badly damaged. A politician who loses in an exercise of the ballot owes it to his constituents and his country to bow out in grace, even if some other position he holds may have little bearing on the contest he has not won. And bowing out is important because the defeated man is perceived to be one who cannot effectively function once he has been beaten by his rival. When the now departed minister of state for civil aviation lost in May, it was rumoured that the prime minister wanted him to tender his resignation and thereby leave office. For some curious reason or the other, Mir Nasir stayed on. The Chittagong elections apart, Mir Nasir’s performance at civil aviation has been anything but commendable. During his tenure in office, the national airlines has lurched from one problem to another. Aircraft have regularly been going out of order, flights have been delayed, profits have been plummeting and, worst of all, pilots and other staff have been on the warpath for a realisation of their various demands.
   The issues cited above should have been enough for Mir Nasir to quit on his own or be dropped by the prime minister. The reason which now has felled the minister of state is the mess created over the fares for intending hajj pilgrims this year. One quite fails to see the point in the Biman management board opting for a hike of hajj flight fares to as much as 1300 dollars per pilgrim when it was the cabinet itself which had earlier settled on a flat rate of 950 dollars per person. There are all sorts of questions which have arisen over the minister’s role in suggesting a rate of 1150 dollars for people who intended to proceed on hajj on their own, thereby remaining outside the arrangements made by the government. Precisely who made that suggestion and without noticing anything wrong with it considering the previous cabinet move remains a big question. And then, of course, comes the matter of some airlines refusing to fly pilgrims to Saudi Arabia for anything less than 1350 or so dollars per person. It should have been for the minister of state to insist on a carrying out of the government’s instructions over the fare arrangements. There is good reason to think that Mir Nasir did not quite take the position he ought to have as part of the administration. Now that he has gone, it becomes a matter of grave importance that a wholesale inquiry be made of the chaos created over the hajj fares. If the inquiry reveals shady deals or anything of a questionable kind, the government should prepare to take the guilty to task.
   Of all the debilitating ailments that can befall a nation, it is incompetence in ministers. In the past few years, we have hardly had any instance of a minister doing his job to the satisfaction of the country. One could take a whole range of examples to point to the malady. Citizens are clear about the absence of performance which has characterised the work of political individuals in such important ministries as home and commerce. There are other areas where ministers have only embarrassed their own government through their inability to handle the issues. The government, if it means to return to office at the next election, ought to be dealing, from now on, with the matter of how to have its ministers and ministers of state rise to the challenge of authority. For the prime minister, the choices are limited. She can either look away as her ministers do a bad job and so see her credibility erode. Or she can be firm and show the incompetent ones the door and convince the country she is on top of things. Mir Nasir should be followed out by quite a few others.

In denial mode ...

Speaking of ministers again, it gets to be confusing and then irritating at times to see how some in the cabinet stay in denial mode. The minister for food and disaster management, Chowdhury Kamal Ibne Yusuf, has just told us that there is no monga in the northern part of the country. We must, in light of his observations, now assume that what the media and civil society have been saying about the deprivations people in the north have been going through are all a figment of imagination. Maybe one would be closer to the point, from ministerial perspectives, through suggesting that reports about the monga are actually a conspiracy to tarnish the image of the government?
   The difficulty for the country is that it has hardly had anyone in the present dispensation willing to acknowledge what millions of people have noted and commented on. The finance minister has never let go of the notion that all the ills the country goes through and all the battering it receives abroad are actually a fall-out of the nefarious way in which the media work here. The commerce minister kept telling us in the month of Ramadan that prices were normal in the market, even as citizens were paying through the nose. These and similar stories keep making the rounds, with the result that at some point the nation begins to get bored. On some of the talk shows on the private television channels, ministers and lawmakers cheerfully go into semantics to deny the existence of any problem in the country. Some will speak of crime and then happily dismiss every allegation of governmental ineptitude through drawing parallels with crime even in the developed world! And simply recall the number of times we have been reminded by the powers that be of the healthy state of democracy in Bangladesh. In such displays of enthusiasm, the fact that cross fire deaths raise questions about the rule of law, that an inability to separate the judiciary from the executive hints at things ominous and so on and so forth is conveniently ignored.
   Now, if the minister says there is no monga, that all is perfect, who are we to contradict him? Ah, but what about the dark truth that others have seen roll across the northern region?

It is time for us to feel a great kind of shosti now that the SAARC shirsho shommelon is over. Nothing wrong with such conferences. In fact, our anondo knows no bounds when all those bideshis decide that they want to come here and talk about all their biraat porikolponas about the future of the manob jaati. When you remember that only teen doshok ago we were a mere prodesh of a country whose capital was situated a thousand miles away, you cannot but thank the upor-wallah for the wonderful poriborton he has brought about in our lives. We are, thanks to our mohan netas and our bir mukti shena, today a shadheen nation. And it is in such a position that we are always happy to have all foreign leaders come to our land and show us that they have a lot of sroddha for us as much as we have all our shomman for them.
   But do you know what the biggest dukkho of our jaati has been with this latest SAARC boithok? It is that the jaati never had a chance to participate in the anondo associated with the summit. We were all kept away and were not even allowed to walk on the footpaths because that might have caused nirapotta problems for the bideshi mehmaans. Here we were all ready to stand by the sides of the road, both sides, to cheer and welcome all our guests and carry back home with us stories that would in time become images in our collective sriti-kotha. But, no! Because of all those bhoyonkor moulobadis forever threatening to blow people up, we were all punished in the same way. It was like going back to school. Some bad polapaan in the class do something terrible and the headmaster shaheb keeps everyone in detention. With the SAARC meeting, it was worse than detention. Many of us could not even go to our offices and had to come back from Farmgate or Mohakhali because the ishpaat-kotheen nirapotta people would not let us cross the road. That was a tajjub bepar. Our gonotantrik rights were trifled with and yet we could not say a word. That is the worst part of living in the tritio bishsho. All the laws are there and all the rights are there. But try pointing them out to the shorkari wallahs. They will at best laugh you out of their presence and at worst give you a gola-dhakka so hard you will remember it for the rest of your life.
   In a nutshell, our jibon-japon was off because SAARC was on. Dhaka was a clean, nearly empty shohor and some of our guests may actually have gone away with the feeling that our rajdhani is really a quiet town and the kolahol people come by in other capitals is not a feature of life here. But how were they to know that what they saw was not the ashol roop of this city? That our shoktishaali lokjon had achieved that feat by forcing us to stay home? All schools and colleges were shut down. Not even the guruttopurno Karwan Bazar was spared. It was closed for four days because someone in the shorkari mohol was afraid some shontrashis might operate from inside it during the shommelon. But have you heard that even with the market closed and all the security measures on, a woman got raped inside its premises? Where were the police and the RAB people then?
   Chintagrosto really thinks that in future the shorkar, this one or the ones to come, must devise new ways of organising ancholik or antorjatik conferences in Dhaka. It is really biroktikor for the nagorik to be told that he is an undesirable element in his own city when important people come down from abroad. Chintagrosto remembers all the shonali times when with thousands of other Bangalis he stood on the pavement to watch mohan bektis like Tito, Sadat, Daoud, Indira and others come to our shohor. Everyone waved at these great people and they waved back. Watching them go by had a bonus to it, for we could also see our own mohan neta Bangabandhu alongside them.
   What a joog it was! And how pranheen life has become these days, how obhadra people have grown to be towards the bhadra nagoriks of this country. That is the byatha and krodh we go through.
   
   Keyamot around us
   The boma wallahs, armed with their version of the Islamic dhormo, have done it again. In the name of Allah, they have just killed two bicharoks in Jhalakati. Now, who will do the bichar in the case of these khunis? The ortho montri has told the deshobashi that Bangladesh has the best security byaboshta compared to other countries. Should we start crying loudly at his remark or should we roll over in otto hashi? After all, who is the minister trying to impress? With the mrityu of the two judges, it has become clear that no one is safe in our country. Even the montri feels he is not safe and if anyone hurls something at him, the shangbadiks around him will also be blown to bits. But why should a minister talk that way? The country will assume, after it has heard the ortho montri, that even the shorkari wallahs are not sure what is happening in this projatontro. If that is the situation, we can safely say that we are all in trouble. When a whole government is in an oshohaye obostha, all that you and I can do is engage in Allah-billah. The feeling grows in us that keyamot is very near and we might as well prepare for it.
   And, pray, what is keyamot? The answer lies in the karjokolap of all these young moulobadis. They have no respect for life. What they want is something we do not want. They think Islam was made in the way they interpret it. Sometimes, when you talk to some people in some of the madrasahs, teachers as well as students, you tend to get the feeling that not even the Prophet of Islam knew as much about Islam as these modern-day medieval Muslims around us. It is such a shame when you have to hear moulovis preach on Eid days the idea that our mohila, all those maa-bon-stree, should be asked to stay home and observe purdah. Did Allah and His fereshtas make women only to have them serve a life imprisonment in their homes? These misguided believers in faith have never been taught to respect life and to respect people following other dhormos. The result is that they grow into youth and old age believing that they are the best of God’s creations and those who do not agree with them are all the descendants of the shoitan. But who is doing the shoitani now? The durghotona of 17 August and 3 October and now the hotya of the judges were all prepared in the dushto, dark mostishko of the little shoitans in the shape of the jihadis around us. Do you notice that the netas of the Jama’atul Mujahideen have been running from the poolish? A true pursuit of religion makes men shahoshi and neetibaan. So why are Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai running about here and there in a kapurush-like manner?
   
   Garrison town?
   During the SAARC anondo-utshob, a lot of nirapotta people were brought into Dhaka from other areas of the country, making the city look like a garrison town. But did anyone in the proshashon ever have a thought to the nirapotta-heenota such a move could give rise to in the rest of the country, especially in the sthaans from where these otirikto policemen were brought in? With so many thousands of poolish and other bahinis concentrated in Dhaka, many things could have gone wrong in the other onchols of the country. Luckily, however, nothing bad happened.
   But let us hope everyone will be careful in future about such things. Have we just made a pious wish? Chintagrosto wonders.

The year 2005 can be termed as one of the worst years in recent history for the pedestrians and commuters of Bangladesh in terms of numbers of lives lost in road accidents. Everyday, reports of fatal accidents involving faulty or over speeding vehicles reach us as harsh reminder of the free-for-all situation that exists on the roads across the country. There is a suicidal propensity among the drivers of passenger buses, private cars and trucks on the highways to drive on without paying any heed to speed limits or rights of way of other vehicles coming from both directions. More often than not these drivers indulge themselves in break-neck speeding competition on the highways in a bid to overtake one another despite the pleas of the passengers inside. Such recklessness causes fatal accidents involving more than one vehicle, and deaths and mutilation of horrific depiction. Day in and day out such speeding ‘games’ on the highways and even inside the city roads have been going on right before the eyes of the administration and yet we have not seen harsh legal measures being taken against the drivers or the owners of the vehicles.
   Besides over speeding, the other reasons that contribute to highway accidents can be summarised as, faulty breaks and steering adjustment, faulty tires and tubes, overloading especially taking passengers on the roof, absence of headlights or side lights, faulty signaling system, absence of properly placed road signs before sharp bends or before bridges, bad eyesight of the drivers, sleepiness of drivers and drunk drivers. All of these factors can be monitored, as is done in any advanced country, through installing electronic monitoring devices and enforcing a strict highway patrolling system. Unfortunately, we have been hearing of introduction of such modern mechanisms in the speeches of the scores of ministers who came and disappeared since the creation of Bangladesh but, to date, nothing tangible has been done on the ground to prevent fatal accidents.
   The chilling figure of 40,000 people getting killed and 1 5, 00, 000 more getting seriously injured in road accidents in the last eight years should have made the concerned administration wake up long ago and move mountains by now in order to remove the underlying factors contributing to such fatalities. An official estimate says that every year nearly 7, 000 people get killed on the roads, on which ply more than 130 million vehicles including motorized and non-motorised ones. The total road network in the country at present is about 25, 000 kilometers. According to the National Road Safety Council the fatality rate in road accidents in the country is over 73 deaths per 10, 000 motorised vehicles every year.
   A news report in this daily based on some research works shows that pedestrians in the urban areas run greater risk of getting involved in accidents. Experts are of the opinion that such accidents occur because of encroachment of the sidewalks by smaller vehicles, shops and hawkers and also because of the lack of awareness of traffic rules on the part of the pedestrians. According to the report, pedestrian casualties constitute about 70 per cent of the road accident victims in the urban areas and about 53 per cent of the total road accidents happening across the country.
   Quoting the director of the Accident Research Centre the New Age report said: “Pedestrians who fell victims to road accidents accounted for about 29 per cent of all reported causalities. Nearly 37 per cent road accidents took place on national highways, 12 per cent on regional highways and 15 per cent on feeder roads. In urban areas, nearly 40 per cent of the accidents took place at road junctions. The Strategic Transport Planning survey conducted by the government in collaboration with the World Bank found that nearly 40 per cent of the footpath in the capital city remained occupied, forcing the pedestrians to walk down the streets. Because of the occupation of footpath, pedestrians often walk on the street, running the risk of being injured and thereby creating congestion. The ARC research found that the most common types of accidents are represented by pedestrians, being 43.7 per cent of the total accidents.”
   
   Role of the law enforcers
   There is no denying that the onus of maintaining order and safety on the roads and highways rests on the traffic department and various law enforcing agencies. The traffic control department will have to be equipped with modern vehicles, two-way communication gadgets and public address system so that it can install a befitting mechanism throughout the country to monitor speeding or faulty vehicles and catch rogue drivers or law-breaking pedestrians. All the year round and for many consecutive years social communication programmes should be undertaken to disseminate appropriate traffic management messages throughout the communities. And last but not the least, laws of the land must be applied against the law violators without any fear or favour. Along with adopting such measures, country’s roads and highways also need to be designed scientifically avoiding too many sharp bends in a short distance. At the same time slow moving vehicles such as bicycle, cycle rickshaw, rickshaw-van, bullock-cart, push-cat etc must be kept out of the highways. In this regard, traffic control department will have to sit down with the officials of the roads and highways and other relevant agencies in order to remove all possible obstacles that imperil safe plying of motorised vehicles on the roads.
   Concerned residents of Dhaka also feel that all the smaller passenger vehicles like mini bus, human haulers, tempo and jeeps must be removed from the city and replaced with bigger buses to avoid cramming the city roads with too many small vehicles. One private study shows that as many as thirty mini buses take up almost the total space in a half-mile long road in the city thereby making it extremely difficult for other vehicles to maneuver through the gaps. The same study says that only about eight larger buses can carry the number of passengers carried by the thirty mini buses. These mini buses, driven by reckless teen-age drivers (many of them being drug addicts) run at break-neck speed through the city roads and suddenly stop right on the middle to pick up passengers before the very nose of the on-duty police personnel. But, to our utter dismay, these rogues are never stopped for violating all the traffic rules in the book. It is common knowledge now that the on-duty traffic constables run after them only when a fatal accident has happened so that they may earn some money from the fleeing driver and the owner of the vehicle.
   Role of the owners of vehicles
   We have observed with some degree of astonishment that in general owners of the passenger buses and similar vehicles (mini bus, mini jeep, human haulers, tempo etc.) remain unmoved by the fact that their vehicle has been involved in a tragic accident that caused deaths to some fellow humans.
   Our memory betrays us in our effort to recall such times when an owner came out in the open taking responsibility of the sad incident and declaring his cooperation in handing over the driver to the police, and offering some financial assistance to the family of the victim(s).
   None of the vehicle owners are known to be in favour of following certain thumb rules while employing drivers, such as checking their papers thoroughly, taking driving tests to ensure their driving skill and sending them to a doctor for physical fitness check-up including eye condition.
   On the contrary, most employers look for drivers they can pay least (as a result they get young drivers having no experience of managing a large vehicle on a highway), they do not care if the driving licence is a fake one (since they know that the police will let the driver go once their palms have been well greased), and they do not bother to issue any appointment letter in order to avoid keeping any record of such employment.
    It can be said with some conviction that if the owners of vehicles follow certain criteria of employment for drivers and instill in them a sense of discipline and fear of law before handing over a copy of appointment letter it would have a positive impact on the employment seekers.
   The employers should ask for certificates from the local UP chairman and UNO and send a copy of the appointment letter to the nearest police station for record keeping.
   If the administration is sincere enough to save human lives they will have to come out of their shell and become visible on the roads where all the accidents take place. We have a feeling that the sight of special highway traffic squads with automatic weapons at every 5 miles would generate fear in the minds of the rogue drivers. This would also demonstrate that someone really cares.