Of cars, sardines and ingenuity
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith has just given us some most intriguing advice. He thinks it will help ease road traffic conditions if privately owned cars are packed to capacity instead of carrying one or two passengers, which is what we see being done these days. The minister has been generous enough to remind us that in countries in our neighbourhood, that is how things are done.
Before we move on to a discussion of what we should do about the cars that many of us happen to own, let us spend sometime on what other people in other countries do abroad and whether or not we can emulate them here in this sad country that we inhabit, that we love in full measure.
The finance minister speaks to us of the ways in which traffic is managed abroad. That is all very fine. But do we have, by way of a credible transport system, what all those good people have in their countries? They have wide roads, they have buses and other vehicles whose drivers stand ready to take people to their destinations, however far and diverse those destinations might be.
In those countries, the road network, embracing as it does a wide expanse of flyovers and highways, gives you the feeling that you will not lose your precious hours stranded on the road in a traffic mess only the Almighty can straighten out.
In those countries, you have professionally qualified and experienced traffic policemen who do not melt into the crowds every time there is congestion on the streets. And, of course, in countries away from ours, it is generally a disciplined citizenry we come across. No fake licences, no overtaking, no violation of rules.
So now we have a question for the minister: before we are told that we must use our cars in the way the government would like us to, can the government he is part of reassure us that all the circumstances we have spoken of can be replicated in our own land? The point here is not what people and governments do in other countries. It is one of how we have been faring in our country in all this time since we liberated the country nearly four decades ago from Pakistan.
You do not have to be an extremely wise individual to know how far behind other nations we have fallen, how full of holes our entire socio-political fabric happens to be, how we have turned into a mediocre nation at the hands of a political class that refuses to lift itself out of mediocrity. The truth is out there for all of us to go through again. But, yes, you can, if you wish, flip through some incisive reports that Transparency International Bangladesh has come up with of late. Our worries find confirmation with TIB.
The lesson ought to be clear. It is folly for us to refer to the progress made by other nations as long as we do not tackle our own realities here at home. Which takes us back to this matter of what we should be doing with our cars after this ministerial exhortation. The simplest of answers is: we stay put.
But since life has never been a matter of simplicity, we must now seriously consider what we should be doing when we awaken from our fitful sleep at dawn. You inaugurate the day through invocations to the Creator of the universe or through a dew-dappled foray into music. That is as it should be.
But that wonderful moment might not last longer, for now your day must begin with worries about how many people you can collect in your vehicle on your way to work. Besides your chauffeur, it is just you in that car. And you mean to be at your workplace when you are expected to be. But you cannot unless your car looks like a can of sardines, for those traffic constables, with a sergeant or two thrown in, will flag you down, ask you all sorts of humiliating questions and will not let you drive on unless you can manage three or four other individuals to accompany you to work.
Now, the difficulty with good people is that they are generally never good at managing bad people, or implementing bad measures. So you might end up in a heated argument with the police. It's your car, it's your office you are headed for and it's your business whether or not your vehicle has other people in the car before you can move on. Try as you might, you will likely not win that argument. Logic has little place in third world politics.
You just might see your car impounded, your chauffeur's licence taken away and you compelled to walk all the way to your office or wherever it is you are going. Now imagine a young mother on her way to pick up her child from school. She could run into big trouble with the police because, apart from the chauffeur, she is the only person in the car. She will lose time arguing with the constable; and back at that school, that little child will be weeping copious tears because her mother will have gone missing.
Absurdity in governance always gets on people's nerves. Not long ago, a police official cheerfully let his imagination roll. If cars on the streets of the capital moved according to their licence plates --- ka, kha, ga --- on particular days (ka on Sunday, kha on Monday and so on), all this traffic chaos could be brought to an end. That was what he said. You call that ingenuity?
The problem, minister, is not in our cars hitting the roads. It is in not having enlightened governance in the country.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk
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