Thoughts on Bangladesh - part 7
Sunday, January 5 is the day when the 10th parliamentary election is set to be held in
59 districts across Bangladesh. One hundred and fifty three seats have already been
elected unopposed because of boycott by the main opposition BNP and its allies.
As such, no voting will take place in 5 districts -- Joypurhat, Shariatpur,
Madaripur, Chandpur and Rajbari where the candidates got elected unopposed. For
the remaining 147 seats, 390 candidates from the ruling Awami League
(AL), Jatiya Party (Ershad), JP (Manju), Gonotontri Party, Gono Front, JSD,
Bangladesh Islami Front, Bangladesh Khelafat Mojlish, Bangladesh Tarikat
Federation, National Awami Party, Worker’s Party of Bangladesh and BNF are
contesting in the election. The participation of the Jatiya Party in the
polls, however, remains uncertain due to contradictory statements by its
leaders.
Meanwhile, the BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia has
termed this election a ‘selection’, ‘farce’, and has urged the voters to
boycott the polls. The BNP-led 18-party alliance has also enforced a 48-hour
strike from 6:00am on Saturday to discourage anyone casting his/her vote.
While it is a foregone conclusion that Sheikh
Hasina of the ruling AL will again be asked by the President to form a new
cabinet, it is not sure for how long could she run the government amid serious
constitutional crisis that the country has been subjected to for the last three
months. I shall not be surprised to see that the 10th parliament may
be short lived. What the country needs is a formula that is agreed by the two major
parties – AL and BNP - that have ruled the country for all but two years since
1991. Instead, the election-time crisis has become a regular feature stymieing
the country’s much needed progress. Many Bangladeshis feel that nothing good is
going to happen politically in their nation as long as these two major parties remain
the most important players in the national politics and are led by leaders who
hate each other. Since politics affects everything important in life,
Bangladeshis must, therefore, endure their troubles for an unforeseeable future
until their situation changes for the better.
As I have pointed out in an earlier article, the
cost of defeat in election has become simply too unbearable for those in
opposition in Bangladesh, which remains an illiberal democracy. This issue is
at the heart of the current political turmoil plaguing the country. Those in
power always have the wherewithal to amass massive benefits, a fact once again proven by the affidavits submitted to the office of the Election Commission by
the political candidates from the ruling party. In the last five years, the
income of some MPs rose several hundred times, which cannot be explained by any
math. If these be the declared assets, what about those assets that remained
undeclared? We can only guess!
Corruption remains the most important driving
force that creates the vicious cycle for enriching oneself and all those that
are involved with it in whatever capacity. And crime follows. The existence of
the one without the other is improbable, to say the least. We shall have more
opportunity to see the manifestation of corruption inside Bangladesh.
----
Let me now get back to where I left my readers
on my 3-month long trip to Bangladesh. [See here for continuation.]
After arriving in Dhaka from the port city of
Khulna in the morning of the strike day in November, my brother-in-law Bahar
and I took a rickshaw and decided to stop by my late uncle’s home in Malibagh
which is closer to Kamalapur Rail Station in Dhaka than my mother-in-law’s home
in Paribagh. It was also a safer mode of transportation during the strike. Late
at night we took a baby taxi to arrive at the Paribagh home where I stayed for
the next two days before returning to Chittagong. Bahar had other plans and
stayed in Dhaka in his sister’s home.
As usual, travel by rail was deemed safer for
me. On the day of my trip to Chittagong, the opposition had not fortunately
called strike and my brother-in-law Ikrar was able to drop me off at the train
station in his car. The train left on time. It was supposed to have been a non-stop
journey from Uttara (the Dhaka airport) to Chittagong. But near Brahmanbariya
station – almost halfway between Dhaka and Chittagong – the train suddenly came
to a jolting halt. We learned that there was a derailment nearby. After two
hours, the train again resumed its course and I arrived late at night.
Inside my compartment the passenger who sat next
to me was a doctor who worked for a famous medical research university in Dhaka.
He was visiting his wife who lived in Chittagong. During our casual
conversation when I mentioned that doctors were making good money in Bangladesh
while they were not paying attention to the needs of their patients, he agreed
and blamed it on the system. He pointed out that patients always like to be
seen by doctors that are older and famous, and not by young doctors who may sometimes
have better knowledge and skills, and are more caring to their patients. Many
of the famous doctors don’t spend the necessary time required to diagnose the
case properly. They usually spend less than five minutes (sometimes just two
minutes) of their time per patient. Sometimes before the patient could mention
all his/her symptoms, the doctor has written the prescription.
Many of these doctors are affiliated with
government-run hospitals and research centers only to promote their own private
practices. Years of affiliation with and work in those institutions have
promoted them to become full professors and with that title the recognition as
a knowledgeable and famous doctor came easily. Thus, it is quite normal for
them to have hundreds of patients waiting every night. Unfortunately, rather
than limiting their numbers they like the money and thus, do a terrible
disservice to their patients by not spending enough time. They end up writing
prescriptions as if they already know what the patient really needs towards
cure.
Some of these famous doctors are so busy that a
patient sometimes must make an appointment weeks in advance. If the patients
instead had opted to see less famous younger doctors who are more caring, this
chronic problem in the health care sector could have been mitigated.
The Government of Bangladesh now requires newly
trained doctors to spend their early years in rural areas. But most of them
have found ways – usually by bribing government officials - to defeat the
system, and spend those years in major cities.
Doctors have their own favoritism as to which
brand of medicine to prescribe to their patients. That choice is mostly
dictated by the connections that they have made with the pharmaceutical
companies. [By the way, this practice is also quite common in the USA and
probably the rest of the world. As a former Director with Merck & Co., one
of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, I am well aware of such
practices. The sales reps would often arrange all-paid vacation packages for
doctors in the Caribbean or some fancy resort areas to promote their products.]
When the sales representatives from the
pharmaceutical companies try to promote medicine from their companies the
doctors in Bangladesh would often times demand huge kickbacks to promote such
brands. In this regard, it may be worthwhile sharing the example of a doctor I
know of. This young Hindu doctor lives with his wife as a tenant in our 6-story
house ‘Aranika.’ His entire apartment – from refrigerator to sofa, beds, etc. -
has been furnished by pharmaceutical companies. My brother-in-law Ikrar has
been in the stent business which many cardiologists insert in the veins of
patients to open up blocked arteries of heart patients. He told me that to
promote his business (i.e., selling J&J and Boston Scientific stent
products), he had to pay first class tickets for some doctors visiting or
attending conferences in Europe. Worse still, some famous doctors who had used
his stents in their surgical operations, charging hefty amount of bill to their
patients, did not pay the price of the product (which costs more than $1000 per
stent).
Just imagine the level of corruption that is
eating away the moral fabric of Bangladesh! As a result of such unscrupulous
attitudes and practices, the patients are suffering and dying. Many patients end
up dying in the hospitals because of wrong diagnosis and treatment. I am not
aware of any medical doctor or hospital in Bangladesh that had faced criminal
charges for wrongful deaths of patients. It is no wonder, therefore, that those
who can afford prefer to be treated in places like India, Thailand and
Singapore. I am told that the major portion of the income of many of these
hospitals in those countries come from Bangladeshi patients. I know of some of
my friends who go to Singapore and Thailand for regular health checkups. I am
sure if the patients have found caring doctors and nurses in Bangladesh many
would not have spent hard earned foreign exchanges for their health care needs
abroad.
Just as in every other sector, except probably
the civil, administrative, judicial, police and defense forces, the health care
sector suffers from lack of well-trained doctors and nurses to care for their
patients. The best of them have found ways to work or settle in the more
prosperous countries in Europe, America and the Middle East. The services
provided in many of the hospitals – government or private run – are simply
horrendous. Even in government-run hospitals the patient often must buy
prescribed medicine. In private hospitals the patients are often overcharged
while they are not treated properly. These facilities are very poorly managed
and governed.
After arriving at home in Chittagong that nigh I
spent the next few days in the company of my parents and did not go out; the
opposition parties again had called hartal (strike), and it was not safe for
anyone to go out. On Tuesday the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance
enforced the 48-hour blockade that began at 6:00am in protests against the
announcement of the schedule for the 10th parliamentary polls by the Election
Commission for holding ‘unilateral’ polls before reaching an understanding over
the election-time administration. On Tuesday at least seven people, including a
paramilitary soldier, were killed and several hundred injured as opposition
activists battled with lawmen, attacked rivals, torched and vandalized vehicles
and government offices and removed rail tracks to enforce the 48-hour
rail-road-waterway blockade across the country.
The railway was made a major target of Tuesday’s vandalism as protesters uprooted tracks, removed fishplates causing derailments and tried to set fire to carriages forcing railway authorities to suspend the service of DEMU (Diesel Electric Multiple Unit ) trains. Several intercity trains got stranded at places for uprooting of tracks. Pickets torched three carriages of Dhaka-bound ‘Sirajganj Express’ at Ishwardi railway station around 7:00am, halting train service on Dhaka-Khulna and Dhaka-Rajshahi routes. The Netrakona-bound Haor Express derailed at Shyamganj as fishplates were removed. Thirty people were injured as six carriages and the locomotive of Dhaka-bound Agnibina Express derailed at a place between Rajendrapur and Jaidebpur stations around 10:30pm as pickets removed fishplates. Rail tracks were also uprooted on Akhaura-Gangabari, Imambari-Gangabari and Imambari-Kasba routes snapping Dhaka-Chittagong train service. Five trains got stranded at Akhaura for uprooting of tracks.
The railway was made a major target of Tuesday’s vandalism as protesters uprooted tracks, removed fishplates causing derailments and tried to set fire to carriages forcing railway authorities to suspend the service of DEMU (Diesel Electric Multiple Unit ) trains. Several intercity trains got stranded at places for uprooting of tracks. Pickets torched three carriages of Dhaka-bound ‘Sirajganj Express’ at Ishwardi railway station around 7:00am, halting train service on Dhaka-Khulna and Dhaka-Rajshahi routes. The Netrakona-bound Haor Express derailed at Shyamganj as fishplates were removed. Thirty people were injured as six carriages and the locomotive of Dhaka-bound Agnibina Express derailed at a place between Rajendrapur and Jaidebpur stations around 10:30pm as pickets removed fishplates. Rail tracks were also uprooted on Akhaura-Gangabari, Imambari-Gangabari and Imambari-Kasba routes snapping Dhaka-Chittagong train service. Five trains got stranded at Akhaura for uprooting of tracks.
Road links between Dhaka and outlying areas
remained snapped as no buses operated on long routes and trucks carrying goods
got stranded at places after opposition activists blocked stretches of major
highways with logs.
What is so outrageous is that the criminal
elements within the opposition parties would start their criminal activities – torching
vehicles and vandalizing - at least 12 hours before the scheduled time for
start of the hartal. It was a sheer tactics to terrorize everyone. In spite of
the personal risks, employees were expected to report to their workplaces. Many
employees took rickshaws to move around although even those rickshaws were not
safe from attack of the terrorists. Many innocent commuters got killed for just
trying to move from one place to another.
My return date to the USA was approaching fast.
With Bahar’s help I managed to buy a ticket and reached Dhaka on a day when the
opposition political parties had not called hartal. After arriving in Dhaka I
met some of my old friends. One of these friends, Dr. Tahir Shah has now become
the Honorary Ambassador for Uzbekistan. He was gracious enough to invite me and
some of our BUET classmates in his home in Gulshan. My ORCA friends from Cadet
College also threw a party in Bar-B-Q Tonite – a famous restaurant in Dhanmondi
(Road 16), which was owned by my late friend Major (retd.) Talebul Mowla
Chowdhury (Rumi). (Thanks to Mosharraf Hossain for hosting the get together.)
In the next few days I met some of my relatives before
hartal was called. I also met Alam Ara khala, a close friend of my mom since
their school days in Calcutta in the British era. My mother was a student at Sakhawat
Memorial Girls’ School in the 1940s where she met Alam Ara Khala, who hailed
from a highly educated family of West Bengal. It should be noted here that the
school was opened by Begum Rokeya, a social reformer, educationist, prolific writer and campaigner for human
rights and gender equality in British India. Before the partition of British
India, my mother returned to Khulna to complete her high school degree. She later
earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees after getting married to my father. I have met
Alam Ara khala many times when I was a teenager. She lived with her husband,
Mr. Kamal, in Chittagong where he was the Superintendent of Police. He later
became the Inspector General of Police after the emergence of Bangladesh, and
died soon thereafter. She and my mom – both now 80 years old – have remained
close, contacting each other by phone.
During my visit this time to khala’s residence near the Habibullah Bahar
College, I learned that her cousin is Mrs. Farhat Qader Chowdhury’s mom. What a
small world! Mrs. Farhat is married to Salauddin Qader Chowdhury (commonly
known as SaQa), MP from Chittagong, who was recently found guilty of committing war crimes
of 1971. SaQa and his elder son – Fayyaz (Fazlul Qader Chowdhury) –
were behind the criminal land-grab of our family properties in Khulshi,
Chittagong, during the BNP rule of 2005. With a criminal syndicate they forcibly
evicted 16 tenant families from our premises and demolished ten homes. It was
purely a Mafia-style crime when hardly anyone dared to come to our aid.
Alhamdulillah, we got our family properties back. But the scar remains and will
probably remain so until ultimate justice is done – if not in this world,
surely in the Hereafter!
I knew of Mrs. Farhat’s siblings and have met some of them during our
family ordeal in 2005, including her youngest uncle Dastgir, who remains a
close friend to my brother-in-law Istiaq. Her youngest brother is indebted to a
sister of mine, and another sibling to Istiaq – for a plethora of reasons. They
were all very apologetic for the crimes of their ‘untouchable’ brother-in-law
(dula bhai) – SaQa Chowdhury, but did neither have the guts nor the courage necessary to
stop him or his notorious son. But Mrs. Farhat, SaQa’s wife remained shamelessly
arrogant; she was seduced by her husband’s power and supported the crime wholeheartedly. [Interestingly, she was planning on running on the BNP ticket from
her husband’s constituency in the parliamentary election.]
In my discussion with khala about Mrs. Farhat’s role, I remarked that it is
commonly believed that the influence of a mother towards a child’s character-building
is paramount. I asked her, “How could your one-time ‘nice’ niece be the mother of
a criminal like Fayyaz who was behind the criminal ploy to grab our family properties?”
Khala replied that it was all a matter of bad company – her niece Farhat is married
to a wrong guy (a Mafia Don type character), and the older son has been spoiled
by his dad who believed that with power crime was easy to commit and would
remain unpunished! But for how long? History has failed to educate the SaQa
family! Will they ever repent?
The day before my flight on November 29 when I
tried to check the status of my flight in the Qatar Airways I was surprised to
see that the flight had been delayed by 12 hours, and instead of the scheduled
flight at around 3 p.m. it had been moved to 3 a.m. the next day. It was a day
of strike. So, the new timing came as a relief since it was deemed safer to
take a car ride late at night to the airport. On the day of my trip,
Shahanshah, younger brother of Dr. Gowhar Rizvi – Adviser on international
affairs to the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, came to see me at the Paribagh
home with his nephew. It was a strike day, and still he took the risk of coming
in his car. When I asked, he exclaimed that people had to take such risks once
in a while!
Just hours before my departure, the criminal
elements of the opposition parties set fire to a bus near the Sishu Udyan
(Children’s Park), which is close to my in-law’s home in Paribagh. Some of the
passengers later died of burns suffered during this criminal activity.
I can understand that the opposition parties are
upset with the government and feel cheated and neglected in the coming
election. But what right do they have to victimize innocent human beings who
must work to survive, who must go out of their homes to find work, report to
work, buy groceries, visit family members or friends, attend to business, etc.?
Because of the political impasse almost everyone
inside Bangladesh is now suffering – from an ordinary rickshaw driver to a fruit
or vegetable vendor to a mason to a businessman. Life is sacred. But the way innocent
people are getting killed as a result of this political madness, absolute
criminality, I don’t think these killers have any regard for human lives. I am
told that they get paid for such criminal activities – the larger the target
they hit the higher the payment.
Bangladesh is losing hundreds of crores of taka
every day because of this political insanity, and people are dying and
suffering for getting caught in the midst of a political tug of war, but
compromise between the major parties is not in the air. Politics continue to
betray our people! It is sad time to be in Bangladesh.
I left from Paribagh around 11 p.m. Ikrar’s
drivers dropped me off at the airport and fortunately there was no problem
reaching the airport safely. The Qatar Airways left Dhaka on time and reached
JFK (New York) via Doha on time.
---
In 1853-63, Elahi Baksh, who was born in Bengal,
wrote a book named Khurshid Jahan Numa (approximate meaning: Sun of the World
Show) in which he discussed the history of Bengal until 1863. In this book, he
quoted excerpts from Riaz-us-Salatin, written by Syed
Ghulam Husayn Saleem Zayedpuri, who was born in Ayodhya (Ajodhya). This latter
book was written in Farsi in 1788 at the behest of George Woodney who was the
Commercial Resident in India when East India Company had taken effective
control of Bengal. Both Baksh and Zayedpuri were highly critical of Bengali
Hindu character of their times. Zayedpuri wrote, “Nobody in the world is as corrupt, shrewd, deceptive and hostile as a
Bengali [Hindu] in matters of business dealings, trading and family affairs.
They don’t think that they have to pay off their loans ever. If they make a
promise of completing a task in a day, they don’t fulfill their promises even
in a year.”
I wish the Bengali character has become better
compared to the above highly critical observations made by Zayedpuri. But alas,
corruption remains a serious problem and has actually become much worse than
what it was some 225 years ago during the early stage of English colonization
of Bengal.
To be continued >>>>
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