Each year has a major event which supersedes all other incidents but in several decades comes one incident, which not only defines a year but triggers an epochal change.
Bangladesh, in 2024, witnessed such an event - a revolution of the people, opposing a government which came to power through an acceptable, transparent and democratic election, but over time, becameabsolutist.
While July-August mass uprising ended in the victory of the people, the course of the ultimate triumph had been soaked in blood, tears and life altering injuries.
International partners must prioritise the masses: The martyrs gave their lives but those who are alive with lost limbs, a lingering sense of trauma face the challenging task of making a future with certain limitations. The state has come to their aid - a step which international development agencies need to follow.
After all, almost every international agency and overseas partner have expressed a firm desire to assist the interim government of the country to carry out much needed reforms and root out venal systems.
Development bodies which focus on youth development should allocate a major portion of their development budget in rehabilitating the youth who were maimed during the July-August mass movement.
A programme to support, train, integrate and rehabilitate is the call of the moment!
International agencies, especially those which work with electoral reforms and were not allowed to operate freely in the period prior to August 20215, must now be on the field and carry out a transparent survey to find out the political ethos of the time and what the general people want from the party, which comes to power in the coming elections.
On top, these organisations need to start initiating election related discussions, involving the young, civil society, academia and the defence forces.
The coming elections should come out of a traditional template and to do so, one major step would be to formally declare a list of key aspirations of the nation on which the contesting political parties would be asked to delineate their plans if elected to power.
This list will remain the touchstone in evaluating the government, to be formed following the elections in 2025/26.
For decades, international agencies have followed the rule of standing by the government in power and while the standing norm for such agencies is to cooperate with the power in place, in the last fifteen years, this cooperation appeared more like docile compliance wading into acquiescence.
Sorry to be blunt but most foreign supported programmes aimed at reforming the state infrastructure and ensure integrity either failed or delivered very little in the decade before August 2024.
If they had been more successful, the government in place would not have become totalitarian and alienated from the masses.
Anyway, no use raking up the ashes! We need to look forward and see how, in a transformed environment, these international bodies perform in creating a system that sustains democratic values and, most importantly, transparency.
For starters, development agencies should temper the culture of appeasing the power in place and begin a project with lasting positive impact for the masses in mind.
Solid media, not a subservient one: The media industry came under flak during the July-August uprising because it became polarised. Against objective reporting of events there was a concerted campaign to downplay the brutality perpetrated by the state machinery and gloss over the government's response. Such politicisation has severely dented media's credibility although journalists alone should not take the blame. Firstly, we must all understand that a journalist is not a robot or a machine, s/he is a human being and with needs and requirements of all other humans.
They have to live in society, pay rent, buy food, send children to school, enjoy pleasures of life and tackle medical emergencies. Therefore, just like others, they need to have a regular income. Now if that income from a media organisation comes with the oblique instruction to toe the line of the power in place, a journalist often has very little or no choice.
They will thrive in their profession, remaining honest to their work ethics when there's no undue pressure on them from the media owning entity.
The nexus between business conglomerates and governments in power is nothing new and the formula is a simple one - the media house panders to the government in exchange for state patronage for the business house owning it.
This is not to say, all business conglomerates interfere in the operation of media housesunder their ownership but those which did, neglecting and distorting the grievances of the masses, have scarred the image of the media.
It's also a fact that some journalists wore the political party colours and peddled the party lines but the houses for which they worked never warned them to tone down their sycophancy. This was obviously done with the nod of the owner of a media house who inevitably got favours from the previous government.
Such government-media nexus has devastating impact for journalism with journalists becoming the main targets of accusations.
Accreditation cards of journalists are being revoked, business privileges remain untouched - now that is unsettling!
During the awakening we saw both sides of journalism - one that was objective, true to fact and fearless and the other one, which was busy hushing up the inconvenient truths.
In a Bangladesh where despotism has fallen for a second time, the lesson for media house owners is that blatantly siding with the power in place leads to degradation of the profession.
Agreed, for a period, blessing from the government creates a sense of euphoria although the end is usually pathetic.
Media in a reformed Bangladesh must be devoted to the ethics of journalism!
The other rule to establish - people who made money through wheeling and dealing should be prevented from owning media outlets.
Such houses provide jobs but destroy what journalism is supposed to represent. Eventually, people who work for these houses are compelled to become political spokespersons or spin doctors instead of impartial journalists.
As Bangladesh steps on to 2025, the year we passed will be etched in minds and, in history. It will be annushorribilis for a despot and annus mirabilis for a nation.
Pradosh Mitra is a social observer!
