Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
বাংলা
   
Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Epaper

Friday Notes

Janatar Mancha tales, coaching centres and new newspapers

Published : Friday, 10 February, 2017 at 9:08 PM  Count : 326
Syed Badrul Ahsan
So we now have a new Election Commission in place. The search party has done its work and has gone home. But if you thought everything was in order, you would be wrong. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has already made it known that it is unhappy about the new team taking over and has said clearly that the composition of the new EC is a reflection of the Prime Minister's wishes. There is then the matter of whether or not the new Chief Election Commissioner, KM Nurul Huda, was part of the Janatar Mancha which in turn was part of the democratic process that forced the Khaleda Zia government from power in March 1996.
Nurul Huda has denied that he had anything to do with the Janatar Mancha. That is his view, of course. But the bigger point here is one of why questions keep getting raised over who took part in or stayed away from the Janatar Mancha. At the time the forum was launched --- and there are many who recall those days only too well --- the one overriding objective before the country was to have the country return to normal democracy. That return was certainly blocked by the non-election of February 1996, an exercise that was boycotted by the Awami League and other political parties. The Janatar Mancha, it ought to be admitted, was an important component of the broad popular struggle for a fresh new election to be supervised by a caretaker government. And that is indeed what came to pass in June 1996.
There is, therefore, little reason to look askance at those who joined the Janatar Mancha, especially individuals who were in the service of the government at the time. Association with the Janatar Mancha should not be a stigma. In societies like ours, where the cause of democracy has historically been undermined through the unwillingness of myopic politicians to see the writing on the wall, it has often taken a wide-ranging group of citizens, an inclusive one if you will, to force the creation of conditions that will restore an acceptable balance in politics.
The Janatar Mancha helped the government of Begum Khaleda Zia in an important way in 1996. It assisted it in a creation of conditions facilitating the formation of a caretaker government, to which administration the Prime Minister handed over power and which development was then followed by a new general election in June of the year. In essence, the Janatar Mancha made an enormous contribution in our lives through pushing the country into breaking out of the logjam in which politics and history had remained trapped since August 1975.
There is little reason, therefore, for people to apologise for being part of the Janatar Mancha or deny that they had anything to do with it. What of course matters is whether, having been associated with the Mancha, they have been able to remain non-partisan and professional in their various new roles after that dramatic episode in our history.
***
President Abdul Hamid has once again warned the nation's private universities against turning themselves into money-making institutions. It is a sentiment we share with the President. The question, though, is whether any measures are being taken by the State to clamp down on such blatantly commercial activities by those whose professed goal is to provide quality education to the young. Clearly, that quality education is missing. With all the exorbitant fees --- and they keep going up year after year --- students and parents are compelled to cough up, you cannot be too sure if our private educational institutions are actually fulfilling the country's needs.
It is not just universities but schools as well which worry us to no end. There is a ubiquity of high-cost, indeed profit-oriented coaching centres to which teenagers flock day after day because they need to have better results at their SSC or Senior Cambridge examinations, as the case may be. That begs the question: Don't these young get the kind of classroom instruction they should be getting at their schools? It is a depressing picture that hits you whenever you survey the education scene in the country. Teachers who should be providing thorough and substantive education to their pupils are often found to be more active in the coaching centres they run or are associated with all through the afternoons and evenings once normal school times get over.
Observe these teenagers, the harassment and the physical torment they go through as they lurch from one coaching centre to the other after school hours. The pressure to do well, to remain level or go beyond their peers affects their health and takes away the glow that should characterise their physical being. These boys and girls do not sleep well, for they attend classes at school, then do the same at the coaching centres and finally do these same things over again at home before and after dinner. We have developed an education system that is killing our young. Who will now step forward to retrieve them from the hard, bony clutches of non-performing teachers and greedy coaching centres?
And the absolutely harassed guardians? When you are informed of all the hard-earned income they have to hand over to their children's schools and coaching centres, it is shock that hits you in the face. How do these parents make ends meet for their families?
There is little point in arguing that a wholesale change in direction by the State, indeed by the education authorities, is called for. The system is too entrenched to be done away with. What you have is a faulty and flawed education system based on money. In other words, when money or the means of earning it in astronomical proportions are the centerpiece of the system, you do not educate the young. You only add to a widening of the vicious cycle of corruption in the country.
And that is what capitalism does to a country where ground realities have historically demanded a socialist order. What would our great socialist leader Tajuddin Ahmad make of it all were he alive today? But, then again, had Tajuddin Ahmad been around, there would not be the chaos that we live through today.
***
Rumours abound in the newspaper industry. Every now and then you hear of plans made by individuals or industrial houses about coming forth with their own newspapers. That is a good thing if this desire for new newspapers comes together with a need to ensure quality. Again, you cannot but ask the very crucial question of whether or not the people who will own these newspapers or finance them will permit the media people they take on board to exercise the kind of freedom which allows newspapers to make a mark in society.
Too many newspapers in Bangladesh have come and gone because of owners who would not give a free hand to their editors in the shaping of policy and setting out of goals for their newspapers. The newspapers which have done exceedingly well are those where the owners have remained faceless, have indeed never sought to override their editors or loom over them as huge shadows. The point should be obvious: the more newspapers we have in this country, the merrier we will feel. But they should be media outlets which their owners should not in any way try to influence or tamper with. Enlightened and qualified journalists --- editors, executive editors, news editors, indeed everyone who has been part of the media in the professional sense --- are there to ensure that good, healthy newspapers hit the newsstands.
 ***
As you sip your morning tea and wait for the day to open out wider, you cannot help wondering why it is that countries often choose the wrong men and women to lead them into the future. Think of America, where it is not just an erratic President who is in the White House today but an entire team of people who simply do not grasp the meaning of political power. Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon --- none of these individuals has any idea of why decency and grey matter are important in politics. In the past, only Richard Nixon lied and then paid the price. Today, an entire administration spouts falsehoods. And nothing happens. What has gone wrong with America?
That is a shame. And shame comes again from observing what has been happening in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The gentle, polite, efficient Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam is now caught in a struggle to hold on to power in the face of an onslaught by a woman named Sasikala and her followers. Sasikala, once a companion of the late J. Jayalalithaa, has now developed the very bad ambition of being Tamil Nadu's next ruler. She just might succeed. When that happens, democracy will go through nose bleeding one more time.r
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Associate Editor,
The Daily Observer




LATEST NEWS
MOST READ
Also read
Who will look after poor and helpless patients?
Rohingya repatriation process: Ensure human rights
Power price hike: eight times in eight years
Save Dhaka people from mugging
We expect responsible comments from ministers
Fulfil primary teachers’ genuine demands
Return of abductees shrouded in mystery
Denial will not save education system
Editor : Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury
Published by the Editor on behalf of the Observer Ltd. from Globe Printers, 24/A, New Eskaton Road, Ramna, Dhaka.
Editorial, News and Commercial Offices : Aziz Bhaban (2nd floor), 93, Motijheel C/A, Dhaka-1000.
Phone: PABX- 41053001-06; Online: 41053014; Advertisement: 41053012.
E-mail: district@dailyobserverbd.com, news©dailyobserverbd.com, advertisement©dailyobserverbd.com, For Online Edition: mailobserverbd©gmail.com
🔝
close