Mirror Mirror: Hello Handsome!

Do We Congratulate Ourselves Too Much?

Let's not look at a mirror in awe of the sight before us, instead let us look at what we  see and question it. How can we do better? If we can make that sort of a critical eye part of our national character, I think we could progress much better in the coming years.

While in a concert, albeit brilliantly arranged (3 or 4-days long Eastern Classical  shows, great stage and a great crowd), I heard one of our politicians declare in her closing statement that we are the BEST audience in the world. Its not a big claim, and its not a usual claim. Even if such a competition exists, the claim is harmless. This might be one instance where we're praising ourselves unnecessarily, when we could actually do that better by our actions instead. E.g., there could be massive support from industry and government for artists in our country both locally and internationally. India has a world renowned flutist; how can we have a maestro too?

This post is closely aligned with what I've stated in Beware the Wide-Eyed Optimist, but today I was just thinking of our education system and whether we're preparing the population for the future. While doing interviews, going through CVs at the workplace, or interacting with random young individuals, I often meet people who are self assured, and confident (approaching cocky). While conversing I am not convinced I have the same confidence in that person as the person holds for his/her own self. At other times, the flashy self confidence is not there, and all of the inadequacies is just there for you to see. A few times, you find a candidate you can talk to or work with.

Our language has the saying 'অল্প বিদ্যা ভয়ঙ্কর' ∞ 'Its dangerous to know a little', implying that a person should not get cocky with what little she has learnt, but continue on the journey with humility gathering knowledge. Its blatantly unfair to just state that the young are at fault. Instead of doing that we really need to reassess our society's value system and definitely our education system.

We should prevent sentimental siding from society, starting from parents, peers and maybe even some educators; looking down on some subjects (such as Sociology) and vice-versa (engineering or medicine). It would be ideal to do away with those distinctions and provide school students a better understanding of what scopes, what industries our country holds, so that they may be inspired to choose a path and have an objective view of the purpose of education along with the broad perspectives that early education provides. The system itself should have mechanisms to identify a student's strengths and helping her grow.

So I think it is great that we recently did some reassessing of how we're testing our students, but a dangerous trend seems to be rising also since we see a great rate of passes and top grades are being used as proof of a political party's contribution while in power! Instead of using 'education' for such means, we need to think of decades ahead and harbor a country where social, technological research takes place, and the educated are employed in solving problems and puzzles to move our country ahead.

Related:
A College Degree Sorts Job Applicants, but Employers Wish It Meant More
EDU Tech Magazine (May 2012 Issue, India)
Breaking the Stigma of Social Studies

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Beware the Wide-Eyed Optimist

As a loon, I am quite suspicious of the sane population, especially those wide-eyed optimists who insist the country is a beautiful place and that we're superior to so many countries around us.

Age is one factor that prevents these people from joining the legions of us loons. In fact, I can testify to the fact that I am much more the lunatic now than I was a few notches back. And I see a lot of the shades of positivity and compliance in a lot of the younger folks that I used to possess. Now and then I also meet the fascinating characters who have stayed those shades even at an age in proximity to my own! Well, Hallelujah!

I also, have lots of opinions about that, loony as they may be, that the wide-eyed optimism is harming us, - not doing us any good. As with the wide-eyed of any age, there seems to be a tendency to forget or forgive the authorities from any duty or accountability. If only having an increased number of cell phones on our hands, less child mortality and and sustained level of growth were enough to make our lives better, I imagine I would feel it. Maybe the wide eyed ones feel it, and I would only extend to them, my jealousy and admiration, but I don't perceive we're getting any better. I only see, in contrast to their views, a drop in every humane indicator (compassion, respect, courtesy, honesty and the like), and a drop in my sense of security* (yes even with all of our fine top-gun sunglassed policemen, RAB and armed police and their exposed weapons big and small, and their check posts**).

I would even go as far as saying that these wide-eyed-ness is a threat to our road to developing out of this mire of corruption and bureaucratic vertigo.


* Actual security and the sense of security, I think are different. I haven't died yet from a stabbing or got robbed of my car or belongings, which might mean I am secure, but I don't feel its very hard to die from a stabbing or get robbed, and I don't feel I can get justice if it should come to that - that's the 'sense of security'.

** Sometimes giving me the impression of this being Palestine or Iraq!

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Recycle. Politics. The "Lorem Ipsum" of a Parliament

In publishing and designing websites, there is a paragraph of Latin that designers use to demonstrate a space where text should go, and how much. That paragraph could be:

Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet mi id ligula amet morbi tellus sollicitudin dolor pellentesque. Morbi accumsan lacinia velit metus morbi ipsum sit sollicitudin consectetur. Ullamcorper viverra sollicitudin sit mauris posuere auctor praesent id lorem. Tortor elit facilisis sit ligula tellus ac sollicitudin facilisis sollicitudin.

There are supportive sites on the Internet where you could generate this amount of text depending on the space on your website or page you want to fill.

While watching our parliament session last night (and of course watching them in general), I wonder if they get trained in their own little academies on how to fill the time given to them to answer questions, with meaningless Latin. Of course Latin is not meaningless to those who understand, and I am not sure who is meant to be the audience for these politicians when they start with their filler speeches!

Last night, a question was put for the home ministry, an apt question considering the recent display of the audacity and the ineffectiveness of the police force. The question was not so well stated, due to what I think is the attempt (of all in parliament) to be theatrical. Since the home minister was not present (?), the second-in-command was asked to answer. That is what inspired this post.

The filler speech could be broken down to two things, and they have 2 or 3 minutes usually to fill:

1. - Draw attention to the failures of the past regime with lots of emotional appeals, hand gestures, pauses - things that will put many stage actors to shame. This works too, since our two major parties almost without fail have cyclically come to power and have found it enough time to take whatever it is they need to survive the years they are to be out of power
2. - Speak highly of the dreams, goals and steps taken by the founding father of the party.

I was happy when the law & order question was asked, since, I and many citizens believe that the home minister should have stepped down or been fired for her inadequacies. Even on the evening this question was posed, there was a report in all the morning papers of a policeman beating a judge outside a courthouse somewhere.

While the fillers were being delivered, I felt like laughing out loud (LOL) like the lunatic I am, and I did to some extent. I could not believe the answer I was getting! Then he also pointed out that they increased their salaries and so and so forth.

We have managed to really turn our heads from what is the root of a problem and just throw money around as if the problem was that they didn't have enough toys or enough to eat. He mentioned they bought pick up trucks too. An editorial was also published which asked if we need to spend even more money on them to get them to do their jobs! A lot of people say they have a tough job. I don't disagree, but I think, so does a farmer, a rickshawala, a thela-gariwala (men who transport heavy goods on pull carts) and so many other people who live on less than them. Who will rise up and put us in perspective? Thanks for asking the question at least MP Fazlul Azim. Don't know what kind of a person you really are, but thanks for the question last night indeed.

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POLICE: Fundamentally Lacking

What they can do in broad daylight
probably surpasses anything
you might expect to see in other countries

I think TIB (Transparency International - Bangladesh) once conducted a public survey on what was perceived as the most corrupt public office. The people, not surprisingly, gave the top prize to the two which are responsible to provide justice to the masses - the courts, and law enforcers.

If you follow some of the links above, you'll see that they both cried "foul" at the survey, and loudly protested this marring with falsehood of their angelic characters.

Meanwhile, some brave journalists have shown reports even way back then of the corruption of the police force. Even the news of the Police HQ opening up for everyone to come to file cases contained an important fact - that the public was having a hard time getting regional police stations to make simple general diaries:

থানায় সাধারণ মানুষের ভোগান্তি দূর করতে ঢাকা মহানগর পুলিশের (ডিএমপি) সদর দপ্তরে সাধারণ ডায়েরি (জিডি) গ্রহণে বিশেষ সেল খোলা হচ্ছে। তবে আগের মতো সংশ্লিষ্ট থানায় গিয়ে জিডি করার ব্যবস্থাও চালু থাকছে।

... এ বিষয়ে জানতে চাইলে ডিএমপির কমিশনার বেনজীর আহমেদ প্রথম আলোকে বলেন, ‘অনেক সময় থানায় জিডি করতে গেলে নানা ধরনের ভোগান্তির শিকার হতে হয়। কখনো কখনো পুলিশের বিরুদ্ধে টাকা নেওয়ার অভিযোগ আসে। এসব বন্ধ করতে শিগগিরই ডিএমপির সদর দপ্তরে জিডি গ্রহণে ওয়ান স্টপ সার্ভিস চালু হচ্ছে।’
(March, 2012)

One TV report showed how a police officer was in shady operations with confiscated drugs in either Gazipur or Ashulia. And now, its back again on today's news: থানায় ফেনসিডিল ব্যবসা!

We've all also seen how they've stood back during hartals/strikes while the student wing of BAL played vigilante against the opposition.

Another report even more disturbing, since it tells about the state of our humanity and not just the police: Cops 'discipline' orphan kids

There are plenty that we received through the news and there are plenty of stories we as citizens can tell from our own experiences, and the only answer we seem to be getting is a denial. That is to say that we are all liars, and to look away from the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with the system, something deep rooted that needs to be taken care of immediately to ensure that a country's citizens don't fear and loathe the very people entrusted with their safety! What the DMP commissioner admits above, doesn't make sense of the solution he is offering. Again, a lack of focus on the what is really wrong. We need a system that trains people to serve the public, instead of a system which ensures they can turn the public away, or worse, play them for a quick buck! (I wonder who had the idea to change the color of their uniform and put the slogan: "ও পুলিশ, বন্ধু আমার" (~o police, my friend)! I bet they had many meetings to get that far. If someone could just let them know, it was a waste of time and money!)

Related:
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Citizen Help Request
DMP's Feats
Guerilla Street Art (The police-mime photo manipulation is from here)

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Strictly Stupid

If someone asked me at 13 for what pops up in my mind when i hear "rules", I'd probably say "Rules were meant to be broken". Its a knock off of "Records were meant to be broken" I suppose, but it was very popular at the time when breaking rules at school seemed like the logical choice.

Now, in the real world, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I still find people clueless to the whole purpose of rules. People are breaking rules that matter and abiding strongly to little ones that defy reason. Very little thought goes into achieving efficiency.

Last time i faced such nuisance was when i ordered a cake from Coopers. I wanted a two story chocolate fudge cake (yes i did) and they showed me a brochure with pictures of three white and blue wedding cakes and i chose one as a model to follow for my cake. I soon realized from talking to the Coopers guy that they plan to cover my chocolate cake with white icing and pink flowers to look exactly like the one in the pic. Why? Its a rule. I tried to reason with him, that i didn't want white and pink on my chocolate cake (that should be a rule), you can just do without it and put chocolate shavings on as decorations the way they would if i order it just flat! No can do. Was it written in stone? I guess it was and used as a foundation to the building Coopers existed in.

People limit themselves everyday, following baseless rules. Our government is quite famous for it, their bureaucracy or red tape. I say, its time to break these rules. Lets think for a minute why we do what we do!

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