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July 03,
2017 Two
disasters, two countries, two peoples
Photo: AFP Consecutively on June 13 and 14, major disasters hit
Bangladesh and the United Kingdom. On the morning of the 13th, landslides
killed more than 150 people, and four army personnel, in Chittagong and
Chittagong Hill Tracts districts of Bangladesh. And in the early hours of the
14th, a fire in a 24-storied apartment complex, the Grenfell Tower, killed
around 80 people in London. Both the disasters killed poor and marginalised
people. In Bangladesh, the victims were “nameless” as well. While a faulty fire alarm system and inflammable
building materials may be attributed to the London fire, massive illegal
deforestation and hill-cutting led to the landslides in Bangladesh. Sadly,
most Bangladeshis had other “more important” problems to address than doing
anything for the landslide victims. However, there's more to the story. While
the poor are inert and indifferent to disasters (beyond the immediate
vicinity), the rich aren't forthcoming with financial support and empathy
with the victims. As it appeared on British media reports, including
BBC, for the first few days, more than 80 percent of the news coverage was
about the Grenfell Tower disaster. Even more than two weeks after the
disaster, British media, politicians, members of the
civil society, intellectuals, and ordinary people were mourning the
“avoidable” deaths, empathising with the victims, helping them generously,
and condemning the various government departments for negligence, which led
to the disaster. The Queen, Prime Minister Theresa May, national leaders,
including local MP Jeremy Corbyn, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and thousands of people visited the disaster
zone. Jeremy Corbyn has gone to the extent of
asking the government to requisition homes of the rich for fire
survivors—like Churchill did to rehabilitate survivors of German bombings
during World War II. Fifteen victims of the fire met the prime minister at
her residence. There was also a one-minute silence observed at the Buckingham
Palace; and on Monday, June 18, the whole nation observed one-minute silence,
to show respects to the victims.
Photo: Anvil Chakma Meanwhile Bangladeshis who understand, and enjoy
cricket, were busy watching the live telecast of the ICC cricket competition
from Britain; and in the same day of the disaster, the prime minister went to
her scheduled overseas trip to Sweden. Within 48 hours, people's attention
seemed to have shifted from the disasters that befell the poor. However, had
the victims been members of the urban rich, Bangladesh would have mourned
their deaths longer. Poor villagers, urban squatters, and slum dwellers in
Bangladesh are much more fragmented, isolated, inert, introvert, and as “sack
of potatoes”—to paraphrase Marx—don't take “political” decisions (in the
broad sense of the term) on their own, and need outsiders, often their own
class enemies, to lead them or take decisions on their behalf. Hence this
collective neglect of the poor by people who “matter”, and those who don't,
across Bangladesh! The bulk of the poor urban and rural squatters in
Bangladesh—many totally landless—come from the typical fragmented and
faction-ridden peasant communities, having strong patron-client relationship,
where the powerless clients having very low self-esteem, work only for their
patrons, not for society or the nation at large. To the bulk of these poor,
society is made of immediate clan members or uprooted fellow proletarians;
the state and nation seem to be too remote and abstract to understand, let
alone integrate into. They only know their local patrons, the village elders
or matbars, “tribal chiefs”, and “mafia
bosses” who are well-connected to local MPs, powerbrokers, and ministers, who
could be ruthless and benign at the same time. "The ubiquitous matbar-MP-minister
nexus, not nationalism, determines the politics of Bangladesh. Thus, the
environment-unfriendly Rampal power plant, rapes
and abductions of poor women, and all disasters beyond their immediate
neighbourhood are too distant and irrelevant to the bulk of the population.
Why so? The ubiquitous matbar-MP-minister
nexus, not nationalism, determines the politics of Bangladesh. Thus, the
environment-unfriendly Rampal power plant, rapes
and abductions of poor women, and all disasters beyond their immediate
neighbourhood are too distant and irrelevant to the bulk of the population.
Why so? We know, the East India Company added certain new
elements to Bengal's administration, land system, and culture. It was the new
land system called the Permanent Settlement aka the Zamindari system
of 1793, which radically moulded the administrative machinery, and the
popular and political culture of what is now Bangladesh. The Zamindari system fragmented the rural
community and the budding urban society by establishing neo-feudal
relationship and patron-client relationship. Surprisingly, Paschim Banga (erstwhile West
Bengal) also had a similar land system but elites, middle and working classes
there have been very assertive and uncompromising. They empathise with
victims of natural and manmade disasters, and don't shy away from questioning
and challenging the authorities. One may impute this to the rise of Western educated
upper, and middle classes in and around Kolkata since late 18th century,
mainly emerging out of the direct beneficiaries of the Zamindari system. Members of these
Hindu Bhadralok classes have been
urbane, capitalist, and some even active leaders of trade unions, socialist
and communist movements. Again, unlike Bangladesh, less dependency on
agriculture—due to the urbanisation and industrialisation process that
started in late 18th century in and around Kolkata—has weakened peasant and
pre-capitalist production relations, and patron-client relationship in Paschim Banga. Bangladesh, which was a rural and agrarian
hinterland of West Bengal up to 1947, still remained culturally rural and
peasant. Hence the collective indifference of the people and their government
to the suffering of the common people across Bangladesh. One may attribute
this “alienation-indifference syndrome” to “post-colonialism”, which renowned
British-Pakistani sociologist late Hamza Alavi has used in the pejorative sense of the expression.
As Alavi has argued, having an over-developed
bureaucracy and military, and an under-developed civil society, ruling
classes in post-colonial Pakistan and Bangladesh lack much sense of belonging
to the state, or patriotism which may be translated into “colonial hangover”,
“mass alienation from people”, and “absence of empathy/sympathy with the
ordinary people”. The culture of unaccountability of the ruling/rich
classes—never that synonymous till the rise of Ershad
autocracy—has also turned the ordinary people apathetic to others'
sufferings, as they have their own grievances to redress. Now, is it necessary or possible to compare the
behaviour of the British government and people with their Bangladeshi counterparts vis-à-vis the recent disasters that befell
their countries in mid-June? We simply can't compare countries with accountable governance having well-entrenched democratic,
urban, and egalitarian values with a “post-colonial”, “soft state” like
Bangladesh, which lacks these values. The ruling elites and ordinary people
are segregated vertically, on political and economic lines, and the ordinary
people are separated from each other horizontally, on factional, religious,
political, and economic lines in Bangladesh, a fractured post-colonial
state—not a well-knit nation state. Interestingly, many poor countries, including India,
manage disasters more efficiently than Bangladesh. It's not lack of resources
that impedes disaster management, but it's lack of
national solidarity, accountable governance, and mass empathy with people in
distress. Surprisingly, “baby boomers” (born between 1946 and 1960)—the
generation that took part in the Liberation War—and “millennials”
(born between mid-1980s and early 2000s) of Bangladesh (both supposed to be
articulated, brave, and liberal), to put it mildly,
also seem to be apathetic and opportunistic, even during times of national
emergencies. The writer teaches security studies at
Austin Peay State University. He is the author of
several books, including his latest, Global Jihad and
America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan (Sage,
2014). |
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