Bangladesh e Amra bolte ki bujhaye

প্রাই শুনতে পাই যখন রাজনীতিবিদ দের কে নিয়ে সমালোচনা হয় , তখন অনেকেই বলে বসে "উনাদের কে তো আমরাই ভোট দিয়ে পদ দিয়েছি , তাই দোষ টা তো আমাদের নিজের।" আমি এটার এক মত হতে পারি না। একটু statistically বুঝাই কেন।এ ধরনের debate এ খেয়াল করে দেখুন যারা participant, তাদের মধ্যে কযে জন দেশ এর বাইরে থাকে। আমার দেখা ৩০% ই বাইরে থাকা রেসিডেন্ট কিংবা চাকরিজীবি অথবা স্টুডেন্ট যে এক আমলে দেশ এ থাকত। ওরা বাদ কারণ তারা actually ভোট দেয় না. তার পর আসেন বাকি ৭০% - এখানে sadly ৬০% লোক শুধু গালাগালি করতে ব্লগ কিংবা ফোরাম এ আসে। productive কোনো কথা বলে না - আর বললেও তা হয়ে যাই একে বারে Utopian world এর জন্য প্রযোজ্য। বাকি রইলো ১০% যারা হইতো বা দুই একটা ভালো কথা বলে, and then back to square one. আমার প্রশ্ন ta এখানে - এই যে শেষের ১০% এর কথা বললাম, এরা কি কোনো ভাবে দেশেr ভোটিং population এর sample size হিসাবে represent করে? করে না। 

ভোট ultimately দেয় রেশমা, যা কে ক্ষতি পূরণ হিসাবে ২৫০০০ টাকা দিলে আবার একই সরকার কে ভোট দিবে যার গাফিলতার কারণ সে ১৭ দিন আটকে ছিল। ভোট দেয় buet এ পরা commerce faculty র ছাত্র , যাকে ২০০ টাকা দিলে মনের আনন্দে ১০ তা গাড়ি ভাঙবে। ভোট দেয় গাজী ইলিয়াস, আমার চোখে যে Bangladesh er lack of education, ruining culture, deprived civic sense এন্ড backward mentality ke represent করে। বলতে লজ্জা লাগে, কিন্তু এরাই voter population. Facebook এ comment আর blogging করা public voter population কে represent করে না।একটু ভেবে দেখুন - ঢাকা এ ইংলিশ মিডিয়াম এ পরা টেলকো তে ব্র্যান্ড মার্কেটিং চাকরি যে করে, আপনি কি কোনো ভাবে তাকে গাজী ইলিয়াস টাইপ পাবলিক এর সাথে compare করতে পারবেন? but sadly এই গাজী ইলিয়াস টাইপ পাবলিক ই আমাদের জেনারেল population কে best represent করে।এখানে শাহবাঘ এর চেতনা সাহবাঘ পর্যন্তই। ওটা দেশের ১৬ কুটি মানুষ এর একটা micro society. Election এর সময় দেখবেন আবার নতুন নতুন অনেক চেতনা জাগবে এন্ড ঘুরে ফিরে যে লাউ সেই কদু ই থাকবে।

অতএব যখন কেউ বলে , যে politician দের কে আমরাই পদ দিয়েছি - একটু ভেবে দেখবেন "আমরা" বলতে কি বুঝে - কারণ আমার চোখে বাংলাদেশe কোনো consistent form of "আমরা" নাই।

Black and White politics doesn't work

The ironies of Bangladesh are very entertaining when observed from the outside. I previously posted a satire, proposing re-coloring our flag into black and white to show the constant efforts in always partitioning ourselves into two clubs. This blog post is probably along those lines with the Shahbagh movement in mind, where the nation has truly been divided in various parts. Event after event, twist after twist, after a month the feared and inevitable has happened - its nation vs. religion - two fundamental faiths and alliances that each individual holds dear to his heart and difficult to part with either.

The current theme I seem to read out is – If you have been to Shahbagh, you are patriotic and as far as ‘Mullas’ are concerned, you are a Kafir/Atheist. If you didn’t go to Shahbagh, then you are a non-patriotic and as far as ‘Buddhijibis’ are concerned, you are Razakaar and have roots that did not support the liberation / collaborated with West Pakistan.

But here is the irony - the grey zone. 

We have a class who are so called patriotic and nation loving. Come to our houses between 8pm - 11pm when there isn’t a blackout. You will find women with undisputed control over the remote and Hindi soaps fueling the life blood of the household entertainment. New age parents who salute the Bangla language have their kids singing Bollywood songs before learning to speak the mother tongue. And few on the extreme go to the lengths of publicly insulting the religion they were born to, and defend their stand point by glamorizing themselves as 'high end thinkers' and practitioners of Atheism. 

The other side of the fence is equally as bad - if not worse - a measly screenshot of words against the holy prophet will provoke us to go out into the streets and spend the whole day burning things in their sight - but the regular Azaan won't inspire us to pray for 5 minutes. Our scholarly examples in this club memorize the Holy Quran without knowing its true meaning or applying it to life. Confusing Islam with Arabic culture and using the religion as a trade to run the show. They capitalize on the ignorance by raising Fatwas, Jihadee morals and what not.

We do have something in common though - majority of us fall within the 'swing vote' population. We will change our thought process depending on the political climate. So why even bother partitioning into clubs when neither party is a true example of either?

Going back to the satire, the flag should actually be a gradient of colours - starting from white to black with shades of grey in between to choose your stand point from. End of the day, people choose clubs to save their back side - not because they have any true attachment. For those who do have a true attachment, if your team loses, you have two options:- 

• Change your jersey and throw away the old for good 
• Keep your jersey and leave the stadium for good. 

The smart guys did just that after liberation in 71 and are now reaping benefits.

A Realisation

Was sitting amongst peers / colleagues today and realized the vast amount of experience and qualifications around me. Professional degrees, double masters, Oxford / Cambridge grads, even few PHds. How did I stack up? Needed to come up with something to curb the growing inferiority complex. Well...

I went to the School of Moral Values where my mother was the principal. Attended the College of Independence where my father was a visiting lecturer. Later did a Bachelors degree from Open University of Friends where I did a major in Trust and minor in Diplomacy. Also did a Masters degree in Problem Solving from the International University of Life. Finally a thesis in Common Sense which has been accepted for PHd at numerous institutions where it is not taught.

What I realized was that I am what people have made me; my family, friends, co-workers in all phases of life. The people who I have built my life around. It's people who defines us and develop our qualities - not the papers or certificates. Felt good.

Extinction of Fundamental Scientific Knowledge

This is going to be quite unstructured, as it's just a conversation I had put in writing. hence I couldn't come up with a better title either. It occurred to me today that future generations, particularly those born in the last decade or so, will find it quite difficult to grasp the fundamentals of technology thanks to the advancements made in product development. Sure, they'll know how an update made on twitter traverses to Facebook, understand how cookies work and be able to spot the difference between a mobile app and a website viewed on a phone. However they'll find it very difficult to appreciate how computer networks operate, or something more fundamental like wireless / radio communications. In fact a colleague used an old Nokia 6600 (Panda) as a day replacement while waiting for his iPhone to be unlocked, and his 4/5 year old daughter found it incredibly difficult to believe that it was a phone until he called her on it and she spoke to him.

Picture the following - it's 1960; (you're probably imagining it thru a mode offered by Instagam but that's fine). Your father is in his early teens. He comes home after school just in time to hear the match updates on the "Transistor" which may have looked like this:

These devices were called Transistor (or Transistor Radios) for a reason - the semiconducting device / electrical component which allowed incoming radio wave signals to be amplified and converted into electrical signals was called a transistor (or something along those lines) but basically the transistor revolutionized how radios work (by bringing down the size & price by several times), and so consumer grade radios were simply called Transistors - it's bit like how we call the thing in the kitchen just a "microwave" instead of "Microwave Oven". Transistors in the 1950/60 were almost analogically the micro-processors in the 1980/1990, in helping complex large high end technology reduce their size into a more consumer market. But this article is less about technology and its evolution but more about how the future generation has limited understanding thanks to the advancements themselves.

So going back to your father playing around with the radio, he'd have to do at least one or two of the following:

1. Plug in the radio / Turn it on - if it didn't turn on, he'd check a small fuse box behind the radio
2. Switch to Shortwave / Long Wave (AM/FM etc)
3. Position the aerial in a direction he's previously figured out works best
4. Dial the knob on the right untill a clear audio can be heard by finding the right channel


Today's generation of teen would first of all not have to worry about reaching home in time to catch the match update, probably see it streamed thru iPlayer app on his mobile device while at school or on the bus, and would take no more than 2 - 3 taps on the screen to enjoy pretty much the same experience. But here's just two fundamental concepts which you and I born in the 70's or 80's might take for granted, but today's or tomorrow's generation may actually find it difficult to conceive:

1. How things are powered - as long as there is a battery and the manual says plug in every night, my phone runs. So no understanding of the concepts like "Earthing", "110V vs 220V", "Amp Fuse". In fact I think in the future, teens won't even know what electricity is because so many electronics will be solid state and battery driven / green fuel type. Who knows.

2. Absolutely no idea what Radios Waves are - forget about the understanding of the different bands and frequency channels. I was replaying the thought process in mind - when I used to teach elementary Physics at GCE level, I could start descriging Gamma Rays after having it compared with Radio Waves - the idea is that if a student in his teens knows what radio waves are, you can then ask them to picture something of much higher frequency - because the user of a radio has at least some idea of what short & long frequencies are, how they are measured. Maybe next time I see a youngster on the bus listening to Capital FM, I'll ask if s/he has any idea what the FM is all about. Then again in London, they won't be "bovered" so let's move on. 

In summary, as it's getting late here, I think the technology we have around us is "packaged" for consumer ease of use. Everything working element is under the bonnet of a shiny touch screen. All the complex processing are handled by software. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that - in fact I'm an advocate of innovation - what I am saying though is it's a pity that today's and future generation will not have a working understanding of a number of universal concepts such as Electricity, Radio, Magnetism, Optics etc.

Having said that, I'm sure my dad never required understanding what vacuum tubes were since transistors had replaced them, so I guess these kids should be fine !!