Hartal

One reason for this disappointing outcome of the public debate is that the hartal analysis has hardly examined the issue from the perspective of citizens' rights and authority in democracy. I want to addresses the issue anew by raising two questions: First, who are imposing hartals on Bangladesh? Second, what is the purpose of these hartals? Why are the ordinary people being asked to suffer harsh personal and socio-economic hardships that often accompany this political power game?

These questions must appear stupid. For, their answers are known to virtually anyone interested in Bangladesh's current affairs: First, the opposition parties execute hartal. Second, the main purpose for executing hartals is to protect and promote welfare of the people or nation.

The above answers, although appearing quite intuitive, are oversimplified. They are, therefore, elaborated below to divert the query to a different direction, i.e., to inspire a different tone in the hartal analysis.

Bangladesh's political battleground is soldiered by several dozens of political parties. All of them, however, do not call hartal. This is not because they consider this partisan protest as a wrong political move. Such kind of political wisdom is fabulously foreign in this land of democracy. The main reason is, these parties are too small to benefit from this effective, and particularly popular, political weapon.

Over the past fifteen years- the so-called golden period of democracy in Bangladesh- two political parties, Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), are alternately ruling the country. This means that when AL forms government, BNP becomes the main opposition and vice versa. Thus, when BNP forms government, AL rejects the election outcome complaining 'cute' conspiracy, boycotts parliament and executes hartals demanding the resignation of government. In their turn, BNP follows AL's footprints when people return them to the opposition.

Both AL and BNP argue that hartal is a political right that is guaranteed in our constitution! And we, the citizens of Bangladesh, seem to have tacitly accepted this explanation.

Politics is a public affair, which means that anyone involved with this activity must claim that the sole objective of their actions is targeted to improving public welfare. This was indeed the perception when the term was originally conceived. However, politicians around the world have played the game so badly that this denotation has virtually vanished and has been replaced by an acrimonious and satirical connotation.

Thus, no matter what AL-BNP politicians say, people know that they are after one target and one target only- capturing the state power. And they pursue all political tricks to achieve this objective, no matter how mean they are. They do not give a dam about what happen to people, whose welfare they are pretending to protect and promote. They do not care if their actions humiliate the nation before the world, make it a laughing-stock and give the impression that people living here must be uncivilised since they do not know the simple rules of civilised society.

University students are supposed to take up independent life after completing their degrees. They are expected to support themselves, and if required their families, get married and plan for starting their own families etc. Since hartals delay this process, this loss in young life is painfully permanent.

But, there is something very serious about the effects of hartal on private and public universities that deserves our sincere attention. Students of private universities are getting degrees on time, but those of public universities do not. Thus, in addition to creating monetary and non-monetary hardships discussed above, hartal originates a process of life-long inequality between students of two types of institutions for higher learning. Are the victims aware of this kind of life-long loss caused by hartal?

We can sum up the whole situation relating to hartal with one overwhelming proposition: This so-called political culture in our society is a sinister source of social injustice. It is a virulent violation of the fundamental principles of democracy and unacceptable infringement on citizens' rights and authority.