The People's Republic happens to be neither

Might is right, and that ugly truth once again confronted us after a teenager was tortured and killed in Sylhet by atrocious adults. The victim wasn't accused of murder, highway robbery or bank heist but some petty theft, an accusation his family has vehemently opposed. It's possible the boy died for a crime he never committed or a crime that's pocket change compared to the big ones happening every day. Yet he was tied to a post, and savagely beaten until his tormentors realised they could not derive anymore dividend of pleasure from their investment in cruelty. 

If that's a tragedy unto itself, it's only the tip of the iceberg. In this country, crime has become a way of life and punishments are as rare as Halley's Comet visible from Earth every 75-76 years.  It's also in this country that justice has become highly class-conscious. The rich and famous roam free after their hideous offences, while the poor get thrashed or thrown in jail, at times even for the crimes of others.

In the ultimate analysis, the strong and the weak in this People's Republic are locked in a quiet showdown. The role of ordinary people is as unclear as the purpose appendix serves in the human body. It's a contradiction how everything and anything done in the name of people is actually meant to undermine them.

At best, the people are to this country what props are to stage. They fill homes, streets, factories and offices, and, of course, the polling booths and political rallies, streaming in and out of the anthills of life signifying nothing but daily drudgery. People are there to die in road accidents, launch capsizes, and bomb explosions or, as the case of the drunken son of a lawmaker confirmed most recently, to provide sitting targets to privileged men venting their irritation at something as mundane as traffic congestion. 

Thus, everything in this country has two sides to it. One side protects the powerful, while another petrifies the powerless. If we are talking about terrorism as a global threat percolated to national level, it has trickled down to our daily life as the mighty incessantly terrorises the meek. Minus the beheading, someone has quipped, there is arguably little difference between the social disarray in this country and the lawlessness in militant-occupied territories.

The 2014 US report on human rights in the world claims that the people of Bangladesh aren't keen to go to the courts because they have lost confidence in the judicial system. Only if there were individual reports on other aspects of life would they have proved that people's confidence has crumbled in a whole lot of other institutions. They don't trust universities with academic standards, hospitals with diagnosis and treatment, police with law enforcement, bureaucracy with administration, banks with fees and charges and businessmen with social responsibilities.  

In short, the proverbial necklace has broken and the pearls are scattered. This country is now clearly divided into two population segments. A handful of knights of knavery are in their shining armours, and millions of gofers are living in fear. 

The rich and powerful, however, are notches above the poor and weak. Their lives are a unique blend of desperation bordering on ferocity and pretension bordering on perversion. They are energetic, entrepreneurial and lucky, but thoroughly convinced the end always justifies the means. In their unwavering minds, the People's Republic is a catchphrase that means exploitation of both in each other's name. 

The image of VIP cars on the wrong side of the road most graphically describes this circus around us. It shows two different rules exist on the same road where the powerful thumb their noses at the powerless. If this city scene is magnified to the country proportion, then elections, selections, allocations and delectations are all but governed by the same discriminating principle. George Orwell writes in Animal Firm, "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." Likewise, all citizens may be equal before constitution but some are more equal than others out on the road.

American musician Frank Zappa said the first thing one has to know about art is that it needs a frame. He argued that an artwork without a frame doesn't make a statement on the wall. Our great country suffers from that same deficiency because nothing has a frame here. Laws are loose, institutions are incompetent, leaders are libertine, wise are wicked, and professionals are perfunctory.

Thus, our beloved country has neither got the parameter nor the perimeter set for anything. Nothing is as it appears, and double or lack of standard blurs the lines between profundity and profanity. This People's Republic is a cruel joke, when a sublime title has been dubiously applied to a ridiculous proposition.

The writer is the Editor of weekly First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. 
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com