The invisible cost of roads and bridges
"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." — Paul Farmer
Ten, Didi," he told me in a flat voice, "Ten indigenous women were raped while constructing a road. One road."
"How long was the road?" asked Sathi. Why did it matter? I looked at her quizzically.
"When did this happen?" I asked him later.
"While constructing the Alikadam-Thanchi road last year."
The perpetrators would not be held accountable because as soon as the deed was done, they had the luxury of leaving the area. Their job gave them mobility, a freedom that was paid for by others.
I hadn't known Riton for longer than a couple of days. Sathi and I have been part of a common network for about three years now. We converse often and about many other things; our predicaments as development workers in the respective communities we work with, humanity heartbreak. As we were having this particular conversation, we were sharing breakfast: ruti, bhaji, cha.
I hadn't visited the Chittagong Hill Tracts in a very long time. The last time I had visited Rangamati and Bandarban was when I was about nine years old. It was a family trip that I don't remember much about. Except that there were a lot of jharnas, pretty mountains and a lot of greenery. I also remember a boat ride on a lake, which must have been the Kaptai Lake. I don't remember if I was concerned with the lack of roads and bridges at that point. I probably had no reason to be, since we were able to access all the tourist spots quite easily. Neither was I concerned about the price that the people there were paying for my luxurious travels.
Infrastructure-based development has its many benefits, the primary one being that it is easy to measure, easy to see. Theoretically, when a substantial proportion of a nation's resources are systematically directed towards long-term assets such as transportation, energy and social infrastructure, e.g. schools, universities, hospitals, we achieve long-term economic efficiency through growth in economically lagging regions and technological innovation and social equity by providing free education and affordable healthcare. So, when we measure development, we usually measure infrastructural development. Roads, bridges, railways, dams, power plants, things that are easy to see, expenditures which are easy to justify.
The Final Report on the Evaluation Study of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Rural Development Project cites responses by 95.8 percent of the study respondents who had "suffered innumerable critical problems due to lack of infrastructure". The lack of bridges over rivers, canals and between the hills, and severe communication problems create immense difficulties especially in the rainy seasons. Farmers lose out on business, children cannot go to school, the sick remain untreated, and expectant mothers give birth in dangerous conditions because they cannot be carried to hospitals and treatment centres. All of these scenarios present dire consequences of not developing the infrastructure.
The Thanchi-Alikadam Road in Bandarban is 33 kilometres long and cost about Tk 120 crore. What else did it cost?
The cost of a human life traumatised by rape and violence is not so visible or easily measurable. Even on the body of the rape survivor, the price she paid for existing is only temporarily visible. The psychological effects are, however, deeper and less temporary. Survivors of sexual assault experience both short- and long-term psychological effects of rape. Often, the most common psychological consequence of rape is self-blame, which the survivor uses as an avoidance-based coping tool that slows or, in many cases, stops the healing process. That is, if she survives.
But many women do not survive. Once they are raped, they are killed. The aftermath of rape involves a cluster of acute and chronic physical and psychological effects. It is important that survivors receive comprehensive care that addresses both the short- and long-term effects of rape as they become apparent. So, I wonder if killing her off is considered a favour to the nation. After all, rehabilitating her, providing her with adequate medical and psychosocial support, are costs that we no longer have to bear. The stigma of surviving rape isn't something that she, or her family, has to deal with.
I met Dipen, a vibrant young man who worked relentlessly to collect funds and aid for Longadu, a few weeks after my conversation with Riton. When I mentioned the conversation that was haunting me, he said he knew someone who was raped and killed by day labourers in the Chengi Chor area. "This was in 2014. She was a mother," he said. I read later in a Kapaeeng Foundation report that when her body was found by the villagers in a crop field where she was working, it had clear marks of grease and oil. Some Bengali labourers, who were seen loading up a truck with sand near the crop field at the time when the victim was last seen alive, were then accused of raping and killing her. Her belongings were found near the truck. Cases were later filed, but no arrests made.
There is a quote in Violence, Mourning and Politics by Judith Butler, "If violence is done against those who are unreal, then, from the perspective of violence, it fails to injure or negate those lives since those lives are already negated. But they have a strange way of remaining animated and so must be negated again (and again)."
They were sitting right across from me, eating the same things I was, sharing the same concerns as me. The tea had too much milk in it. The bhaji had gone cold. The ruti was tough to bite into. Riton with his crinkly eyes, usually full of mirth, following and preceding every sentence with 'didi', could not have been more animated if he tried. Sathi, in her fits of anger at injustice, as ranty as mine, could not have been more real. Maybe that is why they must survive so much violence. For as long as they remain animated, as long as they remain alive, violence will not have succeeded in its purpose. And if violence loses its purpose, what kind of society would that be?
Shagufe Hossain is founder and project director of Leaping Boundaries and a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.
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