BANGLADESH achieved notoriety in the international media on the leap day. This time, it was not for pollution or politics. Bangladesh received worldwide negative media coverage for the Bayley Road fire in which 46 lives were lost in one of the worst fire disasters. The disaster would not have occurred only if the people responsible had even the minimum respect or fear of the law.
The chair of Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha, the government agency responsible for regulating buildings in Dhaka city, in a social event of the Gulshan Society after the fire said that the high rise where the fire occurred had no permission for restaurants. There were, nevertheless, many restaurants crammed in that building. There were no fire exits or ventilation, both mandatory under the building codes in a high rise in Dhaka. If there were fire exits, most of the people who died could have walked to safety. If there had been ventilation, many who died, not from burns but from inhaling the fumes would have lived.
The Rajuk chair assured Gulshan residents that his agency would inspect the restaurants at Gulshan to find out if they have permission to operate as restaurants in the residential area and whether they are following the mandatory building and safety codes. Gulshan residents present at the event greeted his assurance with claps. They were, however, in denial that if Rajuk had fulfilled its responsibilities, the Bayley Road fire would not have occurred.
Rajuk permitted the Bayley Road building for offices only. The building owners and restaurateurs ignored Rajuk’s permission and building and safety codes allowed the restaurants there because they knew how to ‘manage’ Rajuk. The laws, rules and regulations were no problem for Rajuk because these are state-of-the-art copies from the best sources abroad. There is likewise no problem as far as the laws, rules and regulations, under which the government and its agencies function, concerned because these laws have been inherited and, therefore, tested and proven. New rules and regulations that have been adopted over time have also been copied from impeccable sources abroad or adopted after due process based on need and experience.
The problem in Bangladesh is not in the laws, rules or regulations. They are as good as such laws, rules and regulations in other countries. Bangladesh’s problem lies elsewhere and is unique. The problem is in the nexus that has now been institutionalised in a de facto manner between the government and its agencies that are supposed to implement the laws, rules and regulations without fear or favour and the businesses and interest groups for whom these laws, rules and regulations are there in the first place. The latter, namely the business and interest groups, are now experts in ‘managing’ their regulators, the government and its agencies by bribes and other corrupt means, or worse still, by acquiring the political influence over them to place themselves above the law.
The Bayley Road disaster came amid disasters in the health sector that reflected how Dhaka is being ‘managed’ which makes the laws, rules and regulations irrelevant. There would not have been many doctors/hospitals in Dhaka, or for that matter in Bangladesh, if the laws or the Hippocratic oath under which hospitals and doctors operate worldwide were even loosely applied to Bangladesh. There is perhaps no family in Dhaka, rich or poor, that has not suffered a fatality in doctors and hospitals that play gods with their patients and are unaccountable.
Two recent death, that of five-year-old Ayan and 10-year-old Ayham while having, believe it or not, their circumcision, flagged the state of lawlessness in the health sector where patients do not have the rights that non-humans have in civilised countries. Both the children died because they were administered adult dosage of anaesthesia that made their death clear cases of murder in day light.
The health minister acknowledged one aspect of the lawlessness of the health sector. He stated that there were 11,940 hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres, including 3,535 in Dhaka division, that were operating illegally. His predecessor, however, said in the parliament in 2023 that there were no such unauthorised medical facilities ‘open’ in Dhaka. The new minister expressed determination to close these illegal ‘businesses’ that are playing with human lives because the laws are useless against their power to ‘manage.’
Bangladeshis take pride when foreigners who know them vaguely call them resilient. Unfortunately, there is no pride in this tag because it is an excuse for their fear to act while not just their political rights are taken away but, as in the case of hospitals and doctors, even their right to live is no longer guaranteed. A minister just dropped despite being the top sycophant in the last cabinet recently said that 80 per cent of Bangladeshis do not want their rights because they want development.
The Awami League’s Six-Points that led to Bangladesh’s independence struggle was the outcome of the field marshal Ayub regime’s infamous decision to slow democracy by placing development on the fast track during its so-called Decade of Development (1958–68). The former minister nonchalantly gave democracy the red card, trashing Bangladesh’s glorious history of liberation. He picked the 80 per cent claim out of thin air to make his incredible claim while the ‘resilient’ Bangladeshis remained silent.
Bangladesh has been stricken by the deadly ‘managing’ virus, one unknown in any other country. The ruling party has spread the virus by claiming that it ‘managed’ the January 7 election while others say that it also ‘managed’ the 2014 and 2018 elections. Awami League leaders claimed, after the United States had relented its pressures for a free and fair election on the AL regime to please India, that the Awami League had even ‘managed’ the Biden administration. The doctors/hospitals have ‘managed’ their regulators by disowning the Hippocrates oath. The restaurateurs have ‘managed’ their regulators by throwing Rajuk’s building codes out of the window.
The nation is now in the ‘managing’ mode, busy managing itself against itself. The ruling class is ‘managing’ the constitution and laws to serve their interests while the business and interests groups are ‘managing’ the ruling groups for their interests. A nexus stronger than the constitution or the rule of law has, thus, been established between these two groups that allow them to ‘manage’ the people where the latter’s so-called resilience is their biggest obstacle. The antidote to this dangerous nexus that is destroying the country because it has spread deep into the body politic is simple. The antidote is the rule of law. The question, however, is how to achieve it.
Postscript: Citizens of Dhaka must keep in mind John Donne’s immortal words — ‘Therefore never send to know | For whom the bell tolls; | it tolls for thee’ — to keep their sanity and their lives from being swept away in the destructive game of ‘managing’ at play in the country. Meanwhile, they should be careful where they eat in public and where they seek medical help. Their lives are safe in neither.