February 26, 2006

WHATS HAPPENING IN BANGLADESH?

If you live in Dhaka then you know how living conditions have deteriorated now a days.

You wake up sweating because the electricity has gone off again. You go to freshen up and find there is no water in the tap. Your family members are quite clever to reserve some water so you are lucky this time. You go out for work and find some rickshawala cursing at you because your car has blocked him in a lane narrowed by digging for some pipeline deploying. You keep your head cool ignoring that and scratch to the main road. You are surprised by a stagnant stream of vehicles in both sides of the road. After many moments you slowly progress to your destination only to find that a road is blocked and the vehicles are diverted to another by-pass. You know now what the problem is but you can't escape from the jam. Then after more than a hour than your usual time you reach your office. You send your messenger to deposit certain document to the bank. Then you go out for a meeting 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time and arrive there sweating 30 minutes late. Luckily other participants are not as lucky as you are. So the meeting starts 1:15 hours late. You have a delayed lunch and that induces your acidity pains. You come back to office and find that your messenger has just returned without the work done after negotiating another traffic jam due to a rally of a political party. The bank has asked for more documents, which the customer service employee forgot to mention during the briefing the morning. You reach home in the evening after burning much fuel in the traffic jam only to find that the electricity has gone out. You are not fortunate to have generator at your home. You decide to go out to a shopping mall but negotiate another traffic jam. You reach there at 9:30 and find that the shop you wanted to go is closed. You come back home and find that that the electricity has gone out again.

It seems many crisis and disasters have hit Bangladesh. The recent factory collapse in Dhaka has blocked an important inter-section in Dhaka causing the traffic system to go haywire. And the traffic lights in many parts are not working because of electricity load shedding making the situation worse. The exasperating police are trying to keep the traffic under control.

The ongoing power shortage is persisting without any improvement which are also leading to water problems as pumps are being shut most of the times.

I am surprised that people are coping up with all these as if these are normal circumstances. All our political parties takes the streets for unimportant things, but they are not doing anything to make a change by reducing the problems. The government says they have fund shortage to overcome the power crisis, however they have enough budget to purchase fighter planes. But who is to question that? Who will protest and demand the basic rights? Who will try to make a change?

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