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Is it possible that we deserve the leaders we elect? Do we need to be vigilant about the day-to-day occurrences around us? Can we just stay away from politics, saying politics is not for us and one person’s opinion is not going to change the status quo? Are we accountable to the next generation if we mess it up? Is it merely bad luck or inevitable that our country becomes a cesspool of anarchy?
I know a close-knit family who did everything together. The mother was the eye in the sky, guarding everyone, making sure the kids did their schoolwork, did well in school, balanced the family budget, and got warm food every day. She did all these while co-running a tuition centre with her husband. The husband had his own hectic activities with friends and acquaintances, occasionally playing his fatherly role.
Out of the blue, the mother succumbed to a major coronary event. Her children, ranging from late teens to their late twenties, were laying the groundwork for their adult lives. Naturally, they were devastated.
Fast forward five years, the family members only contact each other occasionally. They all went their own way, pursuing their own dreams. The father moved in with a new partner to plunge into a new chapter in his life for himself. The tuition centre is no more. The business had been sold off.
As I see it, it takes one responsible captain at the driver’s seat to ensure things are done appropriately, bigger things are coordinated, and obstacles are cleared for easy passage. Without such an individual at the wheel, everything would derail.
To quote the great APJ Kalam, ‘When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world’,
Extrapolating this to a world perspective, I looked at Bangladesh's story. Just two years ago, India’s eastern neighbour, Bangladesh, was praised to high heavens by the IMF for overtaking India in annual per capita GDP. But India's PPP-adjusted per capita GDP had always been higher, meaning Indians' purchasing power is better.
After the major unrest that shook Bangladesh over the last couple of years and drove the sitting PM out of the country, the nation is now out with a begging bowl. Its bold stance against India for harbouring its exiled PM made mutual trade problematic, with Bangladesh bearing the brunt. Economic and agricultural activities took a dive amid the unrest. To add insult to injury, the Russia-Ukraine war further complicated things.
Bangladesh, after cutting its umbilical cord from a fellow Muslim country that treated them as lesser beings for their Bengali roots, saw much misery in its infancy. Slowly, their lives improved, and the 21st century saw them heading in the right direction. Influenced by zealots with their obtuse ideologies and increasing hatred for the hand that gave them existence, India, they now find themselves in this quagmire. A nation, rudderless, with vultures waiting to pounce on their share of the meat.
We are constantly reminded of a quote often associated with Thomas Jefferson, one of America's founding fathers: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” It is no use casting votes only once every four or five years. Voters have a duty to gauge their leaders’ performance and nip the thorn in the bud before it starts overrunning the fields.
It is nobody’s fault when the fire has raged, but when the very person meant to protect us is seen ambivalent, playing his fiddle or worse, fanning the embers, then it is our fault. We cannot play the victim and blame everyone else for the predicament. When we join the convoy, the beeline to greener pastures, we know we messed it up.
Farouk Gulsara (asokansham@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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