The people whose photos don’t go viral

The law enforcement used a bulldozer to crush the battery-run rickshaw that Fazlur Rahman bought with loan a few days ago. He was crying like a child. A photojournalist captured the the moment that shocked the netizens. People of the middle class do not usually empathise with rickshaw pullers, CNG drivers, conductors or shopkeepers. But that picture caused us pain. We went to bed with heavy hearts that night. The next day we saw someone had bought Fazlur another rickshaw. Fazlur Rahman was beaming. He was wearing a stained T-shirt and a beautiful smile. We were relieved. The image of the wrecked rickshaw vanished from our minds forever.

Hundreds of rickshaws were bulldozed that week. There may have been a Bazlur Rahman like Fazlur Rahman. Like Fazlur, he lost his job at the shop during coronavirus. He probably cried too. He might have bought the rickshaw taking Tk 80,000 Tk too, but his picture did not go viral. We did not see his tears or his debt.

We may have thought about the people who were not photographed, but those thought did not go far.

The responsibility of the state is to create employment. That is what is written in our constitution. When millions of people are losing their jobs and becoming unemployed after the outbreak of coronavirus, governments are subsidising thousands of crores of dollars to save employment all over the world. Who on earth destroys the existing employment at this moment of crisis? No one asked that if such battery-run rickshaws are illegal in the city, how were these sold? Why did anybody not look into where these rickshaws would operate? Can the city corporation take away the livelihood of the people this way? If the activists of the ruling party take commission from the sales of 'illegal' vehicles, why is it wrong for Fazlur Rahman to buy a rickshaw? Who will ask these questions?

Television commercials also used the same campaign, ‘stay home’, ‘stay safe’, ‘keep the country safe’. The advertisements were for the middle class indeed. Would the country have been better off if 50 million of its workers were sitting at home and starving?

II

During the pandemic, the country's upper and middle classes campaigned, 'stay home'. Thousands of people changed their profile pictures on social media with 'stay home' stickers. 'Stay home' is probably the longest-running middle-class campaign ever. But why didn't they realise that if they stayed at home, countless people in this city would have to starve to death?

In the most densely populated city in the world, the distance from our bedroom to the adjoining under-construction building and the makeshift beds of the construction workers is not more than 50 yards. How far is the man who sells pumpkins, the hawkers, electricians, rickshaw pullers, hotel boys or people selling fruits and vegetables or cigarettes on the sidewalk of our flat?

Didn't you know your neighbours buy their essentials on a daily basis? Didn't you know that big GDP and big poverty coexist here? Didn't you know that increasing per capita income is a farce? Didn't you ever think when you said 'stay home' that it means hunger, 'starvation', famine for so many people? Didn't you know it is a country of people without any savings? In the end, people had to leave the house either in search of work, or with a begging bowl, or to steal. Having only two to four kilograms of rice in the homes of the majority of people here is like an impossible dream! Didn't you really know? As such, isn’t 'stay a home' the most selfish and isolated call of the solvent people of this country till date?

Television commercials also used the same campaign, ‘stay home’, ‘stay safe’, ‘keep the country safe’. The advertisements were for the middle class indeed. Would the country have been better off if 50 million of its workers were sitting at home and starving?

Whose country is this? Who are the people counted during the census in this country? Whose tax money creates a budget of 5trillion taka? Who are those people that help the mobile companies earing billions? Who are the real consumers of domestic products? Do only the middle class buy Coke, biscuits, Fanta, potato chips, soap, detergent, shoes, sandals, water tanks, plastic chairs, aluminum utensils? And mobile phone minutes? Are the 100 million SIMs just of the middle class subscribers? The TV screen went on displaying the 'stay home' ads, while the people who went hungry, the people who bought the 'minutes' for the multistoried corporate houses that employed the young graduates. No one asked, if you stay at home, how will they survive?

For the majority of the people in this country, the call to stay at home was a call to die starving. There were 1.7 million tonnes of rice and pulses in the warehouse. This information was displayed on the website of the Ministry of Food. Vegetables were lying in the open fields of North Bengal. Farmers' milk and eggs were being wasted. The farmer's pumpkins, eggplants and cucumbers were being sold at two taka per kilo. There were many strong, capable and trained forces built on the people's tax money. Almost 5 million transport workers were starving due to lack of work. Who is responsible for coordinating these?

Instead of preaching to stay home on social media, our middle class people could not manage the courage to ask the government, “There is rice in the food warehouse, deliver food to people’s home. Stop stealing rice. People will stay in the house as soon as they get food”.

Young people came forward, cooked and distributed khichuri. What the state has not done, the youth has done for the people. It is almost impossible to feed so many people in the city on private initiative. What is the state for? What does the Ministry of Food do? What is the job of the Ministry of Disaster Management? Why do citizens pay taxes? Who have been deployed with those taxes?

People are not only social creatures, but also political creatures. They pay taxes from their salary. They also pay VAT to buy shoes, burgers, mobile SIM, powdered milk, chairs, tables, glasses, cars, laptops, ACs and so on. They also deposited money in the government treasury to register for land.

That is why it is the citizen’s job to ask questions. They must ask, where does the tax money go? Why are they so afraid of asking this question?

The middle class will cook, feed, change profile pictures, but will not shout and ask, “Why did the people starve when there are warehouses full of rice?” Does a good citizen mean to swallow the questions? Humanity and society isolated from politics make decent citizens, but it does not change the picture of a society that is restless under misrule. Only the middle class sleeps well at night.

*Maha Mirza is a researcher in development economics. This write-up, originally published in the 22nd anniversary edition of Prothom Alo, has been re-written in English by Farjana Liakat