The eventual cost

Hammad Ali
Published : 10 Dec 2013, 08:41 AM
Updated : 10 Dec 2013, 08:41 AM

As I write this, it is the fourth day of the second spell of six-day blockades. Over the last two weeks, I have only managed to go to work for two days, two Fridays no less. Neither am I alone in the fear that over the next week, another Friday will again be the only working day. We have relegated to a state where we work one day a week, and remain cooped up in our homes for the other six days, in fear of what chaos might be unleashed in the streets of this nation.

When BNP declared their first stint of blockades, it was unclear to many, myself included, what a blockade entailed. How was it different from a strike? Would it be safe to hold classes? Would we be able to go to work? In the end most educational institutes erred on the side of caution, and decided to not hold classes. After all, no one wants to put students at risk. Every day you see reports of buses being torched and little kids being hurt in bomb blasts. None of us want someone we know to be the subject of such reports. Making up for lost classes during weekends and evenings would be hard, but it seemed like the only viable option. I see no problem with that. Less than a decade ago I was still a college student, and I know my parents would not have let me venture out during a strike or blockade no matter how important I claimed my classes to be. Besides, it's just a three-day blockade, right?

As we now know, it wasn't. BNP began the ridiculous practice of extending blockades for anywhere between 12 to 72 hours, and that too from some secret location. I know a lot of offices remained open in the midst of all this, but I don't know how much business they got done given that hardly anyone seemed eager to step out of the house into what has basically become a war zone. What I do know is that educational institutes lost nearly a week of work, something that is well near impossible to compensate for thanks to the already tightly packed academic calendar most of them have. The options were either pushing back exams in order to hold all scheduled classes, or curtailing the syllabus. The first would hurt students by making them lose time, and the second would compromise the quality of their education. An academician's nightmare if there ever was one.

Just when we had basically accepted the fact that we would only be able to take classes on weekends, the opposition began the inevitable process of escalation. I don't know who to blame for it. Both politicians and common people seem to have become desensitized to strikes and violence. One simple death no longer moves us, it has to be a bus-full of people being roasted alive. The loss of human life is not worthy of attention in itself, it has to be the life of some innocent teenager whose life, sadly, would not improve in any sense no matter which party ruled the country. It only seemed logical then, that the opposition declared blockades starting on a weekend, that too with a mere ten hours to spare.

Once again we were looking at four days of classes being lost. As if that was not enough, on the eve of the last day they extended it by another 59 hours. For the first time I can recall in my entire student and professional life, our university had to be closed for an entire week for reasons other than festival holidays. Even students, who admittedly were initially amused by this frequent closure and postponement of assignments and exams, are now frustrated and worried about how they will ever finish on time. The scheduling has become a nightmare for authorities, who must choose between the lesser of two evils and know that whatever they choose, some people will not be happy about it and more importantly, it will somehow compromise the quality of education for the students.

Most of us are now reluctantly resigned to the fact that this situation will persist until something conclusive happens regarding the elections, and are puzzled as to exactly how we will make up for lost time, even if we extended the term. There is only so much we can extend, and there does not seem to be an end in sight for this madness.

A lot has been said about how these blockades are hurting the economy, how businesses are not faring well and may not be able to survive this situation for too long. All of this is true, but from my vantage point I see a far bigger loss looming ahead. What scares me even more is that this is not the type of loss we can see in the present. Unlike closed stores and empty streets, this loss is in the background, not visible in our daily lives but not any less substantial for all that.

My job entails dealing with young men and women in the prime of their lives, as they are getting an education and preparing themselves for the future. Usually my conversations with them are intended to motivate them to work harder, to train themselves for the challenges of this new world and to make a contribution to society and to the world around them. Lately though, these conversations have begun to be centred around whether there will be any more blockades, how we will make up for all the lost classes, how their vacations will be ruined, and most ominously, about the sheer frustration they feel at how helpless they are at the hands of politicians playing their game of thrones.

Something has changed about me too. In the past, in most conversations with students, I would find a way to remind them how important hard work and persistence are, and how they must somehow make the world a better place. Lately I can no longer bring myself to do that. I look at these young minds with all their potentials, cooped up in apartment units, bored out of their minds. I see their doubts and uncertainty about when and how they will finish their studies, whether it is this term or their undergraduate degrees, because honestly, who knows where we are headed and how long it will be before things return to normal, if they ever do?

And for the first time in my teaching career, I have nothing positive to tell them. I cannot bring myself to tell them that things will be OK in the end, and that they still must strive to make a change in this world. I cannot do that, because it makes me feel like I am lying to them. Because lately when I tell them to persist and do something for country, it feels like I am giving them bad advice. I still try, but I fear the moment when one of them might look me in the eye and ask whether this country and our politicians have done anything to give them reasons to work for it.

It is fashionable to criticise our youth, to say that they don't care about anything but themselves and their only ambition in life is to somehow leave this country, go abroad and settle there. This has been the case for as far back as I can remember, and it makes sense that the brightest kids would want more and better opportunities. I always felt that what we should aim for is not to keep them from leaving, but to get them to return. Now I wonder, what would we ask them to come back for? Choosing between being stuck at home or stepping outside with death possibly around every corner? Suffering financial losses because your business is effectively shut down for weeks at a time? What are we offering them that we ask them to give us their time and energy?

I doubt that anyone important enough will read my writing, or that it will change their minds if they do. People much better than me are trying to get our politicians to see sense, and so far they have nothing to show for it. Just for my own conscience though, I would like to make a public request to anyone who can do something to alleviate this situation. I know everyone sees the financial loss, the lost business and the empty streets. Maybe those people also think that this is short term, and that sooner or later some solution can be worked out. But I can tell you, the damage that is being done to the mindset of our youth is irreversible. They are being pushed to the point where they no longer feel anything positive in connection to this country, and want to be rid of it as soon as possible. If we do not do something to stop this madness now, in another ten or fifteen years we might realise that we are a nation that has irrevocably lost its brightest minds to other nations, and that we have no one left to take us forward. And far worse than that unpleasant truth, will be the even worse knowledge that it is we that drove them out, if not by our wrong actions then by our inaction in this time of turmoil.

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Hammad Ali is a teacher of Computer Science and Engineering at BRAC University.