Once upon a time, within my living memory, the term “honest politician” was not an oxymoron. I actually knew and saw people who were politicians and honest as well. Now they are all dead. I have boyhood memories of some of these poor politicians who would sometimes come to our house after dusk, shadowy underground figures from a banned political party who would straggle in, one by one, and hold meetings in hushed voices to plan movements against Ayub Khan’s decade of reform.
The connection with our house was tenuous and accidental; it was just a safe house where you could have occasional meetings without getting arrested. This was more than fifty years back. These were men who were fired by an ideology, who believed in a cause, and sacrificed their lives for what they believed in.
There were men and women like this in later years as well, people now in their sixties or seventies, who too were inspired by their own political ideologies and struggled without thoughts of profit and gain. In later years, some of these politicians abandoned the gods who failed them, adopted new gods, adjusted, compromised, changed colours, and the rottenness set in.
They gave up their ideals and beliefs, joined this or that major party, became important, and quickly set about making up for time lost as struggling honest politicians. Just look around and see what I mean. Or just read yesterday’s newspapers.
Newspaper revelations of the wealth and assets of politicians are laughable (if you are in that kind of mood), and at once startling and predictable: Possession of landed property for some jumped from five acres in 2008 to five hundred in 2013, cash from two crores to two hundred, ownership of buildings and flats from one to one dozen, just to put it in ball-park figures.
The gains appear astronomical, surreal, and so very depressing. For me, often just the sight of the sofa in the house of a former minister (not the towel), the car she uses, crystal vases crowding the table, is enough to indicate whether he or she has become a person of substance.
During the last military-backed caretaker regime, daily revelations of corruption of people in politics and in other professions were initially exciting and then mind-numbing. Now I often wonder whatever happened to the senior forest official who stole millions by selling government-owned trees and sleeping in cash-filled pillows. Is the guy in jail, out on bail, or simply enjoying his wealth in some exotic location?
There were many others like him whose stories I no longer remember mostly because they were later eclipsed by the Hallmark hero, the Destiny people, and yes, the Padma Bridge brokers. The list is too long.
On December 9, I got this sms, probably sent to everyone with a mobile phone. “Sobai Miley Gorbo Desh, ‘Durniti Mukto Bangladesh’ –Anti-Corruption Commission.” What a wonderful, uplifting idea this is! And how very hollow too! Most of us (at least my generation) had Victorian maxims like this stuffed down our throats. “Honesty is the best policy” and “Lekha pora kore je, gari ghora chore shey”, stuff like this that many were stupid enough to believe. When you are cursed with honest genes (that is what recent scientific research indicates) then you are doomed to the kind of life you lead.
I was in a roomful of people examining scripts when this sms message diverted us. One person muttered a curse when she read it, another said she wanted to throw her mobile away when she got messages like that. I read mine and had the seed of an idea for my column because there is nothing else that I can do.
What exactly can the ordinary, hard-working person trying to make an honest living do to construct a “corruption-free” nation? What was the point of sending this message to millions of mobile phone users who have nothing to do with the corruption that envelops the nation?
Instead, I think it would be a good idea to send this message repeatedly, day and night, every day, every week, to every person who is or has been a minister or aspires to be one, to all advisers, all members of the parliament, past and present, to all government officers, from the petty bureaucrat who reads your electric meter, to the man at the top who might negotiate a 1% commission from a billion dollar contract.
Send this message repeatedly to all garment factory owners and other captains of industry, to all sycophantic professors who have become VCs of public universities, to powerful trustee board members of private universities who take cash to admit students, to all heads of all corporations, and to all bank managers.
The sms message might be the thing wherein you might catch the conscience of the king.
