We The People

People survive. People survive surmounting all obstacles, and people survive foiling all conspiracies hatched against them, and people survive defeating all aggressive powers.

It’s people who define their route of struggle, chart their road to victory, delimit their sovereign sphere, proclaim their sovereign rights, and restore their rights in sovereign space around life. People’s sovereign space and practice is a part of democracy, heart of politics.

But what happens when people find their “friends” are not their friends, their “leaders” are not their leaders, their “organizations” are not their organizations? What happens when people find their organizations are being sabotaged as part of a plan to defeat them, their organizations fail to foil sabotages activated against their organizations, their leaders fail to foresee, their organizations tail behind and fail to take initiative? What happens when people are demobilized and depoliticized?

These are crucial questions in the life of people. And, people’s life provides the answers to the questions.

Roman slaves found the answer: Spartacus. The Palestinian people found the answer: Arafat. The people of apartheid ruled South Africa had their answer: Mandela. The Venezuelan people organized the answer in their Bolivarian way: Chavez. The Cuban people created the answer: Fidel.

It’s not the persons, the individual leaders that created sovereign space of people. Its people that create sovereign space, and standing on this sovereign space people give legitimacy. A historic-socio-economic perspective produced and developed the leaders, the collective leadership, the movement the leadership developed and guided.

All these perspectives, the Roman society, the state of Palestinian people’s struggle prior to the emergence of Arafat, the Venezuelan society controlled by thuggish upper echelon drunk with oil money that overwhelmed the entire society with clientele culture, are completely different from one another. And, Spartacus comes from another historical era.

However, in all the cases, it was contradictions that developed the leadership and organizations casting off chattering, old style, etc. Mandela and his friends had to make an arduous effort to shape ANC, African National Congress. Arafat had to face series of bloody fights in Jordan and Syria, conspiracy, subversion and adventurism. Fidel’s charting of course was a lone effort having no help from traditional leadership.

In all the cases, the new leadership was farsighted, not less competent than their adversaries. Otherwise, they could not have organized their struggles.

In all the cases, moral standing was higher than their adversaries. These made them credible and acceptable to their constituencies. In reverse term, their adversaries lost credibility and acceptability. This gain-loss process is slow and long.

In all the cases, the emerging leadership stood for honor and dignity, and for love for life. Hatred was not guiding them. Serving, not dictating people was their motto.

With this leadership, people gained primary space – resurrecting sense of honor and dignity, visualizing goal, questioning around, getting organized in effective way, shedding practice and culture decadent social forces imposed and overwhelmed with, getting rid of clichés, initiating with realistic approach.

These facilitated claiming people’s sovereign space – struggle to shape a dignified, peaceful, prosperous life. Their passive attitude to their sovereign space moved to the stage of actively making claims to their sovereign space.

Despite intermissions of adventurism and missteps the entire approach of these peoples was constructive, positive. There was no place for hatred. Love for humanity, all life and nature led the initiatives.

These shook off clacking, promises without the tinniest grain of sincerity, proclamations entirely hollow, observations without scientific investigation, sweeping remarks, indiscipline, isolation from constituency, showmanship, theatrical heroism. Imagine an undisciplined slave army confronting a Roman army! Slave army defeated “valiant” Roman army in a number of battles. That slave army was disciplined, and all its members meant participation, meaningful participation.

Brutalized space

People lose ground in an opposite situation, where mainstream politics shamelessly throws away all its glittering clothes and denudes its heart: politics-commercialized, politics-terrorized. People’s inalienable rights and sovereign space get lost. Even their political opportunities, in most cases only tiny fragments, gradually begin to wither away. Their democratic rights to life, honor and prospects for prosperity are snatched away, which is manifested in indignity, engineered disunity, craftily promoted and fed illogic, dominance of hoodlum controlled organizations, ascendancy of backward ideas, and lost land, wage, security and peace. A decadent culture facilitating and strengthening dominance of backward concepts and practices occupies people’s cultural space.

In a brutalized situation, people feel betrayed and turn apathetic, and political participation gradually takes a diminishing downturn, a dangerous turn of time that provides dominating forces tighten its grip on people’s entire life, which includes their organizations also. It’s, the imposed condition, like treating people as animal, like considering them as sub-human, and the imposition is made by dominating forces, the consideration is made by forces monopolizing power.

To people, only sounds and no work by those claiming leadership then turns synonymous to betrayal as violence, in its many forms and manifestations, by all or part of forces of status quo ransack people’s life and peace. People then withdraw trust from the high-sounding leadership.

In such a situation, a situation brutalized and overwhelmed with inactivity, a blabbering leadership finds organizing people difficult, sometimes impossible, but it finds no time to search its soul and method. It’s shallow and incomplete if there is any soul searching.

Should it be capitalocracy?

Democracy isn’t universal. It’s either, in the present world system, capital’s democracy or people’s democracy.
Capital’s democracy, irrespective of, fashionably coined, liberal or illiberal, upholds interests of dominating capital. Its arbitrary character, its, where and when necessary, secretive working, its power to hide its workings out of citizens’ sight and supervision, its manipulation with the political system make it nothing but capitalocracy.

Recent developments in the advanced capitalist democracies provide evidences. The reality is crude and coarse if a serious search is made about capitalist democracies in the periphery of the world system. It’s an uncouth reign of capital. Contemporary examples are abundant there in the entire system, where elected government exercises its power trampling primary requirements of democracy, and doesn’t even hesitate to throw away bare minimum flimsy cover of civility, and mainstream politics takes away all of the sovereign space people possess.

Democracies are now considered by mainstream on a yardstick of illiberal and liberal despite all the facts that emerge from contemporary democratic reality in advanced capitalist economies.

And, the reality is:

“An illiberal democracy is a democracy by procedure only; the people elect the government, but they have little influence on government policy. The lack of influence means the government does not accord the full human rights necessary to achieve substantive democracy.” (Hallie Ludsin, “Returning Sovereignty to the People”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 46:97 2013)

“Liberal democracies”, Hallie Ludsin writes, “are associated with free and fair elections, protection for and promotion of the rule of law, protection for basic human rights, and neutrality toward the determination of the common good.” (ibid.)

Don’t contemporary developments, not only the Wikileaks, the Snowden syndrome and the Guardian experience in and Evo Morales hackling by the so-called liberal democracies show a face of liberal democracy? The engagement of spies to infiltrate organizations active in the area of environment in advanced capitalist democracies, the “role” they played, and the way their misdeed are being “treated” expose the no-space people “enjoy”. Now, there are near-innumerable press reports from advanced capitalist democracies that expose their inner-working, their non-accountability, their all encompassing surveillance, their way of misinforming people, their way of invading other societies.

Manipulation with study results, opinion polls, human rights, and organizations floated for these purposes expose the face of liberal democracies. In so-called liberal democracy, corporations are now treated as person that strengthens role of big money in politics. This puts money on a higher ground than citizens. The entire business of capitalist democracy is opaque, a “mysterious” business as capital strives to deny any limit.

These practices are now “trickling down” to backward societies, where dominating interests are trying to construct a façade of democracy. The donor-democracy designed for underdeveloped economies is now much exposed.

Sovereignty encroached

The question comes: Whether sovereignty of people or of capital?

“Sovereignty lies with the people, as proclaimed by most state constitutions and as protected by international law, including possibly customary international law. Sovereignty in the people means that the people are entitled to receive the benefits of sovereign rights, not the government.” (ibid.)

But, with an army of unemployed, with vandalized unions, with decline in share of wages, with people in debt bondage and having no mechanism to listen to their voice, with financial instability, with control over information and media, with control over culture and leisure time and entertainment, with legislature serving dominating economic interests, with an essentially inaccessible judiciary, with political power and politics shaped to serve dominating economic interests, people find their sovereignty is effectively lost. With capital encroaching people’s life and rights all of people’s sovereign space is encroached.

A reality of spiraling disparity finds millions of people both in matured capitalist and backward economies confronting destitution while the rich protect and expand their wealth. The reality doesn’t allow people to act as source of sovereignty of reigning power, and reigning power thus de-legitimizes itself.

To the people of today’s world, one of the fundamental questions is inequality, an old curse spread over the globe. Now, the issue is being recognized by a part of mainstream as a human rights issue. Doesn’t inequality take away people’s sovereign space?
This fact, the reigning system of creating and perpetuating poverty and equality, tells the state of people’s sovereignty: it’s decapitated.

The rich stash money in suitable bank accounts to avoid tax, The MNCs “innovate” ways and “discover” places, actually the ways were made and the places were created for them, where it is required to pay less or no tax. Corruption, theft of public money and banditry with natural resources go unquestioned in politics and the thieves and bandits go scot-free.

What do people find in this reality? People find their sovereignty lives in utopia.

Referring to the British and Dutch East India Companies, Adam Smith wrote: “Such exclusive companies, therefore, are nuisances in every respect; always more or less inconvenient to the countries in which they are established, and destructive to those which have the misfortune to fall under their government”. (The Wealth of Nations)

Today, don’t MNCs dwarf the “famous” East India Companies in terms of all the “good work” that Adam Smith referred? The task of dwarfing is not only in terms money power. It’s in terms of political power that is germinated by money power.

What about power of and dulcet deals by financial elites, joined together in companies organized with their democratic laws and rules, done with their transparency and accountability? Don’t findings from studies carried out by mainstream research organizations, reports of commissions/committees in a number of advanced capitalist democracies constituted after the Great Financial Crisis, and revelations in even bourgeois press confirm this? Where do they put people’s sovereignty? Does financialization allow people a sovereign space?

What happened with the, now known to public, Iraq lie – “Saddam’s WMD”? Has not been an entire society devastated? Did the Iraq lie upheld peoples’, of Iraq, and other countries including the countries involved, democratic rights, a sovereign space? What happens even in tiny and underdeveloped economies reigned by Lilliputian black maharajas?

Facts tell: People’s sovereignty takes a travel to oblivion. Developments in these societies retain no sovereign space of people. Even, space for organizing democratic struggle gets lost there.

With militarization and/or terrorization of society scope for claiming people’s sovereign space gets lost. No space for people’s sovereignty is left in a society when only war, devastation, death dominate the society. An invaded society turns its first victim while the invader’s society turns the next victim.

People’s sovereignty appears a blue moon as capital’s diabolic power impacts, disintegrates and distorts everything around, all aspects of people’s life, as arbitrary authority, in all forms, formal and informal, rules people’s lives.

This reality takes away people’s sovereign space, effectively a democratic space.

People are put in the eyes of all storms during political and economical crises. During periods of turbulence, political or economic, people are the first victim. They are made scapegoats whenever any crisis makes a “landfall”.

“Stupid, dolt”

The question comes: Who are the people?

“People” is one of the concepts most denigrated by mainstream, the privileged classes. The privileged persons consider people as stupid, dolt, onager, and all the sub-human characters the “sophisticated” taste and “deep” knowledge of the privileged provoke.

Prince Albert once said “the masses on which popular government rests only feel and do not think”. The prince followed James Harrington. About 300 years ago, Harrington perceived people as cannot see, but can feel. There were more or less similar other observers including Carlyle, Mill, Montesquieu, Burke. Disraeli once said: As a political expression, the people are ‘sheer nonsense’. To him people belonged to the realm of natural history than to that of politics. (Cecil S Emden, The People and the Constitution)

On the contrary, to Mao, people are the workers, peasantry, the poor, and all who oppose imperialism. “[M]asses”, Mao writes, “are the real heroes …” (“Preface and postscript to Rural Surveys”) He adds: “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force of world history.” (“On coalition government”)

Private persons turn people as they join together in collective acts and thoughts, in gaining experience and summarizing those, and in claiming and gaining spaces – sovereign space, democratic space.

And, as Alain Badiou, philosopher from France, tells: “An event is political if its material is collective, or if the event can only be attributed to a collective multiplicity.”

Thus people, in their collective interest, think politically, dream politically, and act politically.

People’s silence, seeming inactivity, tolerance, seeming apathy, temporary listless condition changes as quantity changes to quality; missteps are rectified as people gain experience; passive approach is replaced by active approach as reality pulls in burning questions of life; and passive sovereignty takes the shape of active sovereignty.

New leadership and initiatives emerge and hope is renewed. Societies, and times carry evidence of this qualitative change as contradictions can’t be resolved mechanically and through conspiracies, as false assertions can’t replace facts, as lie can’t subdue moral standing, as deceptions ultimately wear out, as “Man does not exist for the law, but the law exists for man”, and as people don’t die. History comes at juncture as people echo Cromwell: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.” 

This article first appeared in New Age, Dhaka in its Victory Day issue on December 16, 2013. 

A Bangladesh Politics Rundown

Hastily drawn tact in a fluid situation was charming onlookers of Bangladesh politics for the last few days. It was sharply overshadowed by a seeming drama, but essentially an imperative that exposed limit of the Bangladesh political elites and showed innovative political initiative by a section of the business elites.

Swift swings

H M Ershad, a former president, was overwhelming citizens and political observers. His were always, one can say, “dynamic” moves, never static, as he was always canceling his last announcements, which can be expressed in the following way: “Cancel My Last Announcement”. A counter observation may be: uncertain tact in uncertain situation, not dynamic. Another observation may be: ever bargaining with all in an ever changing political stage as the stage is revolving, which is a reflection of uncertainty in many areas of politics, telling “something” in economy.

The former president led political party, Jatiya Party, joined the Bangladesh poll-time government and joining the coming national election; then he announced decision to leave it and asked his ministers to tender resignation. Press reports said: a number of the ministers obliged while the rest were waiting. Then, he announced boycotting of the coming national election, and said that was his last stand, he would change no more. Then, he expressed his preference to commit suicide than to turn a betrayer to the nation by joining the coming general election. Then, he said: the press reports on suicide did not reflect his exact announcement as he expressed no such preference of committing suicide. The press did not respond.

In between the announcements and cancellations of the announcements and vows, the party was going through changes within its factions, with its splintered part, and with ally turned deliverer of curse turned possible ally.

The swift changes, the announcements and the moves and counter moves, the run, the parley, the hackles can appear bemusing and amusing to someone, but the issues were not lighter than serious.

A country’s governance, a ruling machine’s future, stability of a country with a population of about 160 million, nurturing of an important source of labor and a few types of important products to the metropolis of the world system were involved with the incidents and its future course. There were other issues of geostrategic importance.

Even, as a market, Bangladesh is not negligibly small. Involvement of or observations expressed or suggestions made by other countries including India, China, Canada, Australia, the UK and USA, and by organizations including the EU and UN, discussions in the European Parliament and in Washington DC, the UN secretary general’s letters to the two main leaders of the country and sending of his emissary to Dhaka, and Dhaka visit by important diplomats from New Delhi and Washington signify the country’s importance.

But it was perplexing if one tried to compare the importance expressed by other countries/interests and the political leaders’ announcements that were swiftly swinging balance of political array and sending equations to uncertainty. The fact is: It was a show of a section of ruling elites representing, to put it vaguely, important interests.

How, then, it plans to secure its interests? The question is important not only to the section, but to all other sections as one will affect others, and the governance.

It’s not only a governance of 160 million, but also a governance of the source of labor, cheaper product, and issues of other importance as geopolitical rivalry is knocking at the door and there is scope of playing other cards by section or sections of the ruling elites. Egypt is showing it. A few other African countries are also playing the cards. At least one Middle Eastern country has recently made a similar move.

Railway tracks

The Dhaka press was carrying reports of derailment of railway engines, etc. throughout the week. On some days, more than one such incident was occurring in different parts of the country. The incidents were disorganizing railway communication daily. There was no official announcement by concerned authority on the incidents: whether accident or a planned act. Any of the two carries serious legal implication.

A comparison between these incidents of derailment and the August Movement during the subcontinent’s colonial era will help grasp the magnitude of the current railway-incidents. Had the risings in Midnapur [Medinipur] and other places, at the near-end of the British colonial rule, such experience? Was it during the 1969-Mass Upsurge in erstwhile East Pakistan (Bangladesh)? The 1969-Upsurge was wider and deeper.

Are these acts of subversion? Or, are these parts of political struggle? Has the political struggle gone to the level of hitting railway tracks? Answer to each of the questions has serious implication. The implication is for status quo, a property relation. Are the acts intended against status quo? The answer may provide a picture of a “strange” political equation as, to capital, trade is important, and trade needs railway.

Ignition

Acts of ignition were many during the period. The victims are common people, mainly poor, members of the working class. A press report said a mother was finding no way to take home dead body of her son from hospital as she had no money. Her son was a petrol bomb victim and died in the hospital. Another report said a weeping widow at a hospital was asking people around about the future of her child daughters as she lost her husband, a working person turned victim of petrol bomb.

Shall not these incidents react in broader society? Any of possible answers, nay or yes, have meaning in society and politics, and the incidents, the tact by any of the quarters, will be interpreted in broader society, the masses of people. One can recollect M K Gandhi’s step after an act of mob action on a police outpost. His was a matured act.

People in different parts of the country have already started raising voices against these acts of ignition. How shall the acts be accepted in mass psyche? Should not a politician take this aspect into consideration? Or, is it a “game” of someone played by another one?

An initiative

Entrepreneurs, especially the garments manufacturers, have made demand to end the on-going political impasse. In a rally in Dhaka, they issued an ultimatum and have stated the intention of mobilizing workers to protest the current situation.

It, the mobilization, the plan to mobilize workers, was a political act that the entrepreneurs usually don’t prefer to initiate. It was not a show. It was their imperative. Their interest demands this.

Then, don’t the mainstream political parties care for the manufacturers’ interest? If they care, do their political acts stand hostile to the manufacturers’ interest? Garments manufacturing is a leading sector in the economy. Then, what’s the relationship between the manufacturers and the political parties? Isn’t it a strange reality?

Also strange is, owners, as they announced, were planning to organize workers to defend the sector. Only weeks ago, the workers, in their way, were engaged in economic struggle. That was raising demands to the owners. It’s also a “strange” relationship: workers will be led to political act against a political situation created by the mainstream political parties, which are supposed to uphold interest of the owners, and the workers will be led, as announced, by owners! One should not smile or laugh at the mainstream politics. Politics of the dominating elites is “difficult” to perceive! It’s a Bangladesh political reality.

Soul of the poor

The period has once again exposed souls of ordinary citizens.

In a Bangladesh village, a group of ordinary persons collectively provided food to passengers of a train that was derailed. The passengers were stranded for hours. A farmer, Abdur Rashid Gazi, and his wife, Rashida Begum, of Shahtali village, Chandpur took the initiative, and other villagers came forward.

A reality

Don’t these present a part of Bangladesh socio-political reality? The acts, the utterances, the political characters, the representation, the level of political maturity, the concerns, the perception leading to the form of political struggle – ignite and derail, the deals, the contingent ally, the relations, show a part of the reality. Here, opportunism sometimes takes satiric face and satirical characters play key role. Here, shameless face appears stubborn and hurting people is interpreted as duty. Here, the weaker part of society – working people and women – is victim of ruthless political approach. How shall the reality be coined? How shall the opposing pulls or pushes within the reality be resolved? Is there a possibility within a decadent reality? 

This piece first appeared in New Age, Dhaka in its December 10, 2013 issue

Non-Drama And Drama In Bangladesh Politics

Absence of theatrical elements has failed to produce political dramas in Bangladesh politics. Resemblance to drama is not staging of it. Dramatic actors are absent. And, drama is there in another sphere of politics in Bangladesh. Actors are there.

Making alliance and breaking of it and reenacting of it are not drama. Not even part of drama. These are regular parts of vibrant politics and are as old as politics. And these signify a few characteristics of a politics. Often, a few limits and possibilities are signified by these. Sometimes not forming alliances and not making about faces appear drama.

Novices in politics only turn dumb as they encounter moves, counter-moves and about turns, which are regular features.

Forget politics. What happens in business? What happens in the world of finance and banking? What happened in the days of emerging coal, iron and bank giants? Don’t competitors join hands? History of business organizations provides the answers. Recollect the emergence of monopolies and cartels. Does politics defy this business rule if the politics is related to the business?

Imperial courts turned lively and tense with changing alliances and allegiance. Empires in the east and west were full with this politics. Conspiracies and coteries were in company of prevailing politics.

For the time being put aside present Bangladesh political incidents, some may like to tag these as mal-incidents, and recollect formation, breaking and re-formation of political alliances in the colonial days of our subcontinent, pre-1947 Bengal, post-1947 East Bengal (Bangladesh), in post-1971 Pakistan, in post-Indira-emergency India. Even, what about the factions within some of the political parties in those periods? One faction was fighting another, and making understanding the next day. What happens in many other countries? What happens in the voting pattern of legislative assemblies that are not ruled by central command? Shifts and displacements are always active. The political force that supported the Pakistan army in 1971 is now denouncing it.

This is a regular part and pattern of political game. Circumstances, essentially interests determine the path of alliance. Somersault is one of many political acts and a turncoat to one is a friend to other.

Alliances or one may term it as friendship, although friendship actually carries deeper meaning, are formed and broken and re-formed among social classes and factions of these classes also. This is also regular part of politics. Politics losses vibrancy if it turns static enough that disallows it to form and re-form alliances.

Former president Ershad-led Jatio Party (JP-E) leaving Awami League (AL)-led Grand Alliance, announcing plan to form a new alliance, indicating plan to boycott planned national election, then joining AL-led poll-time government to facilitate national election, all happened within days and even within hours, should not make one astonished.

There are similar other acts and speed of acts by other actors also. Similar acts in similar speed by other actors in future should not astonish an observer. A politician sits on horse for hours waiting to make a charge at the opportune moment.

The speed of the events and announcements is not astonishing as circumstances change, sometimes, within hours. It’s a character of a politics.

In politics, incidents move not in regular fashion. These, depending on circumstance, move slowly, and also swiftly.

Drama in Bangladesh politics is elsewhere. It’s with political actors posing non-political initiators.

A situation turns dramatic when a class or classes chart a path that ultimately goes against its interests. A situation turns dramatic when an actor, confident with power, manipulation capacity, image and appeal, finds himself in a tight corner. A situation turns dramatic when an actor confident about self as non-controversial mediator turns controversial. A situation turns dramatic when interferences are made but assurances of non-interference are delivered. A situation turns dramatic when mainstream political parties and public leaders depend on external advices. The drama reaches to its climax when the scene is set in context of a class reality.

Bangladesh found all these: diplomats from a number of countries negotiating and suggesting political leaders, seemingly suggesting the Bangladesh people, diplomats visiting Bangladesh, getting engaged with the issue of the next national election, suggesting to initiate dialogue between political leaders as if the Bangladesh political leaders don’t know the effectiveness and method of dialogue although most of these leaders are in political life for decades and they participated in elections more than once.

Press reports carry the names and describe the acts of interference. These dramas happen in front of a people who had the audacity to defy maharajas of the world system while the people initiated their war for liberation in 1971.

All the acts, advising, etc., have root, and the root is in the class reality, and the class reality is composed of competing classes and factions within the classes, and failure to reach a settlement.

The people of Bangladesh had an experience with the United States in 1971. The super power sent its Seventh Fleet towards the Bay of Bengal while victory was within reach of the valiant people. That was in December 1971. The people made a win and the fleet had to retreat. The super power extended full support to Pakistan while the people were waging their armed liberation struggle against Pakistan. The super power’s role is still not a sweet memory to the people.

But the drama is personalities involved with politics still depend on the super power for political existence. What will happen when the people will turn aware of the game and the players? Personalities involved with politics don’t take this aspect into consideration, rather flaunt the friendship. It’s a political drama. People learn, and people learn through incidents, experiences, debates. Someone will expose the aspect to the people. People ultimately reject personalities with external allegiance.

External interference in Bangladesh politics turned starkly visible in the 1980s. But it was not criticized by the mainstream political parties at that time. Only a few individuals voicing pro-people forces were raising the issue.

But now, a section of the mainstream Bangladesh politics publicly names name, criticizes diplomat. Sometimes satire is made with name. The mainstream Bangladesh press carries these reports. How far it will affect career of the diplomat is another issue as turning controversial narrows down mediating space and touches image. But naming name by the mainstream Bangladesh politics is a new development. One can consider it as a drama as to be critical of world power is not a regular feature of mainstream politics.

Two politics are running parallel in the present day Bangladesh: Of the mainstream with political demands, and of the working people with economic demands. The number of life lost in these two is different. The number is far higher in the mainstream politics although agitation of the working people, now the garments workers, is more intensive, wide, prolonged, although agitation by the later is mostly closer to luddite type, anarchism and vandalism: pelting of stones at factories, ignite fire, vandalism with public and private transport, which are not at all connected with organized labor movement, and which ultimately harm the movement, and which are facilitated to subvert rise of organized, aware labor movement.

The way ordinary persons died during the mainstream political agitation is unparallel in contemporary Bangladesh politics. Many of the ordinary persons were burned to death, not by police firing. Most of the dead were poor, working people, members of lower-middle or middle-middle class. To call it a drama will be a cruel, inhuman expression. It’s toll indifferently charged by the mainstream politics.

Non-heroes are sold as heroes by the mainstream Bangladesh politics. Profit at unprecedented level in the society goes unquestioned in the politics. The Bangladesh people know these, know the names, and yet they are swayed by the mainstream propaganda. This is the drama, a drama enacted efficiently.

Efficiency in incapacities of the mainstream Bangladesh politics is the drama. It’s evolving and resorting to complex moves that are not dug by quarters appearing interested. This is the drama. Stream other than the mainstream politics follows the main. The drama is there as it’s the mainstream’s efficiency to pull along its opposing political force although it fails to always pull all its class friends.

These dramas and non-dramas in the Bangladesh mainstream politics are characteristic of the state of the society. These will follow their courses till people initiate their politics and nullify the acts of making wrongs right. Populist moves give people space required to initiate their politics while denying space for progress exposes backward politics that creates background for rejecting it.