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This country is not particularly known for building a society free from violence and crimes including the bone-chilling types. A people that has emerged independent out of one of the fiercest liberation wars in world history is inured to blood-letting no matter if it dislikes to recollect the traumatic experiences of 1971. Thanks to the cool heads of the frontline political leaders of that time, the retributive justice following the independence could not escalate the way it was feared.
In range, scope, engagement and casualties, the liberation war has nothing equal in this country. The recent uprising may have brought about a new dawn but its comparison with that all-pervading once-in-centuries avalanche of national awakening is misplaced. Yet the fact is that 44 people lost their lives due to mob beating in September last alone, according to Human Rights Support Society (HRSS). Of them, 16 were victims of political violence in 83 such incidents. Another eight perished in political power struggles and criminal attacks, the HRSS report claims. Another nine people including two members of an indigenous community fell victim to extra-judicial killing.
Evidently, political vendetta was not the only issue to settle scores. In the sudden power vacuum created with the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, new calculation and struggle for power emerged within forces now raring to claim their reward. That macabre and frenzied episode should have been over by now with the police returning to take over the police stations initially with support from the army and other law enforcement agencies. But the public is taking law into their own hands to deliver summary justice. Even anyone suspect of misdeeds is subjected to such brutal mob justice ---in fact, plain killing.
So, there is no way to say that the country's lawlessness has improved. Daring robbery, mugging and murder have been on the rise in recent times. Even the exclusive zone of Defence Officer Housing Scheme (DOHS) in Mirpur saw the ghastly murder of the 60-year-old wife of a retired lieutenant colonel in their apartment by dacoits at daytime. The bodies of a mother and her son were recovered from an apartment in Sunamganj on Tuesday but the report could not ascertain when the grisly act of hacking them occurred. On Monday, another woman's throat was slit leading to her death in Shreepur, Gazipur. Then there are incidents in which drivers are murdered before decamping with their cars and CNG-run auto-rickshaws.
The capital's Mohammadpur area by this time has earned the infamy of turning into a haven of criminal elements. After an incident of robbery masterminded by a retired officer of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), the dacoits were nabbed. But following a sharp deterioration of law and order in the area, inhabitants there laid seize to the Mohammadpur Police Station demanding action against the anti-social elements. This swung the law enforcement agency into action and muggers, robbers and other anti-social goons have been apprehended for a few days. Whether this will be enough to restore the law and order situation in the area is yet to be observed.
All these are disquieting developments and it appears anti-social goons are taking advantage of the psychological constraint the police are struggling to overcome. Also, the high unemployment and retrenchment of workers in the informal sector may have led some to desperation for criminal acts. In an exploitative socio-economic system marked, moreover, by extremely high inflation and contractionary monetary policy, low- and middle-income segments of society are made to pay the heaviest price. Archaic fiscal policies pursued for decades and mismanagement along with extensive abuse of the banking affairs have brought the country to its knees. The interim government has no ready recipe to address the economic ills overnight.
No wonder, the government now focuses on structural reforms in order to bring the economy back on track. It will take time. Meanwhile, the precipitous slide in law and order has to be attended urgently both through legal measures and matching socio-economic programmes. A community police force can be built up on short training. This will create employment of young people and at the same time serve as a supporting vigilant force to keep a tab on local criminals. Similarly, the social safety network programmes have to be widened further in order to lessen the suffering of the vulnerable groups in society.
At the same time, strategic measures such as pressing into service a pool of trucks from the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) for carrying produce from farms to market have to be taken immediately. This will eliminate the middlemen responsible for hiking prices many times the farmers receive at the farm level. As for big businesses, the monitoring of their letters of credit (LCS) in line with the internal prices of commodities along with hoarding resorted to for creating artificial crisis can take the bull by the horn. The manipulated market volatility and lawlessness are moral aberrations that have to be dealt with smartly. At the end of the day, legal parameter decides industrial productivity, economic growth and distribution of the wealth created.