Discrimination at its worst

Politics, finance, commerce, market volatility and various protesting workers' unions or professional bodies along with major accidents mostly hog news headlines because those issues concern the entire nation and even others well beyond the border. But the news carried on the inside pages, much as those may often be treated casually or just perfunctorily, actually portrays the real picture of the people.

Lately such stories are presenting the image of a country that is not at peace with itself.

Apart from the incidents of violence, lawlessness, killings that include children of tender age, perpetration of extreme brutality, mugging and robbery, there are mortal clashes between rival groups within a village or of neighbouring villages. Conflicts and strifes involving two aggressive parties or the unleashing of furies by the dominant party on the vulnerable erode social peace and harmony. But there are private and more unsettling equations in intimate relations between boys and girls, men and women leading to a suicidal pact or exacting revenge in case of betrayal or faithlessness. Sometimes discords of such order can prompt one party to commit the most gruesome murder as has happened in case of a businessman from Narayanganj and a student of Sherpur Govt. College recently. The businessman's body was dismembered in seven pieces before dumping those. In case of the love triangle, the first lover was applied sedative in his drink before killing and burying the body by the girl and her second lover in the lawn of the latter. Society is coming across a new trend where women are not lagging behind their male counterparts to commit such blood-curdling crimes.

Even such acts do not happen every so often. Also one of the parties or both or the trio in a triangle of extra-marital affair indulge in moral deviation throwing caution into the wind. So such tragedies are unlikely to draw pity and compassion the murder of an innocent tiny tot does. Passions and emotions are further accentuated when a helpless mother or couple brings an end to her or the duo's delights of life before her or their own. Readers of newspapers have perhaps come across more such incidents this year than any time in recent memory.

In such cases, reports are usually sketchy. It is because these are poor, faceless people who can be dispensed with any way! But it is criminal on the part of society not to feel guilty of creating a socio- economic environment where an entire family has to opt for self annihilation. Each such family has a history of extreme penury. Their food insecurity is so intolerable that they are out of their wit's end. The desperation of feeding the young ones is so overwhelming that their hearts often get rent in two. In such cases, many would have opted for something notorious or criminal as a quest for some wherewithal but not all can sell their soul to the devil to mire their hands with wickedness. Better it would be to call it a day for the whole family so that no one lives to mourn the other's demise.

Much as society and those at the helm of affairs may claim that no one will die from starvation, the reality is starker than they would imagine. Even students who have the single-mindedness to eliminate discrimination from society rarely speak of these forgotten vulnerable fringe people. The cold figures or percentage of food-insecure people can hardly help one get a deep insight into the trauma of poverty.

Each such case is tragic in terms of helplessness and vulnerability marked by the common feature of not feeding their kids and themselves. When they have to starve and their small ones cry for food, the paternal and maternal instincts receive the ultimate rebuff. They make a choice in favour of the anti-life.

Not civilised and humane, successive dispensations of the past and society so created have had the incapacity to feel the ignominy of living a life of luxury and comfort while the poor souls bury their dreams under the heaps of filthy wealth acquired legally or illegally by the privileged and usurpers. The most atrocious discrimination is here waiting to be addressed properly.

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