This country has long earned fame or infamy either for paradoxes at their most hilarious or pathetic. Paradoxes can be its weaknesses on the one hand; and strength, on the other. Those can concern molehill to mountain as well. The country so vulnerable and in Henry Kissinger's language, a basket case, has not only disproved the astute US politician but made the world at large wonder at its rise ---a fact not readily explainable by conventional or even the latest economic theories. It defies those all.
Well, let's leave those weighty subjects to experts. What about the apparently not so important incidents common people come across on a daily basis? Those can be bafflingly paradoxical too. One of the latest such paradoxes is the robbing of a police team at knifepoint ---not gun point --- by a gang of four or five robbers on the Sirajganj-Bogura highway. The three-member police team were returning after a successful mission of rescuing an abduction victim in Dhaka. Just when the civilian microbus carrying the three plain-clothes policemen along with the rescued victim and his uncle was nearing its destination, it was attacked by the robbers in a highway segment under the Sirajganj Sadar upazila. The gang robbed the police of their walkie-talkies, cell phones and a sum of Tk 5,000-7,000.
In a way, the incident draws a remote parallel with the murder of King Agamemnon at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra on his victorious return from the war of Troy. One wonders if the police contingent was unarmed or had firearms with them. The report does not mention how the microbus was stopped and only knife-wielding robbers four to five in numbers could overpower a police team that successfully rescued an abduction victim in Dhaka. No member of the police received injury but the uncle of the rescued victim did. Was it accidental or the man tried to be braver than his nephew's rescuers in resisting the dacoits?
Understandably, at the time of rescue operation in Dhaka they had men and material support from the police station concerned. But should a rescue team move long distances such as from Bogura to Dhaka totally unarmed when it has to accompany the victim and his uncle on the return journey? It is also understandable that the law enforcement agencies in this country have not their own vehicles for such long distances and therefore a private microbus is most likely to be hired at the expense of the family of the victim.
This does not mean that the contingent can afford the luxury of relaxing to the extent that they can be surprised by just four or five knife-wielding robbers. Their physical fitness, alacrity and the ability to response to extraordinary situation are in doubt in this case at least. In time of rescuing abduction victims, preemptive action against criminals is the criterion and in that act they have full support of intelligence and firepower from the local police station under which the hideout of the criminal gang is located.
So, what happens here is that the contingent that was supposed to receive a heroes' welcome reduces itself to a laughing stock now. The paradox could not be more bizarre than this. Police contingents coming under attacks in time of nabbing the accused or in other cases snatching of arrested men from them is reported from time to time. But here it is something different from all those incidents.
If the robbers' swoop on a police contingent at Sirajganj highlights the situational absurdity, here is a different kind of paradoxical situation. South-westerners of the country now wax eloquent over the shortest possible time taken to reach Dhaka or visit their village homes from the capital, courtesy of the Padma bridge. But on last Sunday after a long holiday of weekend, Durga Puja and Eid-e-Miladunnabi combined, the rush to reach Dhaka was so heavy that at the Padma bridge toll plaza there was a long tailback. People had to wait from half an hour to an hour because of the delay there. The bridge is made a victim of paradox.
This happened because not all the toll collecting booths were open at night. What kind of calculation the authorities there made? The heavy rush was quite expected on that night. Also there was no ticket available. Those few available were at times not even remotely preferable. But necessity knows know laws. Thus the upshot of all this is a paradox involving a unbelievable journey time of nine to 12 hours when two to three hours are the ideal. Even a most modern system can be brought to disrepute by mishandling it. One wonders if the paradox at its pathetic will not be repeated on a scale larger than this when the greatest festival time will put even more pressure on the routes connected to the Padma bridge.
- Saturday, 23 November 2024 |
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