The expression 'influential persons' has long occupied a permanent place in the country's media outlets, especially the print ones. People in all segments of life, especially those belonging to Bangladesh villages are acquainted with the strength and the power-wielding of these persons. They are a formidable force enjoying a terrible invincibility. 'Influential persons' also exist in the capital and the other cities. But as part of the age-old custom, there are persons here who are more influential than the power-wielding ones in villages.
These 'influential persons' call the shots in almost all social and political affairs. Their interventions and blessings are sought in many conjugal affairs, too. Detractors discover the leftovers of a much-hated feudal custom in this very practice. To speak the truth, these persons are adept at spinning vile designs and machinations. They remain active in scores of socially damaging acts from behind. Though outwardly well-behaved and courteous, their evil selves remain dormant. Their crooked selves hardly come to the surface. The philanthropic activities of these persons endear them to a section of the poor. Those who have witnessed the faint signs of their villainy do not hide their hatred for them. The mere behind-the-scenes presence of these self-styled social guardians emboldens their paid operatives. As part of a sacrosanct custom, they themselves never come up to the front. In fact, few in the villages have the sketchy idea of the striking power and invincibility of these groups.
The naked demonstration of influence doesn't conform to their proverbially ignorant and simplicity-filled myths. It's because most of their 'heroic' acts finally emerge as being abhorrent. The influential persons engage in all types of acts that invariably go against the interest of the common rural folks. Finally, discovering themselves being at the mercy of the syndicates of 'influential people', the poverty-stricken and powerless villagers find remaining silent and looking the other way a wise and pragmatic option. However, despite knowing the acts' futility, a section of adamant people rise in protest. These stances carry only a symbolic value. It's mostly because the villagers know well they cannot face up to the strength of the 'influential people'. They know why a bridge, constructed across a small river or a canal, caves in within two years. Photographs of concrete bridges with no approach roads, or those of helpless villagers climbing up or down using bamboo or wooden ladders are common spectacles nowadays. Many of these bridges and concrete roads are normally built with the money allocated from local government funds.
These 'influential persons' and their men normally get the contracts or sub-contracts. Deadlines are set for completing the projects. Few are completed within the specific deadlines, resulting in cost overruns. Allegations of misappropriation of money from these funds earmarked for the projects are perennially rife. The 'influential persons' play a great role in the Bangladesh rural life. In large swathes of the backwater regions of the country, the print and electronic media point the finger at the influential quarters for being catalysts to scores of misdeeds. They include land and river-grabbing, sand-lifting from mid-rivers, levelling of hills, forestland encroachments, grabbing of archaeological ruins --- and even instigating social and communal violence. According to researchers, the spread of the drug abuse culture in the rural areas wouldn't have occurred this fast had the groups of 'influential persons' remained watchful of the spread of tentacles of this menace. According to many media reviews, a section of the so-called influential persons play a direct role in helping spread the drug culture in Bangladesh villages.
The class of 'influential persons' is, in fact, an allegorical expression. To the common people, the phrase stems from a sense of dread or fear. It's because, these persons' village-based power and their political links to the mainstream leaders give them a formidable status. They just manipulate those privileges. The media people use the phrase of 'influential persons' just to remain safe. Spoiling the honorific used for them, they often come up with their unscrupulous and nasty visage. On occasions, journalists were humiliated in many ways by these social VIPs. Ironically, they can hardly be resisted from demonstrating their dreadful selves. They seem to have no dearth of patrons. This has been a part of the Bangladesh social culture for decades, especially after the 1980s.
The concept of influential persons is strange to the peoples of many lands. It's because few people want to be known as influential persons. The phrase carries sarcastic, as well as comical, elements instead of prestige. In Bangladesh perspective, an influential person brings to the people's mind the visual of a male, both young and old. The person stands out in a crowd. He is unique in his style of speaking, movement and dresses. In spite of his being a special type of person, many of his kind are ineffable, soft-spoken and well behaved. The irony is lots of people are not convinced of this outer look of an `influential person'. The most outspoken of them do not hesitate even to call them a devil in the guise of a saint.
The influential persons always remain in the shadows. Compared to their enormous power and privileges, they are seemingly faceless physically. At times they keep such a low profile that the common people cannot tell them from any of their stooges. They have a tendency to remain incognito at public assemblages in a different area. Few are fortunate or ill-fated to see them in action, i.e. when they chalk out plans for their evil objectives. These plans might include setting poor farmers' houses on fire. The motive is clear: to scare the helpless people from their homesteads and grab their lands. Apart from rivers close to the banks, the 'influential persons' swoop down on croplands. They assist the nouveaux riches in building brick fields or sound polluting factories near the otherwise calm croplands.
Once such a factory is set up near a crop field, and kilns start producing bricks, it becomes difficult to evict them from there. Meanwhile, the smoke spewing out of the chimneys of the brick fields continues to pollute the rural atmosphere. Few dare to challenge the operations of the brick fields. Environmental activists are not found normally in the remote areas of villages. If isolated environmental protection groups are found raising their voices in the rural areas, they are severely dealt with by the hired thugs of the influential persons. Reports of rural environmental activists being physically assaulted are an old feature in the Bangladesh media. The 'influential persons' go ahead with their vile plans of giving the `defiant youths' mostly from remote areas a lesson. They do this at times while sitting nonchalantly in a city hotel. To speak in brief, these faceless people are capable of exercising enormous power in villages. A weird fact of the episode is a large section of these people do not need to go to their areas of operation --- i.e. the villages. On their behalf, the rural operatives or hit-men carry out their assignments.
Socially influential persons engaged in anti-people activities might appear a strange idea to the West. Even many civilised but poorer countries will find the idea quite alien to their age-old culture. Theoretically, the terms 'influential persons' usually refer to people who have attained certain heights in their areas of disciplines. Based chiefly on ethical standards, the areas range from philosophy, aesthetics to spiritual matters to the fields related to them. A true influential person has his or her premier role in society and the community-based units. As time passes on, some of them attain national, and even regional, importance.
Through the passage of history, these people begin to be regarded as role-models for an entire nation. That the identity of an influential person can also be vitiated with negative connotations is found to be a common scenario in some Asian and Sub-Saharan African nations --- especially in South Asia. The very mention of the identity, that of an influential person, creates a feeling of unease in the decent and saner persons in the areas mentioned. It's because they know what it means to be socially known as an influential person. An influential person is literally an influential one in the Bangladesh rural perspective. There are few scopes for escaping this disrepute by resorting to euphemism or double meanings.
