In '1984', George Orwell's classic novel, the 21st century readers look for simile to correlate realities of the latest world. It was the story of suppression of independent thought by a totalitarian regime. Focussed on dystopian future, the book was published in 1949 but suddenly became a bestseller in 2017, the year that might have perfectly represented the time Orwell subconsciously wanted to capture.
The popularity of '1984' skyrocketed with an increase in book sales by even 9,500 per cent at one point and repeated referencing, conspicuously, after Kellyanne Conway, a White House official, defended the Trump administration's falsehood as 'alternative facts'. Nowhere are we immune from the novel's 'reality control' syndrome.
Statistics are something that can rather confuse people, apart from presenting a sort of picture of realities. Efforts have been made in Bangladesh as well over the past decades, to make popular economic indicators, especially GDP (gross domestic product) growth, in order to highlight development attainments and welfare gains. Oftentimes, suffering of helpless patients and unemployed youth or struggles of families of road crash victims have been hidden in the percentage and aggregate number.
However, despite a bright 8.0-plus per cent economic growth of late, most other indicators - employment, investment, revenue earning, exports and imports, or business competitiveness - have shown a pale picture of the national economy.
Thus, statistics turn sour to stakeholders the way some people tend to dismiss one's age 'as a mere number' (as if there is no real-life implications of aging!). To each of individuals and nations, year, date and such numerical expressions do bear varying meanings - joys and sorrows, achievements and failures, satisfaction and grievances, milestone and sad episode and so on.
Today, it cannot be ascertained without research how many international and national days are there for observance in Bangladesh and worldwide. Many of those days have failed to create or lost by this time its appeal while a few 'days' are observed or celebrated enthusiastically. People remember an occasion only if they love or need to.
Bangla Chouddosho Shaal (the year 1400) was widely celebrated in Bangladesh and elsewhere by Bangla-speaking communities [in Aril 1993], thanks to the poem Rabindranath Tagore wrote 100 years ago. Inspired by his lines 'A hundred years from now/ Who could you be/ Reading my poem curiously' [translation by Fakrul Alam], enlightened Bengali minds tried to connect two centuries by joining the celebration.
What we don't want to recognise is that statistics and glorious past won't solve the problems of today, unless honest human endeavours are there.
Otherwise, 2020 could have been automatically an exciting year like the rhythm of the number itself. Once political activist and journalist Tariq Ali recalled the days at Oxford, in a Guardian article on '1963' as he reflected on politics, culture and social upheaval that defined that era. Amid so many happenings in such a turbulent year, Dr Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech 'electrified a whole generation' about civil rights.
Amidst all the hullabaloos over civil wars, refugee crisis and minority rights violations and economic tensions in 2020, an unseen object has surpassed everything and everyone's thinking, shattering the entire global system.
Coronavirus is perhaps not any isolated wrath for the humankind. Issues involving health and hygiene, hush-hush research by powerful nations, reckless lifestyle, economic uncertainties, hypocrisy and social injustice have reached their climax as embodied in the outbreak of the virus worldwide. Its risks are not limited to the disease itself and number of patients as Bangladesh immediately after detection of three cases witnessed stock market plunge due to panic, fearing serious negative effects on external sectors.
To one generation of Bangladesh people, the liberation war of 1971 first came as a horrifying chapter in their life. Independence elevates the year into glorious history. Now, that's been a great source of inspiration for subsequent generations to make the country a better one.
