This year, the nation is set to celebrate the golden jubilee of independent and sovereign Bangladesh. This March is definitely the starting point of the grand celebration. Beside the celebration, it is also a time for retrospection ---a time to closely examine the flaws and drawbacks, in short the vicissitudes, suffered during the 50 years of testing journey. Over the last five decades, Bangladesh has achieved a lot by overcoming many hurdles. Simultaneously, the nation has also failed to establish some fundamental virtues to make the achievement sustainable and equitably shared. One of these virtues is discipline in society.
The country as a whole is largely promoting indiscipline. No matter how rude the assertion is, it is an undeniable reality. Effective teaching and training to maintain discipline is missing. Though families and schools are responsible for imparting the lesson of discipline, the precept is not working in most cases. Laxity in maintaining discipline is seen almost everywhere.
Driving on the wrong side of the roads and parking vehicles anywhere by motorbikers, jaywalking by many pedestrians, reckless driving and stopping buses abruptly in the middle of the road to collect passengers, occupying streets by roadside shopkeepers are only a few examples of growing indiscipline in the country. These things are good enough to understand the level of indiscipline in society.
It is known that without maintaining discipline, a nation cannot achieve long-term real progress. Nevertheless, from policymakers to ordinary citizens, maintaining discipline is not a priority. Who wants to maintain discipline in society when it matters little to attain anything? The undisciplined section has failed to realise that they are gaining at the expense of others who value and practice discipline.
Though the country has rules, people do not want to follow those for various reasons and on pleas. The country also has laws, and again the enforcement is weak, biased and very discriminatory. Many people also love breaking the rules, expecting that only others will abide by the laws and rules. All this leads to proliferation of indiscipline.
Some blame leaders and policymakers for widespread indiscipline in society. True, they are mainly responsible for ensuring society's disciplines by practising the virtue and enforcing it through rules and laws. Nevertheless, they have also some limitations and a lack of willingness to discharge their responsibilities.
Various socio-economic and cultural factors play a role in creating and spreading indiscipline in society. Thus it is necessary to focus on the factors and address those. Some argue that the best way to maintain discipline is self-discipline. Again, it requires adequate training, morality and cooperation from others. When a small number of people are undisciplined, it becomes tough to maintain overall discipline by a large number of people.
There is no easy remedy to fix the problem of indiscipline and turn the nation into a disciplined one in a short time. The first thing in this regard is to acknowledge that indiscipline costs society and the nation.
