Take for Granted
Different cultures are part of the diplomatic experience so I am told.
I am open to that and the first big cultural experience a TS encounters
in Dhaka, is that the week is different.
I don’t mean by what the days are filled with etc, though that can and will
no doubt be an issue in due course. No,
I mean the way the week is structured.
Here a weekend falls on Friday and Saturday.
Friday is very much the prayer day for the Bangladeshis,
resulting in little or no traffic on the roads on these days. You probably find that most expats decide to
run the gauntlet of the Dhaka roads on this day, and feel very proud for the
very fact that they have done this. Wimps!
Anyhow, when you reach Sunday, it is the equivalent of a
Monday and can be quite confusing. One
forgets that a Tuesday is actually the middle of the working week and Thursday
is our Friday. Confused? It is a bit like the clocks going back or
forward. I always remembered as a kid,
when the clocks changed the dog would look at his bowl to either say why are
you feeding me now, or why aren’t you feeding me now.
Never mind. When
Madam came home and said she would have to work on Saturday (our Sunday) and
would I like to come along, I thought oh oh – TSD (Trailing Spouse Duty) kicking
in me thinks and not in the working week – not good. On this occasion, I didn’t mind, as it was to
view the recording of Sanglap
– a BBC style Question Time programme.
Now thinking it was all to take place in a studio, I thought
it is something a bit different – why not.
In fact they had constructed a studio in the middle of an old fort
called Lalbagh Fort
in Old Town Dhaka – amazing. The main
problem was that the show had to take place in the evening due to it being a
public space and that three mosques surrounded the fort, communicating at
sunset their various versions of a call to prayer all at the same time creating
this loud speaker cacophony. The noise abatement
society would have had kittens.
Now why do you ask was all this taking place to produce a
political programme and why was the BBC involved? But after seeing it, I realised we, … as in
Brits, … take our democratic right for granted and the opportunity to question
politics and more importantly politicians.
I’ll explain.
In Bangladesh, there are only two major political parties
who are at each others throats. Any
initiatives created by one party in government, will be stopped when the
opposition gets in power. The whole
country is in a Doctor Whoesque space
time continuum, with half finished infrastructure projects, pet political projects
and little movement on essential components which the Bangladeshi population
actually need to survive. The
opportunity to question the political process and hold to task, if one can
here, in a moderated constructive way does not exist –hence Sanglap.
It is being produced by BBC Media Action in association with
Bangla BBC World Service and the local TV Channel I. It looked and felt liked BBC’s Question
Time. In this case the moderator wasn’t
David Dimbleby, but the presenter on the Bangla BBC World Service. The current Bangladeshi Prime Minister
allowed her Home Affairs minister to take part, because of the BBC involvement. Supposedly any type of political talk show
here ends up in a punch up and thus no politicians take part!
Although there was BBC staff from the UK for the first few
shows, they were training up the local staff to produce future episodes up until
the elections and hence their involvement.
A moderated programme entitling people to question their politicians on
issues and politics is a revelation.
Hopefully, Bangladeshis watching Sanglap, can become fully informed
before they head to the ballot box in 12 months time to exercise their democratic
expression. The last time Sanglap took place
in 2010 it drew a weekly audience of over 25 million people and became highly
respected by all communities - international development in action some may say!.
Conversely, this has made me realise that in the UK, we take
these programmes for granted. We take
for granted we have a culture that allows us to question our political
representatives and are able to exercise a democratic right unlike countries
and in this case - the people of Bangladesh.