A Midnight Call and a Misread “Report”

In 2018, when the movement for merit-based jobs—“jobs on merit, not quotas”—was underway, a call came after one in the morning from an unknown number. Due to my profession, I always answer the phone, regardless of the time of day. As soon as I answered, the caller began speaking without introducing himself. His point was roughly this: “All the reporters are writing in our favor; why are you reporting against us? We won’t take this lightly.”

By habit, born of the job, we learn to face everything. So, in a soft voice, I asked, “What’s your name?” He said, “I’m Nurul Haque Nur; don’t you know me?” I replied politely, “Look, son, I’m getting on in years. I think even your VC is younger than me. That’s why I don’t know you. But in the past few days, I’ve certainly learned your name.”

He said, “Even so, you’re writing reports against us.” I was a reporter up to 1996. I still report now and then, and if I could truly be a reporter, I would feel proud. I never quite became one in that pure sense. Yet the reason Nur calls me a reporter and refers to my opinion pieces as “reports” is familiar to us. The job has taken me to the farthest fields and farms of the country. In those places, people consider everything in a newspaper to be a “report,” and to them a journalist is by definition a “reporter” or “correspondent.” The roles of news editor, executive editor, editor—all that is not something they’re expected to know.

On this, M. R. Akhtar Mukul (notably, the author/reader of Chorompotro on Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, a distinguished journalist and writer) shared a marvelous story about his elder brother, Professor Nurul Islam. After completing his master’s, he joined the university as a teacher and then went to a village market he was familiar with. Some people there knew their father, the famed police officer and writer Sadat Ali Akhand, so they came up and asked Professor Nurul Islam, “Son, have you finished your studies?” He replied modestly, “Yes, I have.” They asked, “So what do you do now?” He answered, “University lecturer.” They said, “So you only lecture? Don’t you do any real work?” Professor Nurul Islam, with the same modesty, said, “Yes.” Many years later, he returned to that market for some errand; the same men were now older. Seeing him, they came up and asked, “Son, do you do anything now?” He replied, still modest, “Now I’m a university reader.” They twisted their faces a bit and said, “So you only read? Don’t you do any real work?” He answered, again modestly, “Yes.”

So, if one sets our personal experiences beside those of M. R. Akhtar Mukul, there is no reason to be hurt when someone calls me a reporter and refers to an opinion piece as a report. The real pain is this: so many years after independence, neither the country nor those who govern it—nor even we in the media—have been able to bring light to the people. Not only that, darkness has crept even into Dhaka University. At least until the 1980s, a good high school student in a small town was expected to understand these things.

Be that as it may, after Nur said a few more hard words, I managed to calm him gradually. I said, “Look, you’re like my son. Your VC calls me ‘elder brother.’ First, read my piece carefully. You’ll see I argued for district quotas, women’s quotas, indigenous quotas, and disability quotas.”

Why District Quotas Once Made Sense

To explain why I supported the district quota, I told Nur that, as far as I know, this quota was in line with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s thinking. Though he himself was a student of a missionary school, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman knew the people of Bengal’s remotest thatched huts. He knew what kind of education the schools offered, outside of a handful of renowned institutions, and the same applied to most colleges beyond a few good ones. Without a district quota, boys and girls from ordinary homes would never pass the BCS. They would fail English and math, or get very low marks. In other words, the BCS would become like the old CSP—reserved for a particular class, the children of the upper-middle class. Bangabandhu believed that children from poor families lacked opportunities for a good education; however, once they secured a government job, with various training opportunities and the chance to study abroad, they would become competent. We also discussed a few other things. He was of an age with my own children. It is better not to mention those here.

On that matter, I have no complaint against Nur or the others who were speaking from the side. Because one thing is not clear to me: why has the education system of this country been dismantled since independence? Why is education not important even to the seniors? After the Liberation War, when freedom fighters should have been sent abroad for higher studies, they were instead allowed to cheat freely and pass a 300-mark exam. And this July’s uprising brought us auto-pass and many such spectacles. Commissions flooded the land; people even saw licenses for manpower businesses, but for improving education, for developing students, no one saw any commission at all.

Power Pays: Why Youth Swap Jobs for Politics

In truth, why everyone neglects the young is a mystery I could not solve in a lifetime of journalism. I don’t know whether I could have solved it had I been an intelligence officer.

Yet, seeing this generation of Gen-Z, I understood one thing: even if they are not all brilliant, they are practical and intelligent. That is why, although they agitated for merit-based jobs, none of them leaned toward a career in jobs. They formed a political party.

Because establishing oneself in any profession—why only in Bangladesh, in any country—takes great labor. Out of thousands, hardly one succeeds. In any government or private job, the starting salary is often insufficient to support a household without overtime opportunities, necessitating the need for part-time work or tutoring to supplement income. And when, having become established, it is time to marry, one discovers that the time left on earth to raise children is very little. As for the professions of advocate, doctor, or journalist, how hard it is to stand on one’s own feet, truly, there is better left unsaid.

By that reckoning, in Bangladesh, there were two comparatively easy paths to build a career: politics and NGOs. The NGO market is now in ebb. On one hand, USAID is shut down; on the other, Europe has become a region of poverty itself. So there are no donors. Without donors, both routes—building a career and the chance to skim money—have narrowed.

And in contrast, what we see in Bangladesh is this: in most cases, once someone becomes an MP, his fourteen generations can coast along without doing anything more. If he becomes a minister or an adviser, there is nothing left to say. For example, in 2001, a respected adviser (naming him would be not only impolite but beyond journalistic ethics) said in a private chat, “I truly didn’t know there was this much money in government. In my professional life, I’ve seen cheques worth crores, but here there’s nothing below hundreds of crores.”

And if one can set up even a small political party in Bangladesh, it has a cadre force. If the government casts even a slightly affectionate eye on that party, then everyone—from the sidewalk hawker to the big businessman—remains hostage to them. Taken together, it is as if jinns and ghosts supply them with many things.

Realism Over “Merit” Illusions

On the ground of this reality, we must admit that among the boys and girls who took to the streets to demand jobs on merit, a segment—though not brilliant—is certainly realistic. In wealthy countries like America, Japan, and China, the Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, and The Japan Times have all reported that men are marrying later because it takes so long to build a career and establish themselves. Even in many advanced countries, many women, after completing their studies, cannot marry at a certain stage, either because they are striving to establish themselves financially or because the person they prefer is not yet established. In such a world, our Gen Z, by avoiding the job track and forming a political party—then swiftly securing a good marriage, a good house, a car—this is not a sign of lesser intellect. On the contrary, they have outpaced the “meritorious” students of the big-name universities.

Our Chief Adviser has said that these young people will show the nation the way. We have bowed our heads and accepted that line. Those friends or younger brothers who whisper in faint voices, “If only I could get my child out of the country, at least the child would be saved—whatever happens to me…”—for the moment, it would be wise to keep one’s distance from such despairing friends and younger brothers.

Author: Recipient of the highest state award; Editor, Sarakhon, The Present World