Everything is fake

We, the people of Bangladesh, are now living in a fake society as we consume fake food, manage fake academic and freedom fighters’ certificates, take fake drugs, run fake companies, take fake bank loans, and many more things fake.

After busting fake freedom fighters, fake police, RAB, and army men, we now have fake judges as well. Munshiganj police on Monday detained a man for passing himself off as a judicial magistrate. The arrested fake magistrate, Monir Hossain, introduced himself as a judicial magistrate before the first joint district judge, Abul Kashem, and tried to get a favour in connection with a case.

The lives of millions are also carrying on with adulterated and chemical-contaminated food, fake textbooks, forged cosmetics, counterfeited currency notes, fake certificates, fake operations by RAB and police, fake assurances from politicians, and all-pervasive corruption.

Under a fake democratic regime where 154 out of 300 parliamentarians were elected unopposed through a fake, unfair, one-sided election, everything seems fake, not real.

The country with the most potential in the 70s is still lagging behind after 43 years of independence despite the 160 million people nurturing their hopes of a developed, democratic, pluralistic, and peaceful society.

The moral bankruptcy of a section of people, a fake government, and an opposition feed the general people a faded and fake dream of the future. As “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and the subaltern corrupt their rank and file, the country is now suffering from a systematic period of corruption and nearing the status of a failed state.

Society is more elastic in accepting dishonest people in every affair, corruption in politics and administration, greed and mountebanks in business. The social resistance against immorality, dishonesty, and corruption is not working now. Everybody now knows the shortcuts to having a job, working in government offices, and gaining undue privileges from the top-brass.

There is absolutely no authority except the one, and all the rest are illusions and fakes. The classic values of family and society are being evaporated due to lack of moral education, seductive cultures, and paradoxical stands among the civil society, immoral social and political leaders, greedy businessmen, a politicising judiciary, and the indifference of educated people to the ongoing lawlessness. Society is standing at the edge, nearing collapse, as fake and counterfeit matters encircle our lives.

It is worth one’s time to think of ways to get back to the classic values of family, society, and religion with a view to ensuring cumulative economic and technological progress. The rules of law, democracy, human rights, and secularism are the guiding principles of the constitution, but the principles are absent from our everyday lives and governance.

Moral education and feelings of accountability could frame our minds to not be corrupt, along with proper enforcement of law and order, a culture of accountability, and rule of law. And social resistance against dishonest, unscrupulous, and corrupt individuals should be raised, or our society should be left to die.

The need for social change is obvious, but who will be the leader of that change? I believe the youth, who are not involved with conflicting politics, who are empowered with knowledge and moral strength, and are dedicated to bringing about this change for themselves, will be the change-makers. There’s no alternative, social change is at our door. Let’s be ready to welcome this change.