O conspiracy!

Here is an innovative, reasonable, and attainable economic solution for Bangladesh: Abolish the entire legal system. The savings to the state and the citizens, of both the over and under the table varieties, cannot be matched by any other single act that simultaneously improves the state machinery.

There is no need for lawyers, judges, or courts when the parliament acquits suspected individuals long before they can be investigated or charged. Others are similarly indicted and convicted, with the severity of their punishment determined by political games and the gales of political whims blowing through an ideological vacuum, not the truth and the law.

This is the level of nepotism that has been made law by the current government of Bangladesh, a precedent that need not be dangerous so long as the supreme and only law that is the government is worshipped and appeased. To suggest otherwise is a vile conspiracy.

People love conspiracy theories, perhaps because they are a convenient way of shirking responsibility for failures and shortcomings, and passing the blame to an indefensible external power identified through prejudices. There is also a more naive reason behind the inclination to propagate conspiracy theories: Today’s leaders have done everything in their power to destroy trust.

In continuing to package blatant lies as truths, in manipulating facts, records, and history, in spinning every minute detail for political and personal gain, they have reduced the power of the people and removed honesty and trust entirely. Faced with this, people find refuge wherever they can to get away from the fairy tales fed to them without proper justification, so as to preserve their right not to be convinced, their right to a dignity and an integrity that are beyond the comprehension of the leaders.

Governments spying on their people, who do not have a right to privacy, was a tired conspiracy theory that took pride of place next to the comedy of Area 51 in the very recent past. There has been a complete reversal in that view, illustrating the latter reason.

Nevertheless, conspiracy theories make for good stories – the phenomenon of Dan Brown is Exhibit A if any proof was needed – and even better gossip, but have no worth in the realm of reality. The hunt for extraterrestrials continues to be fruitless. However, the incestuous, nepotistic political elites who have monopolised power nationally and globally have successfully labelled healthy curiosity, necessary scepticism, and warranted cynicism as conspiracy theory.

The danger in doing so is that it affords those in power to dismiss difficult questions as conspiracy theories or the work of conspiracy theorists, witchdoctors, agent provocateurs et al rather than being held accountable for their actions.

The mysterious case of the Padma Bridge, the state of the stock exchange, pressing political questions – among them, the identities and roles played by the key individuals – surrounding the Rana Plaza tragedy, murders in Narayanganj, murders of Sagor and Runi, the charade of the War Crimes Tribunal that resumed after over half a year of silence from the government that implored it be elected so that its work in this respect could be completed, the continued abhorrent practices of student politics, the façade of stability in a stagnant, at times regressive, country – the mention of these, like the endless list comprised of so much else, amount to conspiracy theorising, not valid critiquing of the golden Digital Bangladesh.

There is no need to justify neither the existence nor its manner of this land because it and the government are perfect. That which is so perfect cannot be questioned, much less reproached.

In the arms race to remove nuances in political and social discourse, mankind has not only castrated itself by negating its very nature, it has also made it all too easy for those in power to point and laugh at anyone questioning or opposing them, and the majority of the world, or at least those upon whom the house of cards of the rulers is haphazardly constructed, laugh with them.

As one laughs, so one will cry. When the day comes that the almighty take the hardest of falls, due not to conspiracy theories, but the unconscionable facts of their misdeeds, they are unlikely to be fortunate enough to get any sympathy. Until then, the only organised conspiracy that will exist is an oppressive one to degrade the people, perpetrated by the ruling class to entertain despotism, deny justice, enforce inequality, rob the people of their rights and power, and supplant knowledge with ignorance and the truth with lies.