Wed 31 May 2006
Gandhi Doctrine, the language of violence and the other production line
Posted by Rumi under News and eventsThey also work in the production line. But instead of producing shirts, sweaters, undergarments, hats, pants etc., these workers are busy producing educated human being. Most of them have more than twenty years experience in these production lines.
They are the teachers of non government schools in Bangladesh. For the last 11 years they have been demanding a raise in salary.
While standard salary of these teachers is Tk 2600 a month ( $35), some of them are paid as low as Tk 750 a month.
One such teacher Mahbubul Alam says,
“We used to get Tk 500 as monthly salary from the government in 1992. Now after 12 years, we get Tk 750 when prices of essentials have shot up tenfold since 1992,”
Employed to teach 10 lakh students across rural Bangladesh, they also do not get their salaries regularly whereas the education sector always gets the highest allocation in the national budget.
“We are given our salaries most of the time three months after the salary dates,”
said Hafizur Rahman, president of Bangladesh Community Primary Teachers Association.
A teacher’s salary even in the government primary school is less than of a driver in a government office. It is even lower in the registered non-government primary schools, reports Mr Manjoor Ahmed of BRAC university in an in-depth analysis.
These are pictures from last 3 years. This scene is repeating every year for the last 11 years.
They only want their salry to be equal to their government school counterparts, i.e. Tk 4000 a month.
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The sad part is that nobody listens to them. Even as I write this blog, hundreds of teachers are in hunger strike. And these news was absent from most of Bangladesh news media. I could not find any nerws in the Daily Star, neither in Ittefaq or prothom Alo.
Rather than sticking to non violent means, should they start burning their schools, breaking public properties, cars, I am pretty sure they would have been very much in the radar screen of our media, our nation and definitely our bloggers.
As soon as you are violent, you are noticed, you are mourned, you are talked about and you are taken care of. People start deep analysis of your plight.
You follow Gandhi doctrin, remain within civilized means, don’t break the law, you are doomed, nobody will talk about you.
June 1st, 2006 at 4:34 am
Well written. Thank you so much. I was expecting that somebody will raise this issue anywhere……
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:25 am
The elites and the have’s ( who have money and power) don’t want the grass root level developement in the country. So the best way to hamper the over all grass root developement is lack of education for the poor mass.
Because once this people become educated and schooled they will question the authority why and why not?
So you provide less money to the teacher from the government fund so the teacher won’t be motivated to teach to the optimal potentials of his or her ability so here come the crappy students from the crappy teachers.
They are not given the right tools right resources and training and proper salary so they can’t teach good enough learning criteria and media.
How shameless the people of Bangladesh are there aren’t any good schools and college or hospitals but people the so called chor borolokh like
Morshed Khan(City cell) ROUF(Rangs) Salman f rahman Apex rohmotollah and all etc are buying expensive cars like Hummer and Porche and BMW
is it too hard for them to build a quility school?
the money that all these chor chottah MP Ministers and the business tycoons have in their foreign banks can surely run Bangladesh’s total population for 10 years.
Can’t they allocate some fund to the goverment to increase the pay for the teachers if they really cares ? funny question because its all just a joke in Bangladesh.
Thanks
Kawser Jamal
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Rumi
you said in despair in your last line
“You follow Gandhi doctrin, remain within civilized means, don’t break the law, you are doomed, nobody will talk about you.”
Do you think they listened to Gandhi when he started Satyagraha out in 1900 in South Africa. he worked his way up establishing passive non-violence as a viable strategy brick by brick step by step. Success did not come to him overnight. Same thing with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. We have to do the same, success will not happen overnight. It has be won through struggle, hard work and discipline one movement at a time.
We Bengalis whether hindus or muslims dont have much respect for Gandhi and his methods. In our estimation Gandhi was too effeminite and effete in his choice of satyagraha and fasting etc. We like leaders like Subhas Bose, Zia, and other more manly types and tactics that are more direct and violent. Any way i should stop before I mouth off more annoy you and other friends on this blog.
June 2nd, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Robin Vai
You probably misunderstood me. I have all respect for Gandhi and his way of achieving his goal. I decried our current trend of paying more attention to violent means , where non-violent demands are not paid heed to by any quarter of the society. I mourn how in Gandhi’s own land, violent means get so much upper hand than non-violent civilized forms of movement.
I still beleive if we all can follow the way Gandhi showed us almost a century ago, our country will still be a much better place to live.
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Robin
us Muslims live by the sword (a bit like the samurai), and would prefer to die by the sword. There’s honour in it. Have you seen the two giantic clashing swords that were constructed in Iraq on Saddam Hussein order?
These teachers engage in non-violence because they know they are powerless to do anything else.
People with power, the born leaders, are confident to use all the means necessary.
June 3rd, 2006 at 11:04 am
Muhamad::
Have you been drinking? The two clashing swords is a symbol of Saddam’s brutal Baathist fascist totalitarian power. Saddam killed millions of Iraqi and Iranian Muslim men and women and tortured untold many others. You want to make his symbol the symbol of Islam? Shame on you.
See those pictures of people protesting. You should keep those close to your heart and make them the symbol of Islam. You should make it a point to go and say salam to them. Those people have more courage and dignity than a thousand Saddam Hussains.
Stop creating false gods in the name of Islam and for Islam. Stop associating a religion with criminality and terrorism.
And if you have to create false gods, at least have the brains not to use puppet terrorists and immoral despots.
June 3rd, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Yes I also have the same feeling. Muhamad has been drinking too much lately. :).
June 12th, 2006 at 4:28 am
Am a teetotal muscleman!
Sid, Saddam, as Ziaur might have put it, is a decent and righteous sunni muslim doing god’s (sorry that’s not an arabic word) work.