Reaction:Students of Dhaka College torch a multi-purpose vehicle bringing it inside their campus yesterday (28-06-08) as the car was involved in a road mishap in which a student of the college was hurt Photo from The Daily StarLink:
http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=43326
Economic Times Parley
Students' reaction on accident-incident
Mahbub Manik
Bangladesh, Dhaka,Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Prologue:
Life is the total sum of our daily activities. Incident-accident and reaction to those are normal phenomenon every where in the world. But the degree of the reaction is different from country to country. In some regions of the world, the reaction to the accident turns into a horrible level that some times breaks into even a civil war. Reactions of the incident and accident of some students of some places in Bangladesh have been crossing the level of maximum violence. Usually in the response to an accident university students destroy hundred of vehicles, create blockade in the busy capital city road hour after hour, classes are suspended day after day. Students' this reaction produces nothing, no solution, just self destroying of the nation. Economic Times thinks differently. It believes a nation can not go ahead in this flat world having this type of attitude, especially in the mind of students who are the ultimate future of any nation. It tries to detect the reasons behind this kind of attitude. It organizes a parley. It invites some top national intellectuals that include one political scientist, one scientist, one philosopher, one psychologist, one top bureaucrat, one senior journalist. It also invites some students from the various universities and university journalist body's personnel in the parley. It specially invited all national print and electronic media to focus on the issue. Economic Times Editor who is also the President of National Press Club, well known as a top young intellectual persona and country's future forecaster Shaukat Mahmood moderated the whole program. Professor Dr. Golam Mowla - Vice Chancellor, Comilla University was the Key Note Speaker.
Parleygram: Pictures of the participants
Summarized proceedings
Resentment causes sufferings — Shaukat Mahmood
Shaukat Mahmood delivers the welcoming speech and describes the objectives of the seminar. He says that the contribution of the student community of Bangladesh is very rare and unique in the direction and magnitude to establish democracy in Bangladesh and whole nation owe to them. Without their sacrifice we can not stand here today. But today we have to think and to start the dialogue how our brilliant student community can contribute maximum to the country building work living in an independent country and how we can prevent them from the destructive and unwanted activities. Sometimes the resentment by them even for good causes turns into a great suffering for many. He mentions a recent incident occurred on the University of Dhaka campus in which one medical college student named Mrinal was killed brutally by mass beating on the campus suspecting him as a mobile phone thief. Media later found he was not a thief but a brilliant medical college student. He said that we all are some how responsible for this. Today we will make some recommendations but definitely not show our angrer to them. We want to express, talk and discuss on this issue. Today our journey is to identify the causes, effects and solution of the problem and to create a more responsible student community. He makes the point clear that the parley is not against student politics. "The parley will just search the reason why students community reacts cruelly after an accident" he clears the position of the parley.
Keys of Keynote
Professor Dr. Golam Mowla covers related issues in his keynote speech. He focuses on key issues of the theme of the parley like accident and incident, students' reaction, relative clashes among the factors of the reaction, argument for both the opposition and the proposition of the theme, and responsibility, commitment and expectation of the nation from the student community. He points out three issues that play a role on students to react to the incident and accident. The reasons include students are soft in mind, emotional and susceptible to the social and economic factors. Then he digs out the subject matters that contribute to the reaction to the incident and accident. Then he depicts the comparison between reactions and violence, reaction and emotion and reaction and sympathy. After that he draws the graph of reaction versus discipline, coordination vs management respectively. He calls upon student community to build them as national asset and not liability. He says that students have to keep them away from violence and negative activities at any time. "They have to perform their responsibility to their institutions, family, society, country and nation while passing the road of life" he ends his speech through this line.
We need patience — Abdul Karim
Country's Home Secretary Abdul Karim calls upon all to keep patience to avoid any kind of bad situations. He remembers a story that took place in the Chittagong University while he was studying there. The story is like that a student jumped from one roof to another roof of a train compartment and unfortunately he could not reach the other roof and fell down and died immediately. So no one was responsible for that, which was an accident. But that time while students heard the incident they reacted violently that turned into disorder. They destroyed all establishments in and out side of the university campus. They fired the rail way station. Such incident is not rare even today. He urges all not to participate in such destructive activities. He then remembers the contribution of the student in 1952, 1971. But he urged all to keep patience. He says that he asked police to keep patience every where. He mentions about the August incident that took place last year around the all educational campuses all over the country when nearly eighty police personnel were wounded only on the Dhaka University campus. But he ordered police that time not to react. He also refers some points showing the original copy to the audience from the Justice Habibur Rahman Commission report that was published publicly and he urges for accepting the commission's recommendations promptly. Home Secretary mentions that the Justice Habibur Rahman Commission recommended to Monitoring Cell for the campuses, Proctor Committee to mitigate disputes, promote extra-curricular activities, activate DUCSU, form Search Committee to recruit qualified teachers. The commission also suggested media to focus on positive activities of the students and not to publish extravaganza of the negative incident.
Share the ownership — Professor Emajuddin Ahmed
Professor Emajuddin Ahmed digs out some reasons of our aggressive mentality. He says our aggressive mentality developed during the colonial regime. That time people of this area used to think that they were not the owner of the state assets. He continues that they used to attack government establishment to express their resentment. Similar type of mentality can be found in all post colonial countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka etc and can not be found in South East Asian countries. He says our all governments since 1971 had never thought to share the ownership of the country among country men. As a result the habit of respecting law never developed in ourselves. "We have to develop a system where each person will think that all public assets are mine. I have a portion in every government establishment" said Emajuddin. He insists on the total transformation of the system- the system that would ensure the sense of identity and ownership among mass people in the government's assets. He mentioned the forming of 'Paribesh Parishad' during his tenure as a VC of Dhaka University to create a congenial environment on the campus was successful instance.
Police should be polite— Abdul Quayum Mukul
Abdul Quayum Mukul says that the expectation to get services from the police is high. Police is well trained organization, they can not do the same thing that an untrained person do. A student as he is not trained can throw a stone to police but a trained police can not do the same. Abdul Quayum Mukul says that the topic of the day is very important, deep andhas enough room to think and discuss. "We always try to publish positive report on activities of the student community" he confirms. He says we have many achievements but we could do better.
Student have politics — Professor Dr M Shamser Ali
Professor M Shamser Ali proposes some measures to control accident. He proposes to build efficient Highway police, strict license issuing rule, introducing insurance. He says that we can produce more drivers. We need not impose extra pressure on a driver. He says the road sense of all persons is not equal. Some people start to run across the road when a speedy car reaches a near distance. He said student should have their own politics for attaining their own rights. They should raise their voice for their rights of having the opportunity of modern library, state of the art lab, Internet access, access to the cutting edge technologies, transport, food, entertainment, and extra curricular activities etc. He called upon all to stop partisan student politics. He urged the media to write strongly to introduce individual Chancellors in each university instead of present system of having the state's President as the Chancellor of all universities. He says that a Chancellor should go to the student community and should hear their voice for effective solution.
At First Teachers — Professor Dr Aminul Islam
Professor Aminul Islam says to change the situation at first parents and the teachers should change their mentality. He raises a question that how much a teacher thinks about his students. He says humanity can solve all problems. He appreciates Shaukat Mahmood for his initiative to arrange the program. "Shaukat Mahmood knows when to do, where to do and how to do" says Aminul. He says people have two characteristics, rationality and emotionality. Students have to consider both factors while reacting. He urges to spread the talk on this issue from campus to campus. He also calls upon the authority to materialize the idea of DUCSU and other efforts.
Psychological development want— Professor Dr. Anisur Rahman
Dr. Anisur Rahman says the development of psychology of the political leaders is the most important issue to make a change in mentality of the student. He says his village primary school has four teachers for seven hundred students. How can the students develop their mentality in such environment. He also says that the change should be started from childhood. Parents’ responsibility is to inject spirit of courtesy, modesty inside child mind. He advised to establish counseling center in every institution.
Media portraits negative-Masudur Rahman
"Media always portraits the negative picture of student community" says Masud. He pinches Prothom Alo saying that it seems that the Prothom Alo only distributes relief goods, it publishes mega series on their very little effort. But student community distributes relief goods hundred and thousand times greater than that of prothom Alo but this efforts never get due place the newspaper.
Proper counseling needed — Fuad Hossain
Fuad Hossain says that proper counseling is a must measure to cut students' negative activities. He says there are many students and teachers who work in every campuses to create a turmoil condition in the country. He mentions two specific accidents of Kauser Hossain who was a teacher of Jahangir Nagar University and Zakia Sultana Sumi, a student of the same university. He describes the post accident incidents of those two accidents were similar. Those were horrible. He continues that angry students vandalized hundreds of buses, cars, auto rickshaws, and various vehicles. Hundreds of people were wounded. They created blocked on the highway for a day. They broke glasses of all buildings inside the campus. They destroyed chair, table and other equipments of the university. He confirms the seminar that no one ever took any information of the victim's family after the incidents.
Students are arms— Moudud
Moudud says that students are used as arms. The student community brought democracy and performed many good works for us. Now we need to search why the same community is doing wrong work. Find backers soon— Shahidul Islam Razib Razib says that we need to find out the people who are playing behind the backdrop. He raises many issues of his universities. He says that maximum student of his university are from villages, they do not know about other things of the city. After getting admission they only know their teachers. "It is our teachers who lead us in bad deeds" says Razib.
First seen person— Mahbubur Rahman
"The person whom we first know on our campus is a student political leader but no one from university authority" says Mahbub. He describes a-z of the process of the transforming of a common student into a party activist. The students have to be habituated of shouting slogans and marching to get a seat in the hall. He says that students are empowered by the political big brothers. Big brothers empowered them to do any thing they want to do.a university student He also describes how the accident of Shammi Akter Happy- a university student, transformed into a political issue and broke like war in the University area in Dhaka city.
The End
