Home ›› 23 Jan 2023 ›› Opinion
Isn’t it unusual when a cigarette and betel leaf shop doesn’t sell a box of match? Of course, it is not unusual when the shop doesn’t sell match boxes as it has run out of it. Now many cigarette shops don’t sell match boxes at least in my locality. Sounds strange!
It was just the other day when I climbed down the stairs of my ninth floor as the lift of the building was out of order what is not unusual. It happens at least twice and always reminds me about how blissful the life is living up in the heaven. I had a plan to buy rather an expensive cigarette lighter for which I had set my heart on. That was the exact reason for which I wanted to buy a match box for a day or two.
I went to a cigarette shop next to my apartment. As I asked for a match of box and was fumbling for a two taka note, which is now almost rare, into the pockets of my trousers the shopkeeper told me he didn’t have any match box for sale. I wasn’t astonished as it might happen in a little shop like that. I went to the shop next to his one. The man sitting in a corner of his shop chewing a betel leaf flashed his teeth stained a reddish-black from years of chewing betel leaf said an emphatic ‘No’. Two shops away from his one as I enquired about a box of match I was really taken aback this time as he said he too didn’t sell the product.
Now, my inquisitive mind was looking for the answer why all those three shops were not selling match box. I asked the seller at the last shop why they were not selling match box. As I asked him the reason his face turned pale and he told me that they didn’t sell it because they couldn’t make any benefit out of it as the price of match box had gone up. If they sell it for Tk2 they have no benefit and if they sell it for Tk2.5 there are two problems – almost no benefit and shortage of coin. It was almost impossible to sell it for Tk2 as half a taka change wasn’t available. So it is better for them not to sell them to avoid both the hassles. “How on earth we can get half a taka coin?” I thought it to be not unreal as I myself nowadays don’t see the coin.
My mind then raced back to my old days when we, during our school days, spent five paisa, ten paisa and siki paisa (twenty five) coins to our hearts’ content on relishing sandesh, super biscuits, sugarcane sticks and what not! In fact, those were our fast food items. Those coins have just disappeared with the money value depreciating. I am pretty much sure that five taka coin too will be non-existent in no time the way the value of money is declining.
This one incident is good enough to understand the plight of people and how faster the prices of essentials are soaring up. Once someone of the acquaintances of Indian novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay asked him why he went to kitchen market every morning while he could get it done by his domestic help or his caretaker. To which Sunil Gangopadhyay replied that if one doesn’t go to kitchen market one never realizes the socio-economic condition of the country and hence doesn’t know about the country’s socio-economic condition and one can’t write.” Put simply, how come a writer can write when he is not at all familiar with the social plight of his or her own country! Of course, he was unmistakably right.
We don’t need to get deeper into the core economic and monetary policy to understand the plight of commoners. This very simple match box story can bring up the reality we are passing through now. Life is now a burden for people and every day the life of burden is getting heavier with new burdens with the price hike of essentials. Just six months into the hike of gas price the rise again in the prices of gas will put people in peril. Though the government said the tariff for households, fertilizer production, CNG-run vehicles and tea gardens would remain unchanged. Will they really remain unchanged? Certainly, they will for the time being but the life’s burden at present will continue to get heavier as the hikes of gas price in large industries, medium industries, small and cottage industries and captive power plants will ultimately pass on to the shoulders of common people. It is they who have to be the
ultimate sufferers.
Even a layman understands the enormity of the hike in the prices of gas for power plants and big industries. The decision will increase the production costs of industries and power plants pushing the prices of various products and electricity up further. This time gas price hike coupled with five per cent electricity price hike a few days back undoubtedly has wrecked a havoc on the lives of marginalized and ordinary people who are already grappling with the higher living cost.
Money inflation is another concern. The increase in gas prices will push up the inflation making people’s lives unbearable further declining the forex reserve that is now presumable below $30 billion. All together it is a dismal picture of the country’s economic condition that should have been taken into consideration by the policymakers before they took such a suicidal decision of pushing up the prices of fuel and energy cost.
There were alternative options for the government to take up but it has not gone that way. It should have ramped up productions in the old gas fields and initiated to go for exploratory wells rather than works on the development wells and buy LPG from spot markets at higher prices. Still the time is not up for us to take some prudent measures to save people and their lives, otherwise like match box, five, ten and siki paisas the country will disappear into the abyss of economic ruin.
The writer is a journalist. He can be contacted at maksud.i.rahaman@gmail.com
