There are journalists scattered all over the country now. There are district, upazila, and even union correspondents. They send in news. So sitting in the cities, people read about leaders visiting the villages from the cities, delivering speeches, they read about people from two villages clashing with locally made weapons and so on. In the cities, garbage piles up at the street corners. There are dustbins in some places, none in other. There are persons essential for maintaining the health, hygiene and aesthetics of the cities. We would call them 'methor,' sweepers or some such thing back in the day. Now we address them as sanitation workers. When they go on strike, the city turns into sheer hell in a matter of two days. There is no such thing in the villages.
That was all about nature. But life is not only about the sky, the breeze, light and water. There is one thing seen in the city lanes and alleyways. And that is politics. Bro, when's the election? What news is there of reforms? Will NCP or Jamaat share seats with BNP? The big leaders of small parties are quite shrewd. They weigh every word before they speak. It is hard to tell in which direction they lead. If they could latch on to a powerful party and manage to enter that big building on Manik Miah Avenue! They are not growing any younger, this may be the last chance!
In the villages, these are not issues. According to our last population census, 30 per cent of the people live in the cities, 70 per cent in the villages. Yet it is the city people that run the country. If it rains continuously for one hour, the headlines scream: "Rain creates public suffering, roads submerged in water, rickshaw pullers demand double or triple fare, crisis for commuters." The poets may sprouted all sorts of romantic rhymes to the rains, but then they don't have to rush in the rain to office with their files and paraphernalia. They can scribble down lines as they please.
The rural farmers are thrilled when it rains, they crops will thrive! They have no wars or worries over reforms, the constitution, tariff or such fancy phrases. Whether they know it or not, the villages are colonies of the cities. The savings which the rural folk earn through backbreaking labour, goes to the cities. It is embezzled there, siphoned out of the country. The city elite are smugly complacent -- the villages are no longer like before. People have proper clothes, sandals on their feet, mobile phones in their hands. Paved roads are ripping through rice fields. That's development.
