When looting becomes the rule and honesty the exception!
Those who took to the streets against exploitation, discrimination, and injustice long before the birth of Bangladesh, they considered patriotism to be a part of faith.
To them, the country was a model of justice, honesty, and responsibility. But those people stand today in 2026, speechless in wonder and pain.
Because they see that in the country for which they had risked their lives, now plunder has become the rule, and honesty the exception!
Like many third world countries, Bangladesh has failed to build a just state after gaining independence.
This is not just the story of a past regime. Looting happened before independence, it happened after independence too, and it has continued in different forms at different times.
The face of the ruler changes; but the character of the system does not change.
A horrific example of this systemic decay was recently exposed in a southern district where hundreds of development projects have been implemented on paper.
Roads, culverts, iron bridges, girder bridges – all exist in the documents; but when you go to the site, you see that instead of bridges, there are bamboo and betel tree trellises at the designated places.
Almost all the money was embezzled by showing hundreds of schemes on paper.
The bulk of the allocated funds have been raised through contracting organizations. Surprisingly, organizations controlled by the same family, using multiple licenses, have been given responsibility for most of the work.
Development here is not a matter of public interest; it is a project to accumulate family wealth.
Even rehabilitation projects for disasters like cyclones and floods are not exempt from this plundering campaign.
Hundreds of crores of taka have disappeared under the guise of hundreds of fake schemes to repair roads damaged by disasters.
The story is the same everywhere, from city master plans to rural infrastructure to regional connectivity roads.The project does not exist; but the bill voucher is complete.
This money has been lost in collusion between LGED, the accounting department and the contracting system.
If we look at the overall picture of the state, thousands of crores of taka have been looted in the banking sector in the name of irregular loans.
Even though there is a glimmer of development on the outside, the state is bloodless on the inside. The sense of justice is lost, and a lack of trust is created among the citizens.
Then the question arises – whose country does this belong to? The looters’, or that of the millions upon millions of ordinary people?