Police hardline lockdown backfires as jails fill up with the poor

The poor are at it again.

This time, despite the strictest lockdown measures in the history of time for those on bikes, the laziest among us continue to risk their, and more importantly our, lives by refusing to stay home and starve.

With the Police Force recently declaring that anyone who is out with a valid reason would be arrested, law enforcers are now finding it difficult to cram in all the newly-minted prisoners into already crammed prisons.

"I swear. I have had it with these people. They don't even know the law and they don't even care about following it for some inexplicable reason," a police officer said.

Police say the temporary lifting of lockdown will not help matters, because after eight days there will be stricter restrictions, which would see even more poor imprisoned because they won't just starve. But there is a silver lining… more on that later.  

While so many of the downtrodden huddled together could breed more viruses, thankfully the poor have what we like to call herd immunity. The cattle-evoking term is also scientifically proven.

In fact, one test by an esteemed organisation found that slum dwellers had more antibodies than their more affluent neighbours. Years of surviving on scraps and living in unhygienic conditions, something that should be declared illegal, has given them some sort of super human strength.

"I earn my daily bread. Hard to fathom for you lot since you go broke after the 15th but still retain a healthy line of credit which adds up to next month and you are caught in your own vicious cycle. We, on the other hand, have to earn per day. If I don't earn a day, my kids go hungry," said a poor person in a profession you scare your children with.

Interestingly, this poor -- also known as G in idiotic elite communities -- unknowingly evoked what Henry Shue, an American philosopher, had long been banging on about.

Shue wrote, "Because actual deprivation of [subsistence] can be so very serious -- potentially incapacitating, crippling, or fatal, even the threatened deprivation of [it] can be a powerful weapon against anyone whose security or subsistence is not in fact socially guaranteed."

Shue argued that subsistence rights, along with security rights and liberty rights, should serve as the foundation for every other right. Deprivation of one will lead to others being void.

While Shue is obviously right and knows more than us, does the subsistence argument even hold true when the government has generously doled out cash to the few among the poor who have a Bkash account?

When demanded to know what they did with the generous stipend of Tk 2,600 given JUST LAST YEAR, one man obviously did not have a good reply. Drugs, for sure.

And the poor's lazy attitude towards life has also seen 10 lakh solvent people eat into loans meant for them under the My House, My Farm project. In fact, a lot of relief material meant for the poor went instead to ruling party members because they were proactive. They wanted it and went and got it.

As if the lazy were not being a nuisance outside our gated communities, apparently some have begun infiltrating even our safest spaces.

"It actually came into my garden the other day. I had the door to the balcony open. I was sitting and having breakfast when it just barged in and started asking me to help.

"My breakfast was ruined. Do you know how jarring that is? Like, I understand it would rather get a handout, but respect the privacy of my home," said one middle-class bourgeoisie, the buffer between the rich and the revolution.

"I later shared this horror with my friends. We have all decided to crowd-fund and gather some supplies but you know they'd sell all that for money," he said.

BRIGHT ORANGE LINING

Meanwhile, sweatshop owners have volunteered to deal with the rising number of prisoners.

"We can take some of them. Put them to some use. If we put them to work, then they will be contained in one place and since they can't up and quit as they are prisoners, they will also learn valuable skills which will be automated very soon," Jemaima Begum, owner of a sweatshop, said.  

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