Driving reverse gear?

I have a recurring nightmare that plagues me every few months. While the circumstances are not always identical, the feelings of panic and utter helplessness definitely are. I am in the back seat of a car going full speed through a busy road – it could be Green Road or Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue. It would be a normal, mundane dream if not for a small detail – there is no driver and the car is going backwards. As soon as I realise that the car is going to ram into a truck or a building I clamber towards the backseat and try to bring the vehicle to a stop remembering my rudimentary knowledge from car school. Is it step on clutch and brake together or first clutch then brake? Thankfully as I feverishly agonise over this life and death decision I learnt eons ago from LSD (don't roll your eyes, it stood for Libra School of Driving), I wake up in a cold sweat.

Now think how I felt when I read the headlines 'Driverless train runs backwards for 27km' a few days ago. To my horror I learnt that the Faridpur Express crossed three stations in Rajbari, going backwards and without a driver. The driver had just got down for a betel leaf brake, sorry break, and had delegated his assistant to check the engine. The assistant checked the engine but in the process made the train carrying 150 passengers go backwards. When he saw he had made a bit of a boo boo, the gallant assistant did what is expected of most individuals in a position of responsibility in this country – he jumped off! It was up to the ticket master with the help of the now quite alarmed passengers to manage to stop the train without any further incident.

This bizarre news, which sounds more like fiction, kind of illustrates the way some things are going – on reverse gear (popularly known here as 'back gear') and without any driver.

The significantly low participation of women in the City Corporation elections would be the latest example. According to a report by an English daily, the Election Commission records show that out of 336 councilor candidates in Dhaka South City, only six are women. Out of the 280 candidates in Dhaka North City, only 12 are women. In Chittagong, there are only three candidates out of 280. This poor representation is despite having a rule that stipulates that every registered political party must have 33 percent of positions for women at every level of leadership.

Of course the fact that we even need such a stipulation is indicative of the obstacles faced by women who are interested in political careers. Apart from the chauvinism of the male-dominated central committees of political parties, women aspirants face another big challenge – raising funds for wide scale campaigns, something their male counterparts do not have much difficulty with.

The same English daily also reveals the sheer sexism of election symbols given to the women candidates – betel leaf (because that's all women really do all day – eat paan and gossip), vanity bag (to keep their makeup and money for sari shopping), pressure cooker (they love the modernity that adds to their life of domestic drudgery), frying pan (what else could symbolise the Bangali nari more?), kettle (for making tea – for the hubby of course), shil pata (to partake in the initiation ceremony of all females to domesticity – grinding spices), steel almirah (a sign of female affluence that keeps all the gold jewellery and benarasis) tissue box (for the endless ocean of tears that she will shed) and radish (because that's what represents women's empowerment in this country – a root vegetable that adds the zing to the food but is also perfectly dispensable). Other rather strange but equally sexist symbols include parrot (women are like birds – colourful and delicate and tend to screech a lot), harmonium (being able to sing is the second most important virtue after cooking, for a woman), swing (because they look so lovely when they swing on a swing with their hair flowing in the wind).

With a woman prime minister, women chairs in the opposition parties, a woman speaker, a few women ministers and quite a few women MPs, you would think we are going full speed forward with a very competent driver. But all this is just fluff if we cannot ensure that women are given a fair chance to compete in local government. Until political parties choose to groom and support women candidates and unless the EC stops behaving like a chauvinistic village elder, the idea of women's political empowerment will remain a dream. Or a nightmare with the car going backwards, driverless.

The writer is Deputy Editor, Op-Ed and Editorial, The Daily Star.