Valuing people and respecting them depends on various abstract aspects such as wisdom, knowledge, integrity, social status, flair, power, influencing capacity, beautifulness, and status backed by powerful administrative positions and material things namely wealth, money, property, business, and resources.
The first category is pertinent to an individual’s inherent quality and the second one is not necessarily achieved by oneself through his or her individual traits or hard work.
Obtaining the second one, which can also be inherited, is contingent on the first one to what extent abstract aspects are used for the fulfillment of materialistic things.
It is strongly recommended that the combination of both aspects adds more value not only for an individual but also for the society and country if abstract aspects and material things are suitably matched and synchronized.
And both aspects have a strong influence on human beings within society and even beyond a particular geographical location.
Normatively, people with a higher level of probity, humility down to earth, sympathy for the vulnerable and poor section of society, greater contribution to socio-cultural development, and creative and artistic exposures are widely respected.
Valuing people is gender biased. Usually, men are more valued in society, even in the family because of the male-dominated social structure, power concentration, family head, resource ownership, and social stratification whereas women in nursing-related jobs are more respectable compared to men.
Again, people having a powerful position in the state capacity or in the bureaucracy, holding the political position of the ruling party, and dealing with huge resources including cash flow are also respectable persons in society.
There are some renowned persons in the field of expertise, for example, sports, business, literature, media, social work, health profession, advocacy, and teaching who earn the heartfelt respect of general people.
There is also a different notion regarding valuing people prevalent in society. The nation-building cohorts including farmers, remittance senders, and garment workers are not as valued and respected as they deserve in comparison with their contribution to the survival and revival of the economy.
Educational status and the nature of jobs are reportedly found to be the difference in showing respect. It means the level of valuing people and respecting them is determined by professional identity, area of responsibility and exercise of power.
For example, employees in the highest echelon or in the hierarchical upper positions are dignified and preferred compared with the lower-ranked officials.
Professionals of structured jobs get a preference likening to unstructured jobs. Similarly public and private sector employment status likewise influences people to value in a comparative way where the first category is highly accepted in our socio-cultural environment.
Although apparently, it seems people with more coercive power with legal-rational authority are widely accepted, professionals with a negative identity are being criticized and devalued.
Citizens are forced to show respect mandatorily to the power-holding high officials whereas those having power and having a good reputation and citizen-centric performance are really loved by general people.
Political identity and ideology is the recent issue of valuing people as it connects to power and exercise of power to benefit the group while people from other political parties are not much valued.
Possessing movable and immovable properties is a criterion for valuing people as seen with people having Rolls Royce, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Toyota, Prado, Motor-cycle, cycle or rickshaws. The higher the brand is the higher the status is in society and wealthier and thus more valued.
A rickshaw-puller or biker is less valued in the street and in society as well. Having branded car symbolizes upper social status.
Reportedly traffic rules are not stricter for those highly valued vehicles. Ownership of apartment(s) and single houses in the city or in the village defines the upper social status in Bangladesh compared with those having none.
The issue of successfulness and unsuccessfulness in life is also treated as a matter of valuing people, although defining success is perplexing as this varies across professions, society, individuals, and satisfaction levels. Winning a match is successful and the contributors are respected while losers are not.
People are valued ridiculously because of geographical location in terms of living and working.
Those who live in the Capital city are more valued than those who live outside of the central city of the country while people staying in the central area of the Capital or some posh area are counted in a better way than the rest of the country.
Similarly, people living in a developed country are always thought to be more valued which is not the case for people coming from developing and LDCs.
This cogently proves to find the stronger position of passports of Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Germany favors the statement and disfavors the poorest countries in the world like Afghani, Syrian, Iraqi, Pakistani and Yemen are the least powerful passports.
In our society, people value people from the Capital over the other parts of the country, urban over rural, and even immigrants from Europe, the USA, Canada Australia over other parts of the world.
It is noticed that residents living in the Gulshan area where all embassies are housed, or the Dhanmondi residential area or Mintu road (a residential place for high-ups of state organs) are highly valued in the society.
Although the Mintu road residents are treated as valuable because of their close connection with the state power while others are because of material possession.
Interestingly migrants from the Middle East are not equally valued as those who are from the UK, USA, or Italy. Interestingly, immigrants from wealthy nations are highly expected grooms (or brides) in Bangladesh’s social setting.
Due to the stratification of giving importance, internal migration leads from rural to urban within the country, from congested areas to posh areas in the Capital city, and external migration from Bangladesh to the USA, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, and European Countries. However, this migration is also associated with some other social, political, and economic issues.
The complexion, gender dimension, and racial issues are traditionally practiced and much-talked how human beings in this region are seen and categorized, and nourished at every tier of socially and economically classified groupings.
Academic institutes are reportedly found as the established division between/among various groups and sub-groups; for example, students from Dhaka University or Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka College or Viqarunnissa Noon College or Holy Cross College or Dhaka Medical College or North South University are more valued in the society.
Again, students from some top-ranking subjects are more valued than the students of less chosen subjects, for example, students of Economics or EEE, or Pharmacy are deemed superior to Islamic History or Mathematics.
Top-ranked subjects are defined based on the student’s choices, employment opportunities, and social demand.
Further, created region-based sub-groups play a pivotal role in establishing the unseen but visible dividing lines.
Since these divided groups are strongly prevalent everywhere in the country and organizations, institutions are somehow dominated by different ideological philosophies.
People’s preference defines the quality that evidences the taste of a person too. Affluent people with aesthetic sense demonstrate their higher taste through their usable items.
Because of practicing this sub-culture, recruitment in different academic institutes is biased to a certain section of people dwarfing others.
North South University prefers appointing teachers who graduated from North American academic institutes; public universities mostly emphasize recruiting teachers from their graduate students and usually never value appointing graduates from a college under a national university.
This process acknowledges the institutional quality of certain parts of the world and is skewed to a particular region or country or institute.
Valuing people is gender biased. Usually, men are more valued in society, even in the family because of the male-dominated social structure, power concentration, family head, resource ownership, and social stratification whereas women in nursing-related jobs are more respectable compared to men.
Although necessity and awareness enhance the engagement of women in some socially defined male jobs, women are not preferred in some strenuous jobs, for example, construction work, rickshaw-pulling, and even security services where women-safety is a concern.
Aged and vulnerable people are widely emphasized differently in society. Within the man and woman-folk, people having resources and social status are more valued and classified.
Interestingly, addressing people also differs in how they are valued. Highly valued people are addressed as Apni (you) for example seniors citizen, business people, and hierarchically senior positioned employees while younger people, rickshaw-puller, day-laborer, or people in the lower level jobs in organizations are addressed as tumi (you).
Although very close friends and junior family members are addressed as tui (you) lovingly, sometimes lower-level people are humiliated as tui (you). Tui is also used for calling names.
Three types of addressing i.e. apni, tumi, tui, which are as similar as you in English create huge differences in how people in Bangladesh society are valued and discriminated against in language.
High officials of the public sector or people with executive power are always resected by addressing them as ‘sir’, which is not the case for the lower ranked job, even citizens who should be addressed as ‘sir’ because of their constitutional empowerment.
It would happen when people would value normative aspects more than material items and when people would realize that being is more important than having in order to find them real. Only then, people would be venerable in the true sense.
People’s preference defines the quality that evidences the taste of a person too. Affluent people with aesthetic sense demonstrate their higher taste through their usable items.
Although this creates a new division of classes different from the general people, they are more valued because of both abstract ideas and the presentation of materialistic artifacts.
It is evidently found that issues of valuing people in Bangladesh society are so peculiar, imperfect, complex, biased, diverse, judgmental, illogical, and contextual; it is difficult to identify the exact criteria for a normatively chosen definition.
However, theoretically positive issues, universally benefit-driven, higher-level integrity, and citizen-centric professions are quite significant in selecting the aspects of valuing people.
Society is being more stratified, divvied, isolated, cornered, and disconnected from the people’s feelings due to the various aspects of valuing people although normatively creating a non-stratified and united society is imperative and essential for peacefulness and greater harmony.
It would happen when people would value normative aspects more than material items and when people would realize that being is more important than having in order to find them real. Only then, people would be venerable in the true sense.
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