The DITF started two days ago, January 11th to be exact, still there are some stalls found under construction, and some of the bank booths are still not working there. The bank authority said that within 2 days they will be available for public use though.
Previous years, from day 1 at DITF almost 100 thousand of people gathered. Roads were full of traffic jams, and many people walking at the Sher E bangle Nagor area was the most frequent scenario during DITF. But it’s almost day 3, and not that big queue for tickets and long traffic jams are seen. Many stall’s salesmen said that there are not enough customers, even the visitors are very few as well.
Everybody in Bangladesh knows that the reason behind this scenario is the recent political violence across the country, and the normal people fears to go DITF for this reason. “If petrol bombing happens, or cocktail blasts”- everybody is thinking that. Many people said that their life is more important than a fair, if the political issue resolves then they will go to DITF next year, but not this year.
But it is true that number of visitors from day 2 was bigger than day 1, and day 3 numbers are even bigger, so looks like the crowd will eventually join the DITF, hopefully so.