But we are going to talk about a different kind of war here. It is about the one war that we all missed to wage so far. It is the War on Error. Think of it! This would be the "Mother of all Wars!" In fact, the War on Error would ultimately stop all wars!

In this war the enemy is tiny and non-lethal. A simple-looking "error." Therefore it would not require a big army to pin it down and eliminate. Why is this war so important? Good question.

If we look around, we shall discover trace of an error, tiny or big, intentional or unintentional, that has always snowballed into a major catastrophe. This has happened time and again, in our family life, social life, professional life and also in our national life. In our national life we have been facing one catastrophe after another, all because of an error made by someone, somewhere down the line. As a nation we have often paid a heavy price for that. For some of the errors, we are still paying the installments and paying through the nose.

If we want to look for examples of present day errors, we only have to peep through the window of the election commission of the country. Plentiful errors are file-bound in that office. That office is in a mess all because of an error the top guns made while taking a bureaucratic decision regarding preparation of an authentic and universally acceptable voter list. They made the first error. Then they tried to side-track it. There they made the second error. Then the third.

Soon the snowballing effect began and today the entire office lies buried under a massive ball of snow. The interesting part of the story is, the people buried underneath are still refusing to accept our rescue attempts, to grab the lifeline thrown at them. They still believe that they can get out of the mess all by themselves! So, one can now hear the huffing and puffing sound coming from below.

At the kitchen market front one would still find footprints of the first error that created another mess of outlandish proportion. The people, who go to the markets on a daily basis, were the first to detect the error that looked ominous. They sent distress signals to the relevant people on day one. But the bigwigs in the government and administration never bothered to identify or correct that error.

It is because they never learned to take any lesson from history. They thought the error would simply go away one day! What a massive wishful thinking! There they made the second error. Soon the tiny error grew bigger and bigger and swallowed the entire market sector. The bigwigs in the government and administration scratched their heads trying to figure out what went wrong. They are looking everywhere but not at that tiny-winy error they had brushed under the rug long ago.

Today, we see teachers lying on the roads, hungry and thirsty, and exposed to the elements. Shall we also mention "exposed to humiliation"? Why are they on the roads and not in classrooms? What forced them to leave home and come sit on the dirt of city roads? This sordid situation also tells the story of that tiny-winy error that someone made somewhere, and which is now responsible for creating an explosive situation.

Someone did not care to listen to the words of the teachers in the first place, thereby making the first error. Then when their words turned into angry words, that someone tried to block the road for further talks with them. That was the second error. Then the usual snowballing began taking down everything that came on the way. But, if a war had been launched on error long ago, things would not have come to such a pass.

Error is a word where only the letter "T" is missing. That means an error can turn into something of the proportion of a terror, if given the breeding ground. The terrors of today are fallouts of yesterday's errors. Therefore, the War on Error would leave no room for an error to flourish and proliferate. We should not lose any time to launch this all-important war.

Shahnoor Wahid is a Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.