In any busy road, a rickshaw waits at a traffic signal. Its back panel is painted with bright flowers, a village landscape and a short message: Respect Women. Another rickshaw asks people not to blame survivors of violence. A third says that dignity belongs to everyone.
Most people notice these words for only a few seconds before the traffic begins to move again.
Rickshaws have long been known as Bangladesh's moving art galleries. Their colourful paintings celebrate rivers, birds, cinema, cricket and village life. But in recent years, rickshaw art has become a quietly reminder ofng us about the kind of society we hope to build.
This art raises an uncomfortable question. Who do we expect to speak about right and wrong?
Many of us, often without realising it, associate moral awareness with education.
We assume that universities produce not only knowledge but better judgements as well. Degrees become shorthand for wisdom, while people with less formal education are too easily dismissed as less aware or less thoughtful.
Life, however, has a habit of challenging such assumptions.
When a rickshaw owner decides to spend his own money on a painting that encourages respect for women or speaks against violence, he is making a choice. Nobody has asked him to do it. There is no prize for it, no extra income and no public recognition. Yet he has decided that this is a message worth carrying through the streets.
It reminds us that empathy is not awarded with a certificate, and decency does not depend on social status.
We have countless examples of ordinary people acting with remarkable integrity. A shopkeeper returns a customer's forgotten wallet. A day labourer risks his safety to help strangers during floods. A bus driver waits for an elderly passenger to cross the road safely. These realities rarely become headlines, yet they happen every day.
At the same time, education alone has never guaranteed respectful behaviour. Universities reflect society as much as they shape it. Their classrooms produce brilliant graduates, but they also contain the same biases, stereotypes and prejudices found outside the campus gates.
That is why these painted rickshaws deserve a closer look.
Across the world, public art has often encouraged conversations that formal institutions struggle to begin. Murals speak about equality. Street performances question discrimination. Community art projects bring environmental issues into public spaces. Rickshaw painting belongs naturally to this tradition.
Every painted rickshaw is also a form of performance art. It is constantly moving, constantly meeting new viewers and constantly placing the same message into different parts of the city. Every journey becomes another small exhibition.
Social attitudes rarely change because of one speech or one campaign. More often, they shift through repetition. The same ideas appear again and again until they begin to feel ordinary.
A respectful message seen on the way to work today may be forgotten by evening. But seeing similar messages week after week, in different places and in different forms, gradually shapes the public conversation.
This matters at a time when discussions about harassment, consent and respect have become increasingly visible in schools, universities and online spaces.
These conversations are necessary, but they can easily become polarised. People sometimes become more interested in defending their positions than listening to one another.
Perhaps that is why these paintings feel so authentic. They emerge not from conference halls or policy papers but from everyday life.
The next time a painted rickshaw passes by, it may be worth looking beyond its colours. The artwork is not only decorating a vehicle, but it is also questioning an old assumption that moral clarity naturally flows from the so-called educated to the 'less educated'. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not.
Sometimes the person offering the simplest, clearest lesson in respect is the one pedalling through traffic, carrying both passengers and an idea.
And sometimes, the street has something to teach the classroom.
