Loss due to recent flood

Flood is not at all a new event in Bangladesh. Every year flood and/or drought occurs at least in some part of the country, and government has its very much professional departments and trained employees even at village level as block supervisors who make preliminary assessment of loss, prepare rehabilitation programmes, and implement them very effectively. The Department of Agricultural Extension in fact, has devised a standard techniques using national and international expertise, and these techniques are utilised over the years without any controversy. I am sure that this year they will also do their professional function most effectively and efficiently. I fully appreciate the statement of honourable Finance Minister the other day in his television interview

Now in these circumstances, we cannot, however, wait again indefinitely and have to make at least a preliminary assessment as to the extent of the damage. To do so we have to identify the area of damage. The highest damage a flood causes is the standing agricultural crops and vegetables followed by damage in communication system and then the other sectors.

Fortunately this flood has occurred at a time when there was no important major standing crops in the field except some aus and seed bed of aman. Our farmers are very experienced and over the years they have been trained to prepare seed bed relatively at higher land, keeping some seed always in stock to overcome calamities like flood, drought, etc. They also know how to use the non-seed paddy for seed purposes after doing the germination test and adjusting the seed rate.

Besides there are private seedling growers particularly for HYV aman and these are available to the farmers. By this time most of farmers have made their own arrangements to raise seedlings and even planting the crop. Planting is easier immediately after receding water from the land with almost zero tillage and our farmers are availing of this opportunity. One can find now most of the land is already green. However planting can continue for another one month or even more in particular areas with particular variety of rice. So there will not be any loss of aman production. On the contrary at least ten percent yield (vertical) will be increased because of new alluvial deposit.

Floods in the month of July do not cause any damage of standing jute crop in the field rather it facilitate harvesting, retting, and fibre extraction.

So, communication system, namely roads, bridges, culverts and other infrastructures are the sectors which have been affected seriously and their damage requires assessment and the cost of repairing and reconstruction has to be estimated which the government will do in its own way. I have been actively associated with this kind of estimation for many years of my service carrier and can well imagine the extent of loss. Publishing and circulating such fat figure of loss, far from the truth by any body is likely to cause harm and jeopardise the good image of the country achieved through dedication and hard work.

Floods are not new. People have faced them always with courage and the government has always handled them effectively in the past, and we expect that this government, being more experienced, will ignore and stop the publication of unrealistic estimation, and will manage the flood more efficiently.

Dr. Md. Ayubur Rahman is retd. Director General, Department of Agricultural Extension, Bangladesh Jute Research Institute, Director, BARI.