Of water and people

Bangladesh is one of the few countries in the world where the amount of poverty is concentrated among so many people in so small an area and with so bleak an outlook. All available arable land has been utilised for many decades, but ownership is very unevenly distributed. Programmes against poverty have, since independence, changed greatly. But they continue to succeed in employing the middle class and providing fine political rhetoric, not in reducing poverty. During the 1990s, the average annual population growth rate was 1.7 per cent, lower than the 2.4 per cent per annum of the 1980s, but still high for a poor country. This decline will have very little impact on the growth of the labour force in the short or medium term, because the new entrants in the labour force up to the year 2020 have already been born.

Even given full labour absorption in crop production, there will remain a large surplus of labour for whom gainful employment opportunities need to be created in the non-crop sector, where the growth of employment has been very limited. The modern industrial sector could not absorb the surplus labour because of its narrow base, its capital intensive nature and a host of other techno-economic factors. Moreover, urban-based industrialisation provides little relief to the rural populace. Compared to many other Low Income Economies Bangladesh has failed to generate sufficient employment in the non-farm sector.

Apart from the economic misfortune, Bangladesh is located in one of the worst environmental corners in the world. In other words, it is located in one of the most disaster-prone areas of the world. Its coasts are susceptible to cyclones, most of which are only inches above sea-level. Except a few Pleistocene terraces, the whole country is a flood plain. So, a severe flood may inundate around 50 per cent of the land area of this densely populated country. This year it has submerged around 60 percent of the total land area of the country.

Floods not only affect the agriculture of the country but the livelihoods of majority of the population. Although it helps irrigation since only 30 per cent of the croplands are artificially irrigated, moderate to severe flooding drives many small and medium farmers from villages to find a room in the mushrooming urban slums. The responses to these environmental disasters have been two-fold. Firstly, due to the weakness of the state and its lack of resources, international donor and aid agencies have funded the construction of many embankments and barrages along the major rivers. Cyclone shelters for the coastal people have been built in the same way. Secondly, a large number of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have been working in post-disaster relief and development programmes targeting women. NGOs provide services like microcredit, education, health awareness and skill-training. Donors who want help the poor in Bangladesh, prefer the NGO channel due to its efficiency compared to the state's.

Once again, the activities of some NGOs have drawn criticism. Earlier, leaders of some NGOs asked the government to provide them with helicopters to distribute relief materials among the flood hit people: "NGOs cannot spin money out of human suffering." "Why do they [NGOs] want to spend Tk 40,000 per hour for flying helicopter to distribute 8-10 bundles of rice or wheat?" the finance minister asked. "This is how they build high-rises like the Rockefeller Tower." The minister made the observations while talking to journalists at his office. Actually he was pointing out at the high rise offices of the large Bangladeshi NGOs. The minister also iterated the government's position about not seeking international relief assistance: "We have adequate relief materials to meet the emergency humanitarian needs." He said the government would, however, welcome external assistance for post-flood rehabilitation of infrastructure and overall economy, and claimed that a number of multilateral lending agencies had expressed willingness to provide funds in this regard. While the government has argued that seeking international assistance for relief operations will harm the country's image, a number of high officials claim that it is unwilling to face questions about aid governance from multilateral lending agencies.

A major environmental disaster that has recently struck Bangladesh is arsenic contamination in almost one third of the tube-wells of the country. Leaving aside the cause of this disaster, the mitigation and cure for this have shown little success. Another example is the environmental impact of shrimp cultivation in the coastal areas which was driven by short-term goal of gaining foreign currency through export. The net effect of this project is salinity encroachment in the croplands and loss of livelihoods of many farmers. Some NGOs in Bangladesh and in the west tried to highlight this issue again with little success.

The response to the environmental effects of these structural measures to mitigate floods have been rather muted. Donors and the elite in Bangladesh prefer them because these constructions bring money and employment. The civil society and NGOs in Bangladesh have been more involved in national issues like women's right, fair election, and rights of sex workers or slum dwellers. Bangladesh has no major environmental movements like Chipko or Narmada Bachao in neighbouring India. One reason could be the absence of public awareness towards the environmental time bomb on which Bangladesh is sitting. Another reason could be that the poor and their NGOs are busy with short-term goal of meeting basic needs ignoring the vision and mission of a long-term sustainable development.

Dr. Mokbul Morshed Ahmad is Visiting Assistant Professor, Regional and Rural Development Planning, School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand.