Bangladesh Hill Tracts Communities Face Survival Struggle – Paper

Text of report by Nazrul Islam headlined “Life in CHT withers in government neglect” published by Bangladeshi newspaper New Age website on 7 July

Gyan Prakash Chakma is elated to see the small engine-boat moor at the muddy bank of Barboshap Ghat in the artificial Kaptai Lake, a few kilometres away from the Rangamati town. He has waited for two days and a half for the boat carrying utensils and rice.

Gyan Prakash is no stranger to hardship but life has been especially harsh since the past few days. He and four members of his family have been living out in the open since their hut was burnt a few days ago.

“The old man has to sell his labour to feed his family,” says Barun Kanti Chakma, chairman of the Bandukbhanga Union Council.

He says he hurried to the spot as soon as he heard of the fire but still believes he should have gone there with help much earlier. “The reality is that we cannot mobilize resources and move immediately to remote areas whenever there is an accident.”

Gyan Prakash does not seem interested in Barun’s problems. He has more pressing issues to tend to; he has to start his life from the scratch. The hut and a few square-metres of arable land is all that he owns, unofficially that is.

Many indigenous peoples lead as harsh, if not harsher, a life as Prakash. Some live in even remoter areas where they have no access to basic services of the government.

A number of non-governmental organizations have started providing civic amenities for them since the Chittagong Hill Tracts Treaty was signed in 1997 bringing an end to decades of bush war for “self- rule” for at least 13 indigenous communities living in the hills.

Over the years, poverty in the remote hilly areas has remained as entrenched as it was before the treaty. The inhabitants are used to one meal a day, an official of the Department of Agricultural Extension points out.

Health delivery is almost non-existent and there are numerous cases of deaths preventable by generic medicine or vaccines included in the government’s health programmes.

Schools are often far away and take hours to reach. Thus children do not have access to education or training to develop skills for better employment opportunities.

Ameena Mohsin, a professor of international relations at Dhaka University who has authored a book on the conflict in the hill tracts, says the face of poverty in the region has remained unchanged for years. “There is no reason to believe that poverty in the hill tracts has been reduced. It is true that NGO activities have increased in the region, but they are concentrated mainly in the urban areas.”

Ameena believes an NGO-based elite society has been created in the hill tracts, which does not mean poverty reduction.

There has been hardly any attempt by the authorities to create jobs, resolve the Bengali-Jumma [tribe] conflict, she says. “The problems with land disputes prevail as they did in the pre-treaty period, and the steps for utilization of natural resources remain controversial.”

Even worse, administrative tangles and different projects with adverse ecological affects are gradually destroying the traditional means of livelihood. The environmental degradation also destroys precious natural resources.

The Agricultural Extension Department official says the recorded food deficit in the Chittagong Hill Tracts comprising Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban and covering an area of 13,295 square kilometres in the south-eastern part of the country was 7,337 tonnes in 2005-06.

The deficit, according to the department, was 21,261 tonnes in 2004-05 and 13,728 tonnes in 2003-04 because of lack of arable land.

According to another survey by a non-governmental organisation, it would have been possible to produce 35,000 tonnes of additional food grain had the government taken measures to bring over 21,000 hectares ? classified as arable ? under cultivation coverage.

Padakshep, a non-governmental organisation, claims that total crop production including paddy, vegetable and different types of fruits can hardly meet 11 per cent demand of about 14 lakh [10 lakh equals 1 million] people, both indigenous and Bengali settlers, in the hill tracts.

Two major sources of livelihood ? forests and water bodies ? for the indigenous peoples are proving insufficient.

“It is tough to depend on natural resources nowadays as the three major components ? land, forest and water bodies ? are not yielding enough,” said Sadhan Kumar Karbari.

Jummas are about to lose their ethnic identity and their land through a systematic process of integration and assimilation, he fears.

Barring few exceptions, Jummas believe in community ownership of natural resources. Therefore, there are seldom cases where an individual might rightfully claim ancestral ownership of a certain piece of land. This in turn leads to complicated disputes.

A land reforms commission was working on means to resolve disputes over land that began with the surge of plain-land Bengalis settling in the area in late 1970s and afterwards.

Unabated felling of trees by unscrupulous section of businessmen in connivance with forest officials over the last decade has turned many a hill with thick vegetation barren destroying the habitat of hundreds of species of plants, animals, birds and insects.

The Forest Ministry says the rate of deforestation, over 3 per cent, in Bangladesh was the highest in South Asia in the last decades.

There are 1,650 water bodies with an area of 925 hectares in the hill tracts that produce about 1.7mn tonnes of fish.

Locals say fish production has decreased drastically and many have changed their profession because of the fall in production.

Indra Kumar Chakma, a peasant who produces banana, mango, jackfruit and turmeric on his hilly land, is frustrated with the lack of proper infrastructure to transport his produces.

Indra also produces paddy on the fringes of water bodies after the water recedes in winter.

He says difficulty in transportation of the produce from villages to district towns is quite strenuous and time consuming.

Half the perishables rot either in the garden or on the way to the markets as there is no mechanism for their preservation.

“We need small exchange centres from where we can buy and sell our products,” the farmer says.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring South Asia. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.