Alternative approach to development for haor areas …………………………………………..

Haor, the lowlands said to be created by tectonic depression of earthly surface resulted from a collision between Indian plates with Eurasian plates, covers a vast area of Mymensingh, Netrokona, Sylhet, Sunamganj, Habiganj, Moulavi Bazar, Kishoreganj and Brahmanbaria district of Bangladesh. Along the 47 large haors there are 6300 swamps, locally called beels which also submerged in water in rainy seaon. In this zone of haors, more than five million metric tons of rice is produced every year if no flashflood takes place for onrush of water from highland, especially from neighbouring country. The area is recognized as natural granary of Bangladesh with only single harvest of boro rice per year and it is the major means of production in this part of land along with fishing in monsoon when haor brims with water. The marginal farmers engaged in rice cultivation are highly dependent on harvest for meeting their yearlong needs. Contrarily, rice supply in the market increases or decreases with the fall or rise of the price in Bangladesh. Becoming a rice sufficient country for Bangladesh is highly dependent of production of rice in haor areas. Unless there is a successful rice production in haor, food supply for sixteen crore peoples from the rest of the land would become quite difficult. But such a success doesn’t come from sky alone. More than two million farmers toil for this and the government funnels huge of seeds, fertilizer, insecticide, water and power with subsidized price. Add to this, a busy administration employs their sleepless hours to oversee and monitoring good supply, equitable distribution, smooth transactions of these in the line of governmental policies. Alas! A flashflood and onrush of water made everything upside down causing miseries to have no bounds in this year. Sadly, unripe rice had gone under water overnight before the farmers resisted the tide with protection dam that were in fragile state for long. It is not a new phenomenon that paddy fields, in haor belt, go under water when a heavy rain occurs or overflowing rivers bring untimely water flow from upstream, mostly from neighbourly rivers that are linked to the haor. But what is new in this time is quite alarming in this sense that after inundation of raw paddy field, plants rotted and produced huge quantity of methane gas causing oxygen deficiency that led to a kind of ecocides for which every species of that wetland died, whether they be fishes, crabs or birds...