A quiet violence in Bangladesh’s chars

Recently, I read with interest a report on Decreer Char published in The Daily Star. The report describes how local political operatives have deprived the landless dwellers in Decreer Char of their legal rights to khas or government land through lease from local administration, and then allowing the people to use and cultivate charlands in exchange for a fixed revenue annually. The char or shoal in question is on the Padma River, near Pabna's Ishwardi upazila. The Pabna district administration leased 1,040 acres of charland, which is a huge parcel, for one year to only one individual—the brother-in-law of the local MP—without any provision for sub-lease as per the law. However, the land is already sub-leased at exorbitantly high prices to the char locals for cultivation.

I am not surprised by the details reported, including the violation of laws regulating the distribution of khas land in char areas. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, the process of acquiring khas land has become more of a political than a legal process, benefiting the local landed and/or political elites, particularly from the mainland. Such land-grabbing, which is acute in char areas, is a form of violence against the poor and the most vulnerable char dwellers. This deprives char people, who already lead a marginal life, from legitimate ownership and access to charlands.

An estimated 20 million people live in chars in the floodplain of the major river systems (i.e. Padma, Jamuna and Meghna) and in the coastal regions of Bangladesh. Char dwellers are by and large poor, isolated and highly vulnerable, both physically and socially, without land rights and sustained sources of living. Thus, chars are also pockets of extreme poverty in the country. Char people mostly live as tenants/users and are periodically forced out to migrate due to erosion. Erosion, displacement, and migration are also part of the char stories. The new lands that re-emerge are still governed by age-old laws and practices derived from the colonial period to determine charland ownership, use and management in contemporary Bangladesh.

I have lived and worked in Kazipur-Sirajganj chars on the Jamuna River for my research and later for consulting work. For many years, my core research has been on char settlements, their economies and social organisations, and how these have been historically shaped by the colonial and post-colonial land tenure and administration with regard to alluvial and diluvial lands. During the British era, the ever-shifting chars constituted endless agricultural "frontiers" as tax-free lands for cultivation and extension by zamindars, who controlled the reclaimed land and appropriated surpluses from their tenants/users. We find many historical accounts of rivalries and lathiyali between powerful landlords or zamindars using their clubmen for control over charlands in the delta. In the post-zamindary period, the local landlords as power-holders took advantage of the unstable riverine situation by maintaining invisible armies of lathiyals to extract surpluses from the dependent peasant households and to further control the new charlands.

Now, decades later, the armed lathiyali has been replaced by political goons, working in collusion with local administration, to effectively control khas land in char areas to maintain and expand their economic and political interest. The land grabbers in the floodplain work as a mafia group with powerful connections. Indeed, there is an interconnection between local control of charland and changes in the government in Dhaka. In Decreer Char, over the past 15 years, the same people of the party in power are getting lease of charlands. Before that, it was the local leaders of the then party in power, who are now unable to wield their influence.

Any observer in contemporary Bangladesh would come across plentiful cases of illegal land-grabbing and violence for control over new char or khas land in the country. In view of the erosion and accretion of land in the floodplain, it is entirely possible that such land-grabbing and violence would continue unless the complex set of rules in the current laws, which favour the powerful elites, are replaced by a new set of land laws for char areas. The poor and landless, who deserve to be the beneficiaries of the new land, lose out to the locally powerful elites due to their manipulation and influence over the land revenue and administration. The current laws and practices need a paradigmatic shift in replacing the age-old legal framework and settlement policy by one that is conducive to the welfare of char dwellers today.

There are strong reasons for rethinking char development issues with a new set of laws and institutions that can benefit the char dwellers. The relative physical isolation of chars, lack of connectivity, and periodic displacement and migration by char people remain as major barriers to poverty reduction in the char areas. Several recent programmes such as Chars Livelihood Programmes, Char Development and Settlement Project, Sandbar Cropping, Danida Livelihood Programmes in coastal chars, etc provide models and lessons that may be used in the formulation of a new char development policy and agenda. Such an agenda must rest on the rights of the char people, and anchored to the principles of administrative devolution and local participation.

Dr Mohammad Zaman is a development and resettlement specialist. His most recent edited book (co-editor Mustafa Alam) is titled 'Living on the Edge: Char Dwellers in Bangladesh.'

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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