Bangladesh Resident Mission

Restoring Life

Background

In September 2000, flash floods inundated six districts in southwestern Bangladesh, destroying homes, crops, roads, and railway tracks. The floods affected two million people, forcing about half of them into temporary shelters.

The water destroyed 150,000 hectares of crops, mainly rice and vegetables, as well as fruit trees, fish ponds, and shrimp farms. Farming families lost the seeds they had stored in their homes for the next planting season. Road and rail connections were disrupted for nearly 3 months, affecting trade links within Bangladesh and with neighboring India.

Communications were totally disrupted in some areas because of severe damage to about 600 kilometers (km) of roads, including 800 bridges and culverts across the region’s numerous rivers and canals. More than 1,200 km of embankments were also damaged.

The Sarsha Upazilla hospital was cut off both from a nearby highway and a rural road linking several villages when a key culvert collapsed. It was truly a disaster.

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Recovering from the Floods

“There was chest-high water in the hospital,” says Dr. Shubodh Kumar Kundu, Subdistrict Health and Family Planning Officer. “We closed our 30-bed inpatient facility and converted the outpatient areas into a shelter.” The highway was completely inaccessible. “But people from the villages on the other side came to the hospital in boats and on rafts made from banana plants.”

Today, they come to the hospital by bus or auto rickshaw. The culvert and the road, rebuilt with financial support from ADB, link the villages to the hospital, a school, several rural markets, and the highway to Benapol, one of two important border crossings into India. Access to the rural markets and the border crossings, known as land ports, is vital to the area’s poor farming and fishing communities. These people sell rice and vegetables in domestic markets. Substantial volumes of the region’s fruits and fish are also exported to India.

The subdistrict hospital provides reliable, affordable, and accessible care for people like Tasleema Begum, who lives with her husband and three children in a village 6 km away. They own a small plot of land, which her husband farms. Tasleema Begum has brought her 1-year-old son Abdur Rahman to the hospital because of his persistent cough. They traveled by rickshaw van, a popular mode of transport along rural roads.

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Business Thriving

Roads rehabilitated under the ADB-supported Southwest Flood Damage Rehabilitation Project help small vendors take agricultural produce to rural markets and bigger traders who truck goods across the border into India.

Many trucks pass through the border trading post at Bhomra, 35 km from the Bangladeshi city of Satkhira and 70 km from the Indian metropolis of Kolkata. In September 2000, a dam broke 9 km away in India and submerged the road and the bridge located near the border.

“The road was under 4–5 feet of water,” recalls Shirajul Islam, manager of the Poly International Company, which imports stone chips from India and has a small shop along the rebuilt road. “Our shop was under water, too. The floodwaters did not recede for 3 months.”

All trade had to be suspended, causing heavy losses to the businesspeople who depend on the border trade. “With no stone chips coming from India, our construction industry also suffered,” adds Shirajul Islam.

Today, the road has been repaired, trucks are once again rolling through Bhomra, and business is thriving. People are also able to visit relatives across the border, which separates Bangladesh from the Indian state of West Bengal.

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Small Loans, Big Returns

The floods destroyed many homes and disrupted the livelihoods of poor farming and fishing communities. To help them get back on their feet—and improve their lives in general—ADB is supporting microcredit schemes that provide small loans, mainly to women.

Zarina Begum, a widow with three grown children, has been participating in the scheme. Her two sons live with her in a traditional Bangladeshi joint family dwelling in the village of Manirampur. She has taken three loans, two of which she has already repaid.

With the help of these loans, Zarina Begum leased agricultural land and traded in livestock, slowly building up her savings until she had enough to buy a plot of land. Last year, she harvested 15 maunds (0.6 ton) of rice and 57 maunds (2.1 tons) of jute.

Zarina Begum’s husband died 22 years ago when her youngest child was only 5 months old. She was left with three young children to bring up in a society that offers women little opportunity to earn a living. “I used to husk rice and do household work in other people’s homes while also bringing up my own children,” Zarina Begum recalls. “Now I work on my own land and no longer have to live in a mud hut.”

Thanks to a little help, her life is at long last looking brighter.

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Learn more about ADB's partnership with Bangladesh