The Past Few Days

I haven't posted in the past few days because I traveled out to a rural area of Bangladesh called Bogra, where broadband connections do not reach and the air is smog-free. I am staying at the Rural Development Academy, a governmental agency that provides training and new technologies to farmers in the area. The campus is beautiful certainly by Bangladeshi standards and by most other standards as well. The campus is similar to the Amherst campus in some ways, with dorms, a library, computer facilities, sports fields, and cafeterias. The major difference is the 80 acres of demonstration farms used for research and development of genetically modified plants and farming techniques. We are here to do field research in a village in the area, and will be doing so until the 17th. We have split up into five groups, each with a guide/translator, that are researching different topics: Politics, Health, Environment, Economic Development, and Education. I am in the politics group, and we have been interviewing people about their local political systems as well as their perceptions of the national government. This is an important subject for the villagers, as they come in direct contact with taxmen and governmental officials in ways that Americans don't always. For example, government officials recently came to the village and told the villagers about a tax that had been on the books for 15 years but never collected. The official told the people that they would have to pay all of it. When the people went to the tax office, they paid the 7000 takas but their receipt indicated that they only paid 1300 takas. Also, today we heard a story about a land dispute between an aunt and nephew that resulted in the nephew using his political connections to bring in 50 men to dig up all the soil on the land and take it away on trucks. In an agricultural community, this renders the land useless. Instances of corruption such as these are widespread, and it has led many of the villagers to question the utility of democracy, or at least democracy as currently implemented in Bangladesh. We also hear ideas such as these when talking to the Bangladeshi students and professors involved in the HECUA program during lecture and discussion in the evening. Bangladesh is fascinating in part because of the unique coexistence of the Western model of development and the presence of huge domestic NGOs that resemble corporations, and seeing how these forces affect a simple agricultural community has been very intriguing. Almost everyone Bangladeshi has a different idea of how the country can be improved, which reflects the state of flux in this country but also that there is a great deal of hope for the future. I am having fun in the present, as I am taking advantage of the RDA's badminton facilities and open spaces to play frisbee. The food isn't as exciting as it used to be, but the program makes up for that.