Shrimps transmuted their woes into boons
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
Maswood Alam Khan
Faltita is a remote village of 200 families most of whom belong to Hindu community. One of 19 villages of Mulghar Union under Fakirhat Police Station of Bagerhat District, Faltita village is dotingly called 'Kuwait of Bangladesh'. Indeed, the way the villagers elevated themselves from below the lowest line of abject poverty to their present status, when they cannot think of skipping a single episode of a popular Hindi drama serial in their home televisions -- all networked by a dish antenna downlinking programmes from dozens of Satellite TV stations -- should qualify them as Kuwaitis metamorphosed from Bangladeshis.
In '60s and '70s, there was not much difference between Faltita people and aquatic plants of 'white water lily', the national flower of Bangladesh, in the pattern of their livings. White water lily blooms in flowering plants,botanically known as nymphaeaceae, which are rooted in soil under shallow bodies of water with their round leaves and multi-petalled flowers floating on water surface. Villagers in Faltita had to keep themselves afloat in synch with ebbing and flowing of flash floods and tidal waves the way long tubular stems of nymphaeaceae elongate and branch out rapidly to reach water surface with rise and fall of water levels.
Frequent inundation by seawater, lack of sweet water bodies, low-lying swampy lands, water stagnation due to faulty barrages, structurally slack soils and total absence of education made people inhabiting Faltita scrape their living as scavengers dependent on the mercy of nature alone. In the absence of embankments against flash floods and drainage facilities to rid fields of stagnant water, attempts to cultivate rice or any other cereal crops on their fallow lands failed repeatedly. Men were not well-built enough, due to undernourishment, to do fishing in far-flung turbulent rivers. Emaciated pregnant women were too malnourished to retain their conceptions for long. Miscarriages and infant mortality were rife. Skeletal children, somehow surviving, were left out to fend for themselves.
The only less laborious job scrawny people of Faltita could afford to perform with their two feeble hands to slake their hunger was picking stems of nymphaeaceae and plucking ripe seedpods (locally known as 'Dhep') of water lily flowers. Men, women and children had to wade waist-deep through mud all day long in ponds and lakes in quest of various hydrophytic roots, rhizomes, stems, flowers and fruits---none of any nutritious value to meet their bare minimum calorie requirements.
At the end of the day as the hydrophytic harvesters clambered onto banks, they were all awash with leeches fattened by their anemic blood. They used to grasp and pull those leeches off their skins by their fingers, but could not afford to use salt, too expensive to them for removing a leech. Some even waited out until those leeches were satiated with blood and would fall off on their own as they regarded the bloodsuckers as godsend meant for removing poisons from their blood. Most of those harvesters, the majority of whom were women and children, had to dry out their wet clothes on their bodies, as they did not have a second set of wears.
More horrific was the story of their kitchens and hunger of their babies. Grains of rice to Faltita people in those days of '60s and '70s were synonymous with granules of gold and 'bhater phen' (liquefied starch strained off from boiled rice) elixir from heaven.
Staple food of Faltita people, as known to everybody in Bagerhat district, was not rice. It was seeds of 'Dhep' (matured pistil of lily flowers) boiled in water they took as their regular meals and their curry was neither meat nor fish nor normal vegetables; it was rhizomes of nymphaeaceae cooked with a little bit of spices made gravy that they had to gulp as curry accompanying boiled Dhep seeds. Popcorns made of Dhep seeds parched in hot sand were a delicatessen meant for sale, not for their own consumption. Poor townspeople of Khulna used to buy at nominal price those innutritious Dhep popcorns (cookies of the poor) as fancy crackers to dunk or lard with their evening teas.
Bitter experience taught mothers that their babies would die in a matter of days if their infants were force-fed courses of Dhep meals down their throats. In search of nutritious food only for their babies, mothers had to walk miles to houses of the rich in the northern parts of Mulghar Union with a hope to get 'bhater phen' and a few morsels of boiled rice fortuitously slipped therein. A caste-conscious wife of a Hindu zamindar (property owner) out of her pity used to spoon out with a ladle held on a long stick a few ounces of those starchy liquids from afar in a cautious way that did not constitute a bodily touch with the begging mother of lower caste.
With such imperceptible level of poverty prevalent among people of Faltita, who were mostly Hindus of low caste, emerged a new caste with a new nomenclature: "Dhep Khawa Manush" (Dhep eating people). Anybody could discern a Dhep eating woman by her appearance; however young or old she was her face and neck bore some stigmatic marks of dark patches.
People suffering from such acute malnutrition, according to demographic behavior, were supposed to be extinct long ago. However, Faltita people survived miraculously. The miracle, in fact, was due to a train that used to shuttle between Bagerhat and Rupsha East ( Khulna) at snail's pace on a 22-mile long rickety broad-gauge track (now abandoned) that touched a Railway Station called Mulghar near Faltita. That train pulled by steam engine afforded the Dhep eating people the only lifeline to earn a little bit of cash by selling in nearby towns whatever spin-offs the national flower of Bangladesh presented.
Unwritten instructions from Railway authority allowed Dhep eaters to travel free of cost---or for a little bribe to the Ticket Checker on duty---by the train service along with their voluminous consignments of nymphaeaceae stems in coils and Dhep popcorns in sacks. Destitute Hindu women and children of Faltita village, in utter consternation, used to stare at the train as a carriage that were, as if, as sacred as their chariot of juggernaut.
I enquired to at least a dozen people in the locality to know the background of naming their village Faltita that in English stands as 'Fruit is bitter'. But none could help me delve into the story of christening the village. One of my colleagues lastly gave me the logical background of the name: "People of that village who subsisted on Dhep seeds could not dream of buying fruits for themselves or their children. Lest their children should cry for buying them fruits mothers tutored their babies at their very infancy that 'fruits are all bitter'. So the name 'Fruit is bitter' (Faltita) evolved as the name of their village that ultimately got registered in the books of revenue collectors."
God kept up HIS sleeve for a long time a pleasant surprise for the Dhep eating people. Fortune started smiling on Faltita not before mid '80s when the villagers serendipitously found that a creature (decapod crustacean to a marine biologist) with multifarious legs, hands, pincers and claws ensconced inside a shell could thrive in multitude in their stagnant waters that were too briny for cereal cultivation. An uproarious revolution for shrimp cultivation took place in Faltita and later in adjoining areas covering entire coastal belts of Bagerhat, Khulna and Satkhira districts.
Shrimps and fish export, now the second largest foreign exchange earner for Bangladesh next to readymade garments, have already employed more than 750,000 people and over 10 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on shrimps. Around 145,000 farmers using 250,000 hectors of land in southeastern and southwestern coastal areas of Cox's Bazaar, Bagerhat, Khulna and Satkhira are producing more than 50,000 metric tons of shrimps annually mostly by using traditional methods. In 2006-07, our country earned about US$ 500 million by exporting shrimps mainly to the USA and the European Union (EU) countries.
Seafood exports from Bangladesh, it is hoped, would fetch US$ 1.5 billion annually by 2010. Plump tiger shrimps, selling at a minimum of one US dollar apiece, are now coined as white-gold nuggets and villages like Faltita, harvesting those white-golden shrimps, dollar-minting factories of Bangladesh.
Overnight Faltita people who used to skimp on barely one meal a day started flaunting their costly Nokia mobile phone sets to answer coaxing calls and indents over telephone for shrimps from clients and customers, from afar. Almost every family owns a refrigerator, a television and subscription to at least one mobile telephone service. Children in schools are now heard shouting numbers at the top of their lungs learning by rote multiplication tables. Adults are seen idling away their evenings massaging their heads in saloons. Mothers are seen probing into expiry dates on the labels of sachets containing baby food while shopping in local markets. Stigmatic marks of dark patches on their faces and necks have already melted away. Babies of Faltita nowadays keep nagging their fathers to buy them apples from Australia and pomegranates from Iran.
Happiness does not stay long in the poor's homes, anyway. The entire communities of shrimp cultivators of Bangladesh are of late passing sleepless nights awaiting what happens after October 17, the day when, as they heard, some foreigners are arriving at Bangladesh to pay visits to their fields and homesteads. "Foreign sahibs", a longtime shrimp cultivator from Faltita village explained to me, "will study palms and foots of our ladies and children to check whether they ever laboured in catching or feeding shrimps. They will also take samples of water from our ponds to test in their laboratories whether any child ever left his/her urines or feces in those waters. Moreover, they will also check whether we ever misbehaved with any sea fish while catching nauplii of shrimps. God knows what happens to our dollar-minting villages after they leave Bangladesh for their homes in Europe!" He perhaps brooded too much out of fears.
A four-member delegation from Food and Veterinary Office of EU will be arriving on October 17 on a 10-day visit to see for themselves whether shrimp cultivators and processors of our country are implementing HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) policies properly. They will inspect government laboratories for standard control, factory premises, quality control systems and other infrastructural facilities of different shrimp cultivating farms and processing plants located at Dhaka, Chittagong, Cox's Bazaar, Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira. They will also crosscheck prevalence of child labour practices, gender discrimination and human rights violations etc. as publicized by different non-government organisations (NGOs) working in Bangladesh. Based on their report on this visit, the authorities in the USA and the EU will decide whether they should continue allowing Bangladeshi shrimps to reach their coasts or not.
I have visited many shrimp processing plants in Khulna. Nowhere could I find a single child working inside or outside of those plants. Conscious of penalties being imposed on the noncompliant plants owners and operators have been maintaining utmost sanitation and quality controls as enunciated in HACCP policies and keeping their stainless gadgets tidy, orderly, spotless and sparkling. I was sprayed at least a dozen times with disinfectants in spite of my wearing sterilized caps, aprons, masks and gumboots on my way to inspect machinery and freezing vaults of a plant. I am sure EU inspection team will leave Bangladesh completely satisfied with whatever efforts the shrimp processing plants are making to satisfy their potential buyers with their quality products.
I am afraid, though, the EU inspection team may not be happy with the waste management of our shrimp cultivators. They may find organic and inorganic wastes oozing out of some shrimp cultivating ponds, an erratic way of cultivation that are telling upon the marine and terrestrial environments of our coastal areas. They may also observe addiction of making quick money through shrimp cultivation reducing lands for other agricultural produces that may ultimately make our rural folks in those areas totally forget how to till lands and harvest crops or how to rear poultry and raise livestock.
The governwemnt of Bangladesh, however, already has undertaken programmes to encourage shrimp cultivators to carry out their agricultural activities like growing crops and vegetables on the peripheries of shrimp cultivating enclosures side by side. Some shrimp cultivators are also being motivated to grow vegetables by hydrophonics, a system of growing seasonal plants on floating mounds of decomposed water hyacinths combined with grain stalks, straws, etc., given the nature of their lands remaining filled with stagnant water throughout the year.
Foreign sahibs of the EU inspection team are not that dreadful to shrimp cultivators as are some Bangladeshis working in some organizations with questionable reputes.
There are people in our country who will not mind spending the whole
day on a handstand position inverting their bodies and throwing their legs upward if only they were assured of a little bit of funding in dollar from here and there at the end of the day. Tanners and vultures spend a heartrending day if there is not a carcass around. So are those people who shudder at the thought of total absence of crimes like abuses of women and children in Bangladesh; they sweat to fabricate a petty crime into a severe felony to justify funding they receive from some mysterious donors. They print colorful banners and posters depicting Bangladeshi children cracking mollusks for shrimp feeds. They, along with competing shrimp exporters of other countries, will glow with smiles of contentment if the EU inspection team enunciates in their findings those tales of tortures on children and women so that the USA stops buying our shrimps and Faltita people reverse their journey back to their days of '60s.
In a country of 150 million people, a few reported or fabricated cases of abuses suffered by women or children must not be taken as yardstick to judge our overall human rights situation. Not a single mother can be found in Bangladesh who would compel her child to drop out of his/her school and catch fish or crack mollusks unless both mother and her child will have to starve to death in the absence of earnings by her only child.
May we humbly appeal to foreign teams visiting our country not to lend both their ears while listening to harangues about human rights violations in Bangladesh from a representative of an organization with questionable reputes?
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank,
may be reached over
[email protected]
Faltita is a remote village of 200 families most of whom belong to Hindu community. One of 19 villages of Mulghar Union under Fakirhat Police Station of Bagerhat District, Faltita village is dotingly called 'Kuwait of Bangladesh'. Indeed, the way the villagers elevated themselves from below the lowest line of abject poverty to their present status, when they cannot think of skipping a single episode of a popular Hindi drama serial in their home televisions -- all networked by a dish antenna downlinking programmes from dozens of Satellite TV stations -- should qualify them as Kuwaitis metamorphosed from Bangladeshis.
In '60s and '70s, there was not much difference between Faltita people and aquatic plants of 'white water lily', the national flower of Bangladesh, in the pattern of their livings. White water lily blooms in flowering plants,botanically known as nymphaeaceae, which are rooted in soil under shallow bodies of water with their round leaves and multi-petalled flowers floating on water surface. Villagers in Faltita had to keep themselves afloat in synch with ebbing and flowing of flash floods and tidal waves the way long tubular stems of nymphaeaceae elongate and branch out rapidly to reach water surface with rise and fall of water levels.
Frequent inundation by seawater, lack of sweet water bodies, low-lying swampy lands, water stagnation due to faulty barrages, structurally slack soils and total absence of education made people inhabiting Faltita scrape their living as scavengers dependent on the mercy of nature alone. In the absence of embankments against flash floods and drainage facilities to rid fields of stagnant water, attempts to cultivate rice or any other cereal crops on their fallow lands failed repeatedly. Men were not well-built enough, due to undernourishment, to do fishing in far-flung turbulent rivers. Emaciated pregnant women were too malnourished to retain their conceptions for long. Miscarriages and infant mortality were rife. Skeletal children, somehow surviving, were left out to fend for themselves.
The only less laborious job scrawny people of Faltita could afford to perform with their two feeble hands to slake their hunger was picking stems of nymphaeaceae and plucking ripe seedpods (locally known as 'Dhep') of water lily flowers. Men, women and children had to wade waist-deep through mud all day long in ponds and lakes in quest of various hydrophytic roots, rhizomes, stems, flowers and fruits---none of any nutritious value to meet their bare minimum calorie requirements.
At the end of the day as the hydrophytic harvesters clambered onto banks, they were all awash with leeches fattened by their anemic blood. They used to grasp and pull those leeches off their skins by their fingers, but could not afford to use salt, too expensive to them for removing a leech. Some even waited out until those leeches were satiated with blood and would fall off on their own as they regarded the bloodsuckers as godsend meant for removing poisons from their blood. Most of those harvesters, the majority of whom were women and children, had to dry out their wet clothes on their bodies, as they did not have a second set of wears.
More horrific was the story of their kitchens and hunger of their babies. Grains of rice to Faltita people in those days of '60s and '70s were synonymous with granules of gold and 'bhater phen' (liquefied starch strained off from boiled rice) elixir from heaven.
Staple food of Faltita people, as known to everybody in Bagerhat district, was not rice. It was seeds of 'Dhep' (matured pistil of lily flowers) boiled in water they took as their regular meals and their curry was neither meat nor fish nor normal vegetables; it was rhizomes of nymphaeaceae cooked with a little bit of spices made gravy that they had to gulp as curry accompanying boiled Dhep seeds. Popcorns made of Dhep seeds parched in hot sand were a delicatessen meant for sale, not for their own consumption. Poor townspeople of Khulna used to buy at nominal price those innutritious Dhep popcorns (cookies of the poor) as fancy crackers to dunk or lard with their evening teas.
Bitter experience taught mothers that their babies would die in a matter of days if their infants were force-fed courses of Dhep meals down their throats. In search of nutritious food only for their babies, mothers had to walk miles to houses of the rich in the northern parts of Mulghar Union with a hope to get 'bhater phen' and a few morsels of boiled rice fortuitously slipped therein. A caste-conscious wife of a Hindu zamindar (property owner) out of her pity used to spoon out with a ladle held on a long stick a few ounces of those starchy liquids from afar in a cautious way that did not constitute a bodily touch with the begging mother of lower caste.
With such imperceptible level of poverty prevalent among people of Faltita, who were mostly Hindus of low caste, emerged a new caste with a new nomenclature: "Dhep Khawa Manush" (Dhep eating people). Anybody could discern a Dhep eating woman by her appearance; however young or old she was her face and neck bore some stigmatic marks of dark patches.
People suffering from such acute malnutrition, according to demographic behavior, were supposed to be extinct long ago. However, Faltita people survived miraculously. The miracle, in fact, was due to a train that used to shuttle between Bagerhat and Rupsha East ( Khulna) at snail's pace on a 22-mile long rickety broad-gauge track (now abandoned) that touched a Railway Station called Mulghar near Faltita. That train pulled by steam engine afforded the Dhep eating people the only lifeline to earn a little bit of cash by selling in nearby towns whatever spin-offs the national flower of Bangladesh presented.
Unwritten instructions from Railway authority allowed Dhep eaters to travel free of cost---or for a little bribe to the Ticket Checker on duty---by the train service along with their voluminous consignments of nymphaeaceae stems in coils and Dhep popcorns in sacks. Destitute Hindu women and children of Faltita village, in utter consternation, used to stare at the train as a carriage that were, as if, as sacred as their chariot of juggernaut.
I enquired to at least a dozen people in the locality to know the background of naming their village Faltita that in English stands as 'Fruit is bitter'. But none could help me delve into the story of christening the village. One of my colleagues lastly gave me the logical background of the name: "People of that village who subsisted on Dhep seeds could not dream of buying fruits for themselves or their children. Lest their children should cry for buying them fruits mothers tutored their babies at their very infancy that 'fruits are all bitter'. So the name 'Fruit is bitter' (Faltita) evolved as the name of their village that ultimately got registered in the books of revenue collectors."
God kept up HIS sleeve for a long time a pleasant surprise for the Dhep eating people. Fortune started smiling on Faltita not before mid '80s when the villagers serendipitously found that a creature (decapod crustacean to a marine biologist) with multifarious legs, hands, pincers and claws ensconced inside a shell could thrive in multitude in their stagnant waters that were too briny for cereal cultivation. An uproarious revolution for shrimp cultivation took place in Faltita and later in adjoining areas covering entire coastal belts of Bagerhat, Khulna and Satkhira districts.
Shrimps and fish export, now the second largest foreign exchange earner for Bangladesh next to readymade garments, have already employed more than 750,000 people and over 10 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on shrimps. Around 145,000 farmers using 250,000 hectors of land in southeastern and southwestern coastal areas of Cox's Bazaar, Bagerhat, Khulna and Satkhira are producing more than 50,000 metric tons of shrimps annually mostly by using traditional methods. In 2006-07, our country earned about US$ 500 million by exporting shrimps mainly to the USA and the European Union (EU) countries.
Seafood exports from Bangladesh, it is hoped, would fetch US$ 1.5 billion annually by 2010. Plump tiger shrimps, selling at a minimum of one US dollar apiece, are now coined as white-gold nuggets and villages like Faltita, harvesting those white-golden shrimps, dollar-minting factories of Bangladesh.
Overnight Faltita people who used to skimp on barely one meal a day started flaunting their costly Nokia mobile phone sets to answer coaxing calls and indents over telephone for shrimps from clients and customers, from afar. Almost every family owns a refrigerator, a television and subscription to at least one mobile telephone service. Children in schools are now heard shouting numbers at the top of their lungs learning by rote multiplication tables. Adults are seen idling away their evenings massaging their heads in saloons. Mothers are seen probing into expiry dates on the labels of sachets containing baby food while shopping in local markets. Stigmatic marks of dark patches on their faces and necks have already melted away. Babies of Faltita nowadays keep nagging their fathers to buy them apples from Australia and pomegranates from Iran.
Happiness does not stay long in the poor's homes, anyway. The entire communities of shrimp cultivators of Bangladesh are of late passing sleepless nights awaiting what happens after October 17, the day when, as they heard, some foreigners are arriving at Bangladesh to pay visits to their fields and homesteads. "Foreign sahibs", a longtime shrimp cultivator from Faltita village explained to me, "will study palms and foots of our ladies and children to check whether they ever laboured in catching or feeding shrimps. They will also take samples of water from our ponds to test in their laboratories whether any child ever left his/her urines or feces in those waters. Moreover, they will also check whether we ever misbehaved with any sea fish while catching nauplii of shrimps. God knows what happens to our dollar-minting villages after they leave Bangladesh for their homes in Europe!" He perhaps brooded too much out of fears.
A four-member delegation from Food and Veterinary Office of EU will be arriving on October 17 on a 10-day visit to see for themselves whether shrimp cultivators and processors of our country are implementing HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) policies properly. They will inspect government laboratories for standard control, factory premises, quality control systems and other infrastructural facilities of different shrimp cultivating farms and processing plants located at Dhaka, Chittagong, Cox's Bazaar, Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira. They will also crosscheck prevalence of child labour practices, gender discrimination and human rights violations etc. as publicized by different non-government organisations (NGOs) working in Bangladesh. Based on their report on this visit, the authorities in the USA and the EU will decide whether they should continue allowing Bangladeshi shrimps to reach their coasts or not.
I have visited many shrimp processing plants in Khulna. Nowhere could I find a single child working inside or outside of those plants. Conscious of penalties being imposed on the noncompliant plants owners and operators have been maintaining utmost sanitation and quality controls as enunciated in HACCP policies and keeping their stainless gadgets tidy, orderly, spotless and sparkling. I was sprayed at least a dozen times with disinfectants in spite of my wearing sterilized caps, aprons, masks and gumboots on my way to inspect machinery and freezing vaults of a plant. I am sure EU inspection team will leave Bangladesh completely satisfied with whatever efforts the shrimp processing plants are making to satisfy their potential buyers with their quality products.
I am afraid, though, the EU inspection team may not be happy with the waste management of our shrimp cultivators. They may find organic and inorganic wastes oozing out of some shrimp cultivating ponds, an erratic way of cultivation that are telling upon the marine and terrestrial environments of our coastal areas. They may also observe addiction of making quick money through shrimp cultivation reducing lands for other agricultural produces that may ultimately make our rural folks in those areas totally forget how to till lands and harvest crops or how to rear poultry and raise livestock.
The governwemnt of Bangladesh, however, already has undertaken programmes to encourage shrimp cultivators to carry out their agricultural activities like growing crops and vegetables on the peripheries of shrimp cultivating enclosures side by side. Some shrimp cultivators are also being motivated to grow vegetables by hydrophonics, a system of growing seasonal plants on floating mounds of decomposed water hyacinths combined with grain stalks, straws, etc., given the nature of their lands remaining filled with stagnant water throughout the year.
Foreign sahibs of the EU inspection team are not that dreadful to shrimp cultivators as are some Bangladeshis working in some organizations with questionable reputes.
There are people in our country who will not mind spending the whole
day on a handstand position inverting their bodies and throwing their legs upward if only they were assured of a little bit of funding in dollar from here and there at the end of the day. Tanners and vultures spend a heartrending day if there is not a carcass around. So are those people who shudder at the thought of total absence of crimes like abuses of women and children in Bangladesh; they sweat to fabricate a petty crime into a severe felony to justify funding they receive from some mysterious donors. They print colorful banners and posters depicting Bangladeshi children cracking mollusks for shrimp feeds. They, along with competing shrimp exporters of other countries, will glow with smiles of contentment if the EU inspection team enunciates in their findings those tales of tortures on children and women so that the USA stops buying our shrimps and Faltita people reverse their journey back to their days of '60s.
In a country of 150 million people, a few reported or fabricated cases of abuses suffered by women or children must not be taken as yardstick to judge our overall human rights situation. Not a single mother can be found in Bangladesh who would compel her child to drop out of his/her school and catch fish or crack mollusks unless both mother and her child will have to starve to death in the absence of earnings by her only child.
May we humbly appeal to foreign teams visiting our country not to lend both their ears while listening to harangues about human rights violations in Bangladesh from a representative of an organization with questionable reputes?
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank,
may be reached over
[email protected]