Bangladesh once took pride in its myriad rivers, tributaries and canals flowing through it. The country came to be known as a land of rivers, and also of floods. Though being called the lifeline of the country, the rivers, numbering around 700, also stand for countless woes for the people. The hazards have buffeted the land intermittently in the forms of, mainly, floods, and river erosion.
These onslaughts notwithstanding, rivers are entwined with the existence of Bangladesh. The alluvial, fertile nature of its soil has a lot to do with the rivers, both large and small. In the bygone days, Bangladesh was known as a land self-sufficient in agricultural production. But to the woes of its inhabitants, periodic disruptions to crop yields also followed.
In the past, we could muse over the Arcadian visual singing, "… and quiet flow the rivers." Mostly sourcing from the Himalayan glacial streams and lakes upstream, the country's rivers have flown for thousands of years to end up in the Bay of Bengal. Nowadays, many of our rivers and their tributaries do not flow in their age-old smooth pace. Human interventions in their travel forward have virtually choked them resulting in their drying-up or death. A lot of other rivers, however, have kept their streams alive; but over time they have become stagnant with their width turning shrunken and the water fetid.
River pollution has long posed a great environmental and ecological threat to the country. Barring the big ones, almost all rivers in the country, in one way or another, are being polluted with the expansion of industries and human settlements. Even the otherwise 'clean' rivers, like the Karnaphuli in Chittagong or the Shankha in Bandarban could not keep themselves free of pollution. The grim reality is many rivers in Bangladesh are on the verge of being wiped out.
On the other hand, one-third of the country's 700 rivers are virtually dead, the main reason being grabbing of their banks and land-filling of the stretches along the shores. The perpetrators of these criminal acts are known to the communities nearby. They comprise local influential persons, who allegedly act in collusion with a section of elements in the government agencies concerned.
Rivers also die away due to tampering with the physiographical features of a territory. Many rivers that once used to flow on this earth have faced extinction. As a natural phenomenon, rivers dry up in prolonged droughts, or their streams get lost in the fury of desertification. Rivers have been wiped out from the face of the earth thanks to climate change. Natural catastrophes like earthquakes have also caused deaths to many rivers in the last million years. Earthquakes also trigger shifts in the course of rivers, as has been seen in the case of the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. At the same time, innumerable ancient rivers still flow -- some changing their direction. The oldest river on earth is the Nile in northern Africa. Many river experts would like to call Australia's Finke River the most ancient.
With the mention of Bangladeshi rivers, the picture that flashes across our mind these days is one of mindless encroachment or grabbing. It is one of the scourges that have lately been plaguing the country. That a sensible or a sane person could ever think of occupying a river or its parts was once beyond the furthest stretch of our imagination. Nowadays, it is routine job. The devil-may-care attitude of the river grabbers hardly surprises people, not even those who are devastated by the crime. Except for the uproars in the media, and the firm stance of the environmental activists, the river-grabbing is passed off mostly as a minor deviation. No matter which party is in power, the government is least bothered about this. People find it hard to cope with the shock, when they learn that the culprits involved in river grabbing have strong links with the administration of the time. The matter has come to such a pass that in the country a river could hardly be found which remains free of the grabbers' swoop. Except the mighty ones like the Padma, the Meghna and the Jamuna, almost all other rivers and their branches in the country have long fallen to bad times due to encroachment. To cite a ready example, we might turn to the fast-dying rivers surrounding the capital Dhaka. Elsewhere in the country, one would come across the similar spectacle. The photograph of a once-mighty-but-now-extinct river in the daily newspapers is a common feature.
In fact, the country does not have an authentic statistics on its rivers, leave alone their present state -- whether they are in the throes of the process of death or have already died. Had not their news with photographs been published in the newspapers, we would have taken many rivers in Bangladesh to be fully flowing. They include Mahananda, Korotoa, Kobodak, made famous by Poet Modhusudan Dutt, Atrai and Punarbhaba in the northern Bangladesh. The Dhanshiri, immortalised by Poet Jibanananda, the Sugondha, the Titash, celebrated by Oddoito Mallobarman in his novel, and Narasunda in Kishoregunj have long turned into veritable canals. There are hundreds of narrow streams now flowing across the country that were once large rivers. The Meghna still flows in its full glory. The two other mighty rivers, the Padma and the Jamuna, have lost much of their ferocity and magnificence. The grand Hardinge Bridge across yesteryear's Padma has vast tracts of crop fields beneath it during winter. The erratic, and mostly thin and shallow, water flow down the Padma has its roots in the construction of the Farakka barrage on the common Ganges-Padma river across the Bangladesh-India border. The fast-deteriorating state of the rivers in the Ganges-Brahmaputra and the Brahmaputra-Jamuna basins could be blamed to a great extent on the Farakka barrage. In comparison, the rivers and the tributaries in the Surma-Meghna basin are still in good shape. However, the spectre of impediments to the flow of Surma and Meghna looms, as the construction of a mega hydro-electric plant in the Indian state of Manipur has long been on the cards.
Long periods of silt accumulation, lack of capital dredging, encroachment and other human interferences have played havoc with scores of rivers in Bangladesh. A lot of them have lost their navigability decades ago. Both the large and minor rivers play a great role in keeping the country's economy alive. The routes along the rivers carry bulk of the country's merchandise. Easy travel to and from many areas in the country makes people go for water vessels.
The bitter truth is the rivers are not safe. With a rapidly growing population, and the pressure on riverside lands for commercial-residential and industrial uses, the river flows are continually being obstructed. For a nation, long eulogising its rivers in its folklore and the arts, nothing can be more shocking.
shihabskr@ymail.com
The ballad of Bangladesh rivers
Shihab Sarkar | Published: January 16, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
The grand Hardinge Bridge across yesteryear\'s Padma has vast tracts of crop fields beneath it during winter.
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