SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK
Reports from Dhaka:
Meeting with Dr Rita Afsar at her apartment, 19 March, 2002:
Present: Dr. Rita
Afsar, sociologist, Reseach Fellow, Bangladesh Institute of Development
Studies, BIDS;
Professor S. Aminul Islam, Dept.
of Sociology, University of Dhaka; and Dr. Mahmud Alam, Senior
Research Fellow, BIDS
Dr. Afsar was invited as a chief guest for the SASNET
workshop on global networking in South Asian studies, arranged in
Lund in August 2001, and she was supposed to present a paper. However,
she met with an serious traffic accident in Australia, which made it impossible
for her to attend the Lund workshop. (The paper
is available on the SASNET Gateway, as a pdf-file). Her main interest
is urban development and migration.
Dr. Alam is an economist interested in education. He is director of an
NGO, involved with research and development.
Prof. Islam is working on political culture and has an interest in the
functioning of the local uppazillas. He is member of a local government
support group.
We discussed the Muslim Hindu conflicts in Bangladesh, about the Green
Revolution and that Bangladesh was now more or less self supporting in
staple foods in normal monsoon years. This is due to the expansion of
the irrigation system via shallow wells which began in the 1970s and the
application of the new HYV technology in the 1980s. The acute problem
now, though, is the serious problem of leakage of arsenic in the wells.
Dr. Afsar took up a thread: much of the industrialisation in Bangladesh
today is due to agricultural development which creates demand for industrial
services, goods, etc. Small towns are now growing fast all over the country.
The others then talked about the poor standard of these small towns regarding
education and health, which means that the middle classes do not want
to live there, which then again reinforces the poverty of education and
health institutions there, as many people prefer to settle in Dhaka, where
the commerce, education and health services are better.
We discussed the phenomenal growth of Dhaka city, now with a population
of 12 million. In 2015 it is expected to have 22 million people and be
the fifth biggest city in the world. If this growth can actually take
place is a different question though. It can be argued that it is a rather
unlikely scenario after all.
Meeting
with faculty members, Social Sciences, Dhaka University, 20 March, 2002
Present:
Prof. Dr. M. Asaduzzaman, Dept.
of Public Administration, Dean of the faculty
Prof. Aminul Islam, Dept of Sociology
Prof. Ishrat Shamim, Chairperson,
Dept. of Sociology (also President, Centre for Women and Children Studies)
Prof. Dr. Mahbub Ahmed, Sociology
Prof. Dr. Gyasuddin Molla, Dept. of Political
Science
Prof. S G Maola, Dept of Management
Studies
Ass Prof. Delwar Hossain, Dept
of International Relations
Ass Prof. Mobasser Monem, Dept
of Public Administration
Prof. Dalem Ch. Barman, Dept
of Peace and Conflict Studies
Prof. Aftab Ahmed, Dept of Development
Studies
Prof. Sayefullah Bhuyar, Dept of Political
Science (also Director, Japan Study Center)
Prof. Meghna Guhathakurta, Dept
of International Relations
Ass Prof. Mahbuba Nasreen, Dept
of Sociology
Prof. Monirul I Khan, Dept of Sociology
After we had presented SASNET and the gateway, we had a discussion covering
the following points:
1. The Dean, prof. Asaduzzaman had been to Norway, where there had been
co-operation with the Law Centre at the University of Bergen. He
had also had some co-operation with the University of Tampere in
Finland, and with Warsaw University in Poland.
2. The University of Dhaka was involved in an Asia Fellow’s programme,
funded by Ford Foundation, in which there was researcher exchange between
South-East Asia and South Asia. Centre for this activity was the International
Institute of Education, Bangkok. They had had researchers coming from
among other countries, Palestine, Somalia, Pakistan, etc.
3. Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, has had a small project
funded by IDEA in Stockholm on the status of democracy in Bangladesh.
Dr. Dalem Ch. Barman, professor of Political science, had been
to Uppsala, Dept. of Peace and conflict studies in 1995 and Peter Wallensteen
had visited here. He had also attended a course on human rights at the
Raoul Wallenberg institute at Lund.
4. Ishrat Shamim wanted to have a network for sociology.
5. Dr. Aftar Ahmed, Political science, presented the newly established
Department for Development Studies, where they plan to have a Masters
course lasting for two years, and a short and a long diploma course. They
aim at new entrants for NGOs and Government services. They have a great
need to build up a library with books and Internet facilities. They need
assistance for that.
6. Somebody asked if there was not a risk that SASNET would become Indocentric,
and we answered that we were aware of this risk. But Indians are much
less interested in a Swedish network than e g Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis.
7. What about Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives? We answered that we worked on
that too.
8. Somebody also pointed out that it is very difficult to get a research
visa in India, while it is much easier in Bangladesh and Pakistan. In
the Maldives and in Bhutan there is also strict government control of
researchers who may not express themselves freely.
9. We talked about the Bangladesh network for studies lead from Europe,
and its biannual meetings.
10. We also agreed that the building out of infrastructure for IT was
important. One hurdle was the lack of knowledge of English among the students.
This comes at a time when Bangladesh is still a new country with a progressive
nationalism to build it up and when there is also a need to develop Bengali.
11. We also talked about the lack of knowledge about the latest theories
in the West and other parts of the world, for example when it comes to
feminist theories. In this connection we also warned about the possible
imposition of theoretical positions from the West based on other questions
than those relevant to Bangladesh today.
Meeting with teachers at the Department of Sociology, University of Dhaka
Prof. Aminul Islam, Sociology
Prof. Ishrat Shamim, Chairperson,
dept. of Sociology
Prof. Dr. Mahbub Ahmed, Sociology
Prof. K.A.M. Sua’duddin, an old professor who joined in 1964,
and now is about to retire.
Prof Shamim told us that they have a faculty of 30 (only a few of them
with a PhD) and a yearly intake of 220 students. The have very few PhD
students, the whole university does not have more than 100 M Phil and
PhD students. They don’t have regular research seminars, but mostly
just teach B. Honour (four years), and MA (two years).
In the year 2000, they collected money from various sources and renovated
the department, painted it, bought computers, books etc. They have also
changed the syllabus, which she promised to send as an attached file to
me. New courses that they give are, for example:
- Sociology of disaster
- Gender
- Sustainable development
- Mass communication
- Social Forestry
- Feminism and women’s problems
They have problems getting new text books for this. They dearly wants
a partnership with a foreign university, and have tried a lot to get it
but failed so far.
After the meeting we were shown their museum, which was basically a small
collection of artefacts from fieldwork in rural areas, like baskets, religious
sculptures, scripts, etc. Earlier they also had Social anthropology in
the department, but now that is a separate department. They still teach
some courses in anthropology, though.
We saw a small statue of Rabindranath Tagore. Prof. K.A.M. Sua’duddin
remarked that Tagore was not a Hindu, but belonged to the Brahmo sect,
that is, he belongs to all humanity, and was a main bearer of an overall
Bengali culture.
Meeting with Anders Granlund, Counsellor, Embassy of Sweden, Dhaka, 20 March, 2002
Anders Granlund who has
worked for several years for Sida/Sarec has been at the embassy in Dhaka
since the last 1,5 years. He has prepared the recently published “Country
strategy for development co-operation with Bangladesh, 2002–2005”.
Anders told us about the priorities, which the Swedish government now
has decided upon concerning its continued development assistance to Bangladesh.
Three key areas are in focus, namely Poverty reduction, Social development
(including primary health care and primary education), and Local governance.
We discussed several matters of concern to possible research co-operation
between Sweden and Bangladesh, where Anders mentioned that Swedish researchers
already work on the Arsenic problem in the country, funded by Sarec.
He told us about CPD, Centre for
Policy Dialogue, which is one of the most influential policy think
tanks at present in Bangladesh. The centre is led by Dr Bhattacharya
and Professor Reban.
Finally Anders gave his views on the general problems that the country
faces:
• In the present situation a new generation is taking over, young people without any connection to the War of independence in 1971, and who do not share the same reference frame anymore. Bangladesh is today an Islamic nation which at the same time rapidly goes Western, and this might cause convulsions and a sharp polarisation between urban and rural areas.
• In order to develop the entire nation it is necessary to put focus on local governance, and make it possible for people to live properly in their home region. Today everything in Bangladesh is concentrated to Dhaka.
Other serious problems facing Bangladesh are:
• The risk for a major earthquake which could have catastrophic consequences. An earthquake shook the country in 1892 and a new one is expected to come anytime. This could mean a total disaster for Dhaka and a large part of the country, where people, villages and cities would just be washed away from the ground by mud water from the rivers.
• The global warming could also mean disaster for the country (just like it would for the Maldives), as a large part of the country is so low-lying that it could become flooded by the sea in a few decades from now.
• The arsenic poisoning which is a great problem in large parts of the country, due to extensive boring for ground water even without regard to what kind of bedrock is prevailing in different parts. Even though many of the affected springs have been identified and classified as not suitable for drinking purpose still the water is used for irrigation purposes. For some important crops, such as wheat and rice, it is not a problem as they do not take up arsenic, but other crops do. The arsenic poisoning is a problem with grave consequences, as agro-business is just now a growing concern in the country, with the expectation of successful export. If some of these crops turn out to have high degrees of arsenic content they will not be possible to sell on the World market.
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Last updated 2006-01-27
