S Dilip Roy

Vast  swathes of land on Bangladesh’s side of the no-man’s-land separating  the country from India in Lalmonirhat district are sitting idle while  those in the neighbouring nation’s half of the region are being used to  farm tea.

The closure of the border haat in no-man’s land along the Jinjiram River at Baliamari Char of Rajibpur upazila in Kurigram district has impacted the livelihoods of more than one hundred families based in the region.

Lalmonirhat district, bordering the Teesta, Dharla and Saniazan rivers, accounts for about one-third of the maize produced in Bangladesh’s northern region.

A college teacher in Lalmonirhat has started a different kind of campaign to dissuade farmers from tobacco cultivation and to make them aware. He is neither distributing flyers nor holding meetings.

Shri Shri Gouri Shankar Goshala Society, an integral part of the heritage of Lalmonirhat town, is shambling with the financial crisis as a portion of its properties has been illegally occupied by a local influential, while some other portion was acquired by the government around 50 years ago.

Eighty-five girl students out of 345 of Baravita Girls High School in Kurigram’s Phulbari upazila have been married off during the closure of the school amid the pandemic.

Nargis Nahar and eight other girls graduated from class eight together at Sardob High School in 2020 before the pandemic hit. After schools were shut down, she lost touch with her friends.

Around 400 trucks carrying imported goods from India are waiting to unload goods at the Burimari land port of Patgram upazila in Lalmonirhat due to a shortage of space in customs’ warehouses.

Around 400 trucks carrying imported goods from India are waiting to unload goods at the Burimari land port of Patgram upazila in Lalmonirhat due to a space shortage in customs’ warehouses.

With help from Bangladesh Tea Board, 82 farmers in Lalmonirhat district of Rangpur division are farming tea on 121 acres of plain land with great success.

Principals, pandits and employees associated with Sanskrit Colleges are living inhumane lives because of a meagre salary.

Menazul Islam, a seasonal rawhide trader from Matikata Mor area of ​​Chilmari upazila in Kurigram, is in dire straits after taking a Tk 2 lakh loan for his business in hopes of turning a profit.

Flouting rules, a private company is constructing a road on the Teesta river bed in Lalmonirhat’s Kaliganj upazila, posing a risk of severe floods and river erosion upstream.

Shortage of rainfall has put farmers of Kurigram and Lalmonirhat in distress and posed a threat to Aman paddy cultivation.

The flow in a three-kilometre stretch of the Ratnai river in Lalmonirhat’s Aditmari upazila has weakened following its excavation by a contractor of the Local Government Engineering Department, allege local farmers.

 The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused a global economic crisis with Bangladesh being no exception. 

The work of widening of a road has remained suspended due to objection from the Indian Border Security Force along Phulbari border in Kurigram, said an RHD executive engineer.

Dragon fruit has caught the attention of several young farmers in Lalmonirhat as they are increasingly showing interest in growing the tropical fruit because of higher demand.

“Covid has killed my parents. I've become an orphan,” said a distraught 14-year-old Sajjad Hossain.

Aheda Bewa is a resident of Jatrapur char in the Brahmaputra river, under Kurigram Sadar upazila. She stays with her son Atoar Ali’s and his family. She occasionally works as a day labourer. For her, Eid-ul-Fitr morning -- which sees celebrations and festivities around the world and in Bangladesh -- was not joyous. She was depressed as she could not manage to buy new clothes for them.