Reviews from Syed Badrul Ahsan
… where trees are endangered species
In our youth, it was nature which defined Bangladesh. The rural regions were emblematic of greenery. And in the urban regions, which again were yet to be strictly urban, a ubiquity of trees was what defined the life and culture of Bengalis. Of course, political freedom was yet quite some distance away, but society was largely based on a very wide ambience of natural beauty as symbolized by trees, rivers, streams, placid villages, furious monsoons and terror-striking floods and cyclones. A balance was what characterized life in Bengal, or the eastern part of it then known as Pakistan's eastern province. Even after the liberation of the country in 1971, when Bangladesh rose as a free nation, nature was yet the driving force in societal existence.
And then came a point where everything began to go awry. Trees began to disappear. Beginning in the latter 1970s and well into the early 1980s, institutional drives to have trees cut down along such places as Manik Mia Avenue in the nation's capital in order for the road to be widened were the earliest signs of what was about to go wrong in the country. Little time was lost in having the green, not just in the cities but in the rural interior as well, losing the battle against human encroachment, to a point where real threats were perceived to be coming up against the environment. Homes built in an earlier and more aesthetically inclined era began to be struck down, to be replaced by the more commercially well-serving condominiums and apartment complexes. The proof of how lop-sided urbanization has led to the death of trees in towns and cities is out there. And in the villages, the encroachment, first by brick kilns and then a host of other industries, today threatens the bucolic spirit and appearance of Bangladesh's rural regions.
It is against such a background of creeping disaster that Harun-Ar-Rashid's Brikkho Banchle Manush Banchbe ought to be read. This is a book which reminds readers not only of the immense damage that has been done to the land through a systematic onslaught on the environment but also warns them that unless careful, purposeful steps are taken to arrest the slide into chaos, an entire country could end up finding itself in a state of the comatose. Rashid has gone into a comprehensive study of the many ways in which trees have been felled in the country. The study, again, is a collection of brief but rich write-ups on the subject. He deals with such subjects, or such variations on the subject, as the prime minister's afforestation programme in Sitakunda and the audacity with which forests are being destroyed in Lawwachhara by organized gangs of tree robbers. In Teknaf, jhau trees are being destroyed; and in other regions, the extraction of stones from hilly areas has swiftly led to a decline in the quality of the forests and agricultural fields around them.
The writer's focus in these essays is three-fold. In the first place, he draws attention to the many sinister ways in which trees are being cut down and forests laid bare. In the second, he points the finger at the organized gangs which throughout the country, with not a little help from corrupt government functionaries, have been ruining forests at random. In the third, he informs anyone willing to listen that unless measures are in place to stem the tide of green destruction, the country will be in danger.
Environmentalists should be drawing invaluable information from this book. Journalists can add material from the book to their personal archives of knowledge. And general readers, particularly students, will find in the work rich facts as reference material.
The essays in Brikkho Banchle make you think and wonder.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, The Daily Star.
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