By Pinaki Roy and Dipankar Roy
Mar 22 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Roksana Khatun moves aside dirt and floating leaves from a pond, slowly lowers her earthen pitcher into it and fills it with around 20 litres of water.

Collecting the water, she carefully climbs the muddy, steep stairs of the pond and walks around 45 minutes to return home. She holds the heavy pitcher against her waist or on her head the entire time.

Only to fetch water for her family, she does this arduous task every day, twice, throughout the year, except for a few months when it rains and she can store some drinking water, she told The Daily Star, while on her way home from the pond recently.

“I’ve a tubewell, but it does not work. I’ve no other option … I need water for my family of six. I’ve been doing this for years,” Roksana, aged over 50, said, wiping sweat off her face with her left hand.

Despite all these hard work, Roksana’s family, which lives in Madarbaria village of Khulna’s Koyra upazila, gets to drink saline water. Their consolation is the water of the pond is a bit less saline than what many others get.

Sushama Sarkar, 53, of Hatiardanga village of Koyra, travels to a pond, which is two kilometres away from her home. Carrying the heavy pitcher, she suffers from back pain frequently.

“Some buy water but we can’t afford it … It also hasn’t rained in the last several months,” she said.
A recent UNDP survey has highlighted the plight of the country’s coastal people regarding safe drinking water. It said 73 percent of the people living in five coastal upazilas — Koyra, Dacope, Paikgachha of Khulna and Assasuni and Shyamnagar of Satkhira — have to drink unsafe saline water.

Though the permissible salinity level in drinking water is 1,000mg per litre, those people, on average, consume water with salinity level between 1,427mg and 2,406mg per litre, reveals the survey.

In the dry season or winter, the salinity level of tubewell water in Shyamnagar goes up to 6,600mg per litre, more than six times the permissible limit.

The survey was carried out on 66,234 households of 271,464 people living in 39 unions of the five coastal upazilas, under a project, titled “Gender-responsive Coastal Adaptation (GCA)”.

The study, which ended in February, also found that 63 percent of the people face difficulties even in getting that water as they have no other source of drinking water.

In 74 percent households surveyed, women are solely responsible for collecting the drinking water while in 10 percent households males take on the responsibility. The task is shared by the male and female members of the families in rest of the households.

Many spend more than two hours daily to collect drinking water. Sometimes, they need to go more than a kilometre to fetch the water, either from a tubewell or a pond.

People in more than 16 percent households surveyed said they have to walk even more.

The study also found that among the people’s available drinking water sources, the salinity level of 52 percent ponds was higher than the salinity level of ponds elsewhere in the country. It was the same for 77 percent tubewells in the coastal region.

On average, the salinity level of tubewell water is 2,406mg in Dacope, 1,453mg in Koyra, 1,510mg in Paikgachha, 998mg in Assasuni and 1,683mg in Shyamnagar.

For ponds, it is on average 650mg in Dacope, 1,024mg in Koyra, 1,581mg in Paikgachha, 1,203mg in Assasuni and 1,184mg in Shyamnagar.

Also people living there have to spend more than those in the capital for drinking water, the survey revealed.

It converted the time spent for fetching the water into monetary value based on the wages of the government programme of Kajer Binimoye Khaddo (Food for Work), and said when people spend one hour for the task, it actually costs them Tk 1,875 a month. If it is more than two hours, the cost rises to Tk 2,463.

On the contrary, Dhaka Wasa charges each household Tk 200 monthly for water.

Asked what interventions were required to improve the situation in the coastal area, Alamgir Hossain, coordinator of the survey project, funded by the Green Climate Fund and the Bangladesh government, said they support climate resilient drinking water supply through rainwater harvesting.

Replying to a query on the health impact caused by consuming the saline water, he said they would assess the impact at a later part of the project.

However, there has already been notable health impacts, including high blood pressure, skin diseases, indigestion, diarrhoea, he added.

As river water started to became saline nearly three decades ago, people living in these coastal upazilas mainly depend on ponds and tubewells for drinking water.

Many freshwater ponds were damaged at least four decades ago due to saltwater shrimp farming in some areas.

Due to cyclone Aila in 2009, many ponds became full of salt water. Most have remained so for even more than a decade. Cyclone Amphan caused a similar havoc.

Lately, salt water is being found in different tiers of the ground there, Alamgir added.

Pritish Mondal, an engineer of Public Health Engineering Department, said, “There is no shortage of water in the upazilas. But all the water is saline water,” he said.

Akmol Hosen, executive engineer of DPHE told The Daily Star that around 35 percent people of Khulna district get safe drinking water. Rest of them depend on ponds or other sources.

Shahidul Islam, the director of NGO Uttaran and a native of Sathkhira, said, “As you travel around the villages in most of the upazilas of the district, you will see there are many deep-tube wells that have been set up to ensure drinking water for the villagers, but they simply don’t work.”

Dilip Kumar Datta, professor of Khulna University, said the impact of brackish water has always been in the south-west of the country. Gradually, the salinity level is increasing in rivers, ponds and other water bodies, he said.

When asked how the salinity problem could be resolved, Ainun Nishat, Professor Emeritus of Brac university, said, “You need to build the Ganges barrage.

“It is also the number one project of the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100. The government could build the Ganges barrage in collaboration with India.”

He also said, “As far as I know, India is very keen on supporting Bangladesh on this. Because India has realised that the Ganges barrage is very important to save the Sundarbans and the reduce salinity in this region.”

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

Excerpt:

Since her husband Abrahm Soreng died two years ago, 70-year-old Veronica Kerketa doesn’t get the chance to talk in her mother tongue at home. None of her children or grandchildren speak the Kharia language.

In her village, under Bormachhara tea garden area of Moulvibazar’s Sreemangal upazila, only one other person — her younger sister, 65-year-old Christina Kerketa — speaks Kharia.

“Except for the two of us, the nearest person who knows this language, Jaharlal Pandey Induar, lives three kilometres away from our village,” said Veronica.

“I talk with my sister or sometimes talk with him in this language when we meet.”

She added, “Nobody else from my own family speaks this language now. So, I need to talk in Sadri or Bangla with them.”

The use of Sadri is largely prevalent across the various ethnic communities in the tea gardens.

“After our death, nobody will speak this language [Kharia]. I tried to teach the language to the younger people but they do not show interest and laugh at me when I speak in Kharia,” said Veronica.

Jaharlal Pandey Induar, 65, of Sreemangal’s Mangrabasti, said that as a tea workers’ family, they are always under financial stress. “We do not have enough time to give for our own language.”

He said, “I still can’t speak Kharia fluently, as I have mostly used Sadri for a long time now.”

Dayaram Kharia, 60, also from Mangrabasti, said 110 Kharia families live in the village.

“There is no one in our village who can speak our own language fluently — there are only five people who know a few words of Kharia.”

In Krishnanchura village of Habiganj’s Chunarughat, of 41 Kharia families living in the village, only four old women can speak a few words in the language when they meet each other, said 45-year-old Manik Kharia.

Rajshahi University student Simon Kerketa, 23, from the Bormabosti area of Sreemangal upazila, said at least six members of his father’s family still know Kharia.

“But I myself can’t speak the language,” he said.

A DYING LANGUAGE

Mashrur Imtiaz, assistant professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Dhaka, who conducted a survey on the language in 2018, found less than 20 people in Sylhet speak Kharia.

“Only 10 to 12 people from their community know this language. And a few others know some Kharia words and some stories and rituals. But they cannot really make sentences or continue a conversation,” he said.

“There is no written form of this language in Bangladesh. I wanted to work on their grammar but did not get adequate people who speak the language.”

Kharia, a language belonging to the Munda branch of the Austro-Asiatic language family, is one of Bangladesh’s endangered languages, he said.

George Abraham Grierson’s “Linguistic Survey of India”, published in 1928, described Kharia then as a “dying” language, noted Mashrur.

Kharia people, who live in various tea gardens in Sylhet, were enlisted in the government’s updated list of 50 small ethnic communities, which was made in 2019.

Before this, they were not even recognised as a separate ethnic group in Bangladesh.

Pius Nanuar, a Kharia social activist, who conducted a study on the Kharia population in early 2020, told this correspondent they found around 5,700 Kharia people in 41 villages in Sylhet division.

“New generations do not talk in this language — they hardly know one or two words. This language is going to be lost from our country very soon as only 12 people from the community can speak the language,” he said.

Pius, who knows a little bit of Kharia, said he learned it from his grandmother when he was a school student in the ’90s.

His grandmother used to take classes informally every evening, telling stories of Kharia heroes, myths, riddles, rhymes, singalongs, harvest stories, Karam (a harvest festival) and other festivals, hunting, and folk traditions.

“In our boyhood, a good number of Kharia children at least learnt a few Kharia words and came into connection with our Kharia roots and culture. But after her death, that effort was lost,” he said.

In 2017, an initiative was taken to teach the language to the younger generation through a youth organisation called “Beer Telenga Kharia Language Learning Centre”, Pius said.

But it was a failed effort to save the Kharia language and culture in his community.

“Kharias in Bangladesh do not have our own alphabet. Kharias in India too use Roman and Latin alphabets,” Pius added.

According to the website Omniglot, an encyclopedia of writing systems and languages, Kharia is spoken in the Simdega and Gumla districts of Jharkhand state, in the Surguja and Raigarh districts of Chhattisgarh, and in the Sundargarh district of Odisha in India.

There are about 256 speakers of Kharia in the Mechi and Kosi zones of Nepal along the border with India.

Kharia is written also with Devanagari, Odia and Bangla alphabets, according to the website.

NOT JUST A LANGUAGE LOST

The majority of Kharia people in Moulvibazar, Habiganj and Sylhet districts are descendants of people who were brought to the plantations from various parts of India by the British colonists around a century and a half ago, according to the Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD).

In 2016, SEHD identified 658 Kharia households in 16 tea estates in Sylhet division.

Not just Kharia, even the more commonly spoken ethnic languages are in danger of disappearing.

Pranesh Goala, chairman of Kalighat Union Parishad in Sreemangal, said those who still speak Sadri also mix in Bangla and Hindi words while speaking.

AFM Zakaria, professor in the anthropology department of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, told The Daily Star losing a language means closing the entrance to a civilisation, to a storehouse of cultural resources.

Sukra Kharia, 65, a younger brother of 70-year-old Gopia Kharia, a freedom fighter from Nalua tea garden in Habigang’s Chunarughat upazila, said as Bangladeshis, they are proud to be part of the country’s history and culture.

At least six Kharia people participated in the Liberation War in 1971.

“But it is very sorrowful to say we are waiting to see the death of our own language,” he said.

In the month of February, Pius Nanuar said, Kharia children pay homage to those who sacrificed their lives for the Bangla language but will never know how to speak the Kharia language, their own mother tongue.

Director General of the International Mother Language Institute Prof Dr Jinnat Imtiaz Ali told The Daily Star it is difficult to preserve a language spoken by less than 20,000 or 30,000 people.

“Finding the source of the language then becomes very difficult. We do not know then what exactly the oral form of the language was.”

“However,” he added, “we have formed a committee to compile the grammar in a dictionary to save endangered languages. We have started work.”

Some of the Hindu women and children, from Rakhine near Kutupalong camp yesterday. Photo: Pinaki Roy

By Pinaki Roy and Mohammad Ali Jinnat
Sep 1 2017 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Law enforcers rescued 19 bodies of Rohingya people, who had been fleeing violence in Myanmar, from the Bay of Bengal after the ill-equipped boats carrying them capsized yesterday.

With this, the total death toll of the Rohingyas from boat disaster stood at 23. Four others drowned as another boat sank in the Naf River Tuesday night, local authorities say.

Of those rescued yesterday, 10 were children and nine women. One woman was aged around 60, while others were between 35 and 45.

The children, seven of them girls and two boys, were under four, said Teknaf Upazila Nirbahi Officer Jahid Hossain Siddiqui.

A Rohingya family in the rain and some of the Hindu women and children, Photo: Pinaki Roy

The boats sank near the west beach of Subrang union of Shah Pori Dweep in Teknaf upazila of Cox’s Bazar, said Mohammad Main Uddin, officer-in-charge of Teknaf Police Station.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), Coast Guard and Bangladesh Police in a combined operation rescued the bodies early yesterday after Subrang Union Parishad Member Nurul Amin informed them about the accident.

Nurul Amin said one of the boats capsized around 1:00am and the other around 7:00am. He added these were small boats carrying people way beyond their capacity.

Talking to some people who managed to swim ashore, he learnt that the dead were residents of Dongkhali and Fatngza areas of Maungdaw in Rakhine State of Myanmar.

As their identities were not known and none claimed their bodies, the dead were buried in a graveyard at Shah Porir Dweep, said Cox’s Bazar Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Ali Hossain.

Thousands of Rohingyas are fleeing to Bangladesh with Myanmar law enforcers conducting a “clearing operation”.

Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts and an army base last Friday, triggering a military response. More than 100 people, mostly insurgents, were killed.

Refugees and rights groups alleged Rohingya villages were set on fire in Rakhine, triggering the influx. While most are walking to cross the border, many are taking rickety boats to enter Bangladesh.

UN agencies estimate more than 27,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh, while some 20,000 have been stranded in no man’s land along the border.

Some Rohingya people with bullet and burn injuries have been admitted to different hospitals in Bangladesh in the last three days. They claim to be the victims of Myanmar military offensive.

HINDUS FLEEING TOO

Alongside the Rohingya Muslims, over 400 Hindus from Maungdaw made it to Bangladesh yesterday through Rezu Amtola of Ukhia amid attacks by an “unidentified armed group”.

They took shelter in a makeshift tent at Paschim Hindupara of Kutupalong. They said unidentified people with firearms, bombs and knives besieged their villages last Friday.

The attackers, wearing black clothes and veils, surrounded Fakirabazar, Riktapara and Chikonchhari villages till yesterday and “killed some 86 people of the community”, they claimed.

“My husband Kanu Rudro went to visit our son-in-law’s house at Fakirabazar. But they [unidentified armed men] killed all of them [Kanu, his daughter, and son-in-law],” said Bakul Bala, wailing.

Niranjan Rudro from Chikonchhari of Maungdaw, too, said some people in black clothes besieged the villages and set fire to the Hindu houses.

“They were carrying guns, bombs and knives.”

The refugees said one or two Hindu children went missing while crossing the border with Rohingya refugees.

“We have been living in Burma for generations. We are Burmese Hindus,” said Chitya Ranjan Paul, who reached Kutupalong around 5:30pm yesterday.

His identity card issued by the Myanmar government described him as “Indian”.

Aid workers were seen enlisting the names of the Hindu refugees while local Hindus providing them with food and shelter.

MEDICAL CAMP FOR ROHINGYAS

BGB has set up a medical camp for the several thousand Rohingyas now stranded in no man’s land along the Naikhyangchhari border and waiting to enter Bangladesh.

Some 200-300 refugees have been seeking treatment daily at the medical camp set up two days back, said Dr Mohammad Shahidul Islam, who is treating them.

The patients, mostly children and women, come with fever, cold, diarrhoea, minor cuts and scrapes and skin diseases, he added.

A few youths from a Rohingya camp in Kutupalong of Cox’s Bazar also provided some relief materials to the refugees at the makeshift shelter in no man’s land.

A team of Bangladesh Red Crescent Society also visited the site yesterday morning.

CHANGED ROUTE

In the first five days since last Friday, Rohingyas entered Bangladesh through the hills and land routes. However, since Tuesday, they are mostly crossing the border through 11 points of the Naf River, locals said.

The points include Anjman Para and Rahmater Beel of Ukhia, and Leda, Moulvibazar, Lambabil, Kanjarpara, Unichiaprang, Jhimangkhali, Ulubunia, Kharangkhali and Karainga of Teknaf.

Locals said the Rohingyas are taking river routes because of restrictions on the land points.

During a visit to Hoyaikong Kanjarpara around 11:00am yesterday, these correspondents found some 800 Rohingya men, women and children gathered by BGB.

Some of the Rohingyas said they crossed the Naf River by boats to reach Bangladesh in the wee hours yesterday. Each of them had to pay 10,000 Burmese kyat (Myanmar currency) to the boatmen.

Many in the villages along the borders, meanwhile, are providing temporary shelter and food to the Rohingyas before the refugees move to the unregistered camps in Leda, Balukhali and Kutupalong.

Haji Abdul Malek, a leader in Kanjarpara village, said some 3,000 Rohingyas entered Bangladesh through Kanjarpara point of the Naf River on Wednesday and Thursday night.

UNSC DISCUSSES ROHINGYA ISSUE

The UN Security Council on Wednesday discussed the violence in Myanmar though there was no formal statement from the 15-member council following the closed-door meeting.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft to the UN said there were calls from council members for de-escalation. “We all condemned the violence, we all called on all the parties to de-escalate,” Rycroft told reporters.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Parliamentarians for Human Rights on Wednesday also called on Myanmar to take immediate action to protect civilians from violent clashes in Rakhine.

“The priority here must be civilian protection,” Indonesian MP Eva Kusuma Sundari said in a statement from Indonesia.

“Urgent measures must be taken by all parties to protect all individuals caught up in this violence, regardless of their ethnicity or citizenship.”

In March this year, China, backed by Russia, blocked a UN Security Council statement on Myanmar. Just a month before, the UN human rights office had accused the country’s military of mass killing and rape of Rohingya Muslims.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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