Whenever untimely rain and mountain torrents surge through the haor areas of Moulvibazar, our so-called ‘civil society’ and policymakers dismiss it as a ‘natural disaster’ or ‘divine wrath,’ as if that absolves everyone of responsibility. Yet these submerged crops are not random casualties of nature, they are the brutal and inevitable consequence of our decayed social and economic structure. The current devastation striking Boro farmers in Moulvibazar is, in truth, a carefully manufactured structural killing.
Every year, the dreams of farmers in this region die prematurely, and we conveniently call it a ‘seasonal misfortune.’ But this is no isolated accident, it is the poisonous fruit of systematic negligence, cultivated year after year. Our current economic system is built in such a vile and exploitative design that even though farmers work themselves to the bone to produce food, they remain the most destitute and marginalised in society. Each planting season, they must beg for loans from NGOs charging intolerable interest, from usurious moneylenders, or from banks mired in suffocating bureaucracy. When the half-ripe paddy is submerged and rots under floodwater, it isn’t only a few sacks of grain that perish, it’s the farmer’s last hope for survival, drowned and defiled in the dirty current. This vicious cycle of debt keeps farmers trapped as modern-day serfs, for even when crops fail, debt collectors show no mercy.
When large industrialists and businessmen default on billions in bank loans, our banking sector looks away or grants easy rescheduling. But when humble farmers collapse under the grief of lost crops, the same system shows no shame in sending agents to their doorsteps for loan installments. The farmer stands at the very bottom of the social pyramid; thus, for bureaucrats and policymakers, haor embankment construction or repair becomes nothing more than an easy, lucrative ‘project’ for personal enrichment. Every year, millions are allocated for embankment repairs, yet rampant corruption ensures those fragile dykes crumble like houses of cards, proof that the ‘development money’ merely lines the pockets of powerful profiteers.
Just as Bhawal Garh’s wildlife and ancient ecosystems were destroyed in the name of ‘development,’ the same fate now befalls the haors and wetlands of Moulvibazar Hakaluki, Kaua Dighi, and Hail Haor choked by encroachment, pollution, and unplanned sluice gates. To make matters worse, a market system run by syndicates preys on farmers’ misfortune: when crops fail, a group of vulture-like traders manufactures artificial crises to raise rice prices, looting consumers while leaving producers in utter despair. Under the guise of ‘climate change,’ it is our marginalised people who bear the cost of the developed world’s carbon sins, while our own state, rather than taking sustainable action, continues building destructive, unscientific infrastructure that kills the natural flow of rivers.
This negligence is no accident; it is a systemic failure that treats farmers not as humans with rights, but as mere numbers during elections. Until this exploitative structure is dismantled, until farmers stand at the center of policymaking and their land and crops are secured, no set of economic figures will ever erase this anguish.
The cries of Moulvibazar’s farmers are, in truth, the laments of a dying civilization – one we continue to sacrifice at the altar of so-called ‘development.’ If rivers, forests, and the farmer’s life are unsafe in this land, then the state can neither be sustainable nor sovereign. Unless this structural injustice ends, history will never forgive us. The towering palaces built upon this rotten order will one day collapse just like the embankments under floodwaters.
The time for compromise is over. What we need now is a radical transformation and uprooting of the system and fierce resistance against the oppressors. From Bhawal Garh to Moulvibazar’s haors, a conspiracy is underway to silence life itself. If we fail to stop it, not just farmers but the food security and the very survival of the nation will be at risk. Therefore, the struggle ahead must not be for charity or relief, but for farmers’ rightful share and dignity. If we do not raise our voice against the rot that infects every pore of the state, future generations will judge our silence as a crime.
When a farmer’s field sinks beneath water, it is not only his land that is lost, our collective moral values are buried there, too. The only way to rise again from that grave is to shatter this architecture of exploitation and forge a new social contract.
The writer is a Development Worker and Researcher
