BANGLA BAZAR: For generations Paban Baroi’s family guarded a temple to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, until Bangladesh’s mighty Padma river wreaked havoc of its own, wiping out the shrine, their home, and 200 other houses in their village.

The 70-year-old and his neighbours are among thousands in the country who will be rendered destitute this year as surging waters and eroding lands reshape the landscape – a phenomenon made worse by climate change.

One day in September, the waterway abruptly changed course and a swathe of the tight-knit community in Baroi’s village vanished as the very land on which it stood was washed away.

“The river current was so powerful,” he told AFP. “Many of us have been living under the open sky for the last few days.”

Baroi’s family were hereditary custodians of the temple in Bangla Bazar, on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, the site of an annual festival that long drew Hindu faithful and friends from its majority-Muslim population.

The ceremonies were staged even through some of the country’s worst catastrophes, including sectarian violence that accompanied the end of the British colonial era and a brutal 1971 independence war that saw an exodus of persecuted Hindus to neighbouring India.

But next year’s festivities could be cancelled for the first time in more than a century – as by then many of the usual participants will have been forced to move away.

“It has been a thriving community of carpenters, fishermen, farmers and traders,” Sohrab Hossain Pir, a councillor for the village, told AFP.

“But now everything is going into the river.”

Bangladesh is a delta country crisscrossed by more than 200 waterways, each connected to the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers that course from the Himalayas and through the South Asian subcontinent.

Periodic flooding that inundates homes, markets and schools has always been a fact of life for the tens of millions of farmers and fishermen who crowd the rivers’ banks – some of the most densely populated areas of the Bangladeshi countryside.

But scientists say climate change has increased the severity and frequency of the phenomenon, with more erratic rainfall causing more cyclones and flash floods.

“CLEARLY CLIMATE CHANGE”

This year Bangladesh saw record flooding that killed more than 100 people and cut off 7 million others, with relief efforts continuing for months.

The impact is expected to worsen significantly in the coming decades, just as rising sea levels threaten to displace tens of millions of people along the low-lying Bangladeshi coastline and inundate its most fertile farmlands with salt water.

Bangladesh is already rated by the UN and civil society groups as one of the countries most affected by extreme weather events since the turn of the century, with entire inland villages wiped from the map.

Around 1,800 hectares of land will be eroded by rivers in Bangladesh this year and the homes of at least 10,000 people will disappear, according to the state-funded Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS).

“These erosion events are clearly as a result of climate change,” Ian Fry, the UN special rapporteur on climate change, told reporters when he visited in September.

Residents of disappeared villages often seek a new life in the slums of Dhaka, a sprawling city of 22 million that has doubled in size since the turn of the century on the back of urban migration.

“Many of these people have been displaced by climate change-related reasons,” Fry said in a statement that highlighted endemic child malnutrition, a lack of safe drinking water and high rates of human trafficking.

DHAKA: At least 130 million people in Bangladesh were without power on Tuesday (Oct 4) afternoon after a grid failure caused widespread blackouts, the government’s power utility company said.

More than 80 per cent of the country was hit by the sudden outage shortly after 2pm local time (0800 GMT), according to the Power Development Board.

Apart from some locations in Bangladesh’s northwest, “the rest of the country is without power”, agency spokesman Shamim Ahsan told AFP.

Ahsan said 130 million people or more were without electricity and it remained unclear what had caused the fault.

“It is still under investigation,” he said, adding that a technical malfunction was the likely reason.

Junior technology minister Zunaid Palak said on Facebook that power would be restored by 8pm in the capital Dhaka, itself home to more than 22 million people.

Bangladesh has suffered a major power crisis in recent months as a result of higher global energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Public anger has intensified over lengthy blackouts in the South Asian nation, which is struggling to pay for enough imported diesel and gas to meet electricity demand.

Bangladesh last witnessed a major unscheduled blackout in November 2014, when around 70 per cent of the country went without power for nearly 10 hours.

DHAKA, Bangladesh: Rescuers in northern Bangladesh on Tuesday (Sep 27) found more bodies from an overcrowded boat with Hindu pilgrims that capsized in one of the country’s worst recent river disasters, pushing the death toll to 66, officials said.

At least 15 more people are still unaccounted for, said Dipankar Roy, a senior government official in Panchagarh district, where the boat capsized on Sunday.

About 100 pilgrims were crossing the River Karatoa in Boda area to celebrate a religious festival in a temple when their boat overturned, according to video footage in local media.

Just before the accident, onlookers from the river bank were shouting at the boatmen to navigate carefully.

Local police chief S.M. Sirajul Huda said the search would continue.

The Hindu community, the second largest in the Muslim-majority nation, is gearing up to celebrate one of its largest religious festivals — Durga Puja — next month.

Some 32,000 pandals or fabricated structures were being prepared across Bangladesh, where idols of goddess Durga will be set up to worship during the festival. Authorities have ordered tight security for the temples and makeshift pandals because past celebrations were marred by communal violence in some places.

About 8 per cent of the more than 160 million people in Bangladesh are Hindu.

Boat accidents are common because of poor navigation, overcrowding and lax law enforcement in the delta nation crisscrossed by about 130 rivers. Last year, a ferry capsize killed at least 34 people while a fire on another ferry left at least 39 people dead.

DHAKA: The death toll from the sinking of an overcrowded ferry carrying Hindu devotees in northern Bangladesh climbed to 50 on Monday (Sep 26), with many passengers missing a day after the disaster.

Onlookers and relatives of the missing gathered along the riverbank as rescuers searched for bodies, witnesses said.

“I just want to see the face of my mother,” Deepak Chandra Roy said, speaking through tears as he searched for his mother. His son was rescued.

The dead recovered so far included 25 women and 13 children, said Jahurul Islam, chief administrator of the northern district of Panchagarh, where the accident occurred.

“Divers are searching for more bodies as some are still missing,” he said, adding the ferry was taking Hindu devotees to a temple on the occasion of Mahalaya, when Hindus make offerings to their ancestors.

The death toll was the worst for a maritime disaster in the country since 2015.

A five-member committee was investigating the sinking but initial reports suggested the boat was carrying almost three times its capacity, Islam said.

Authorities were making checks on the list of the missing based on information provided by relatives, he said, while passengers said more than 70 people had been on board.

Police said some 15 people were still missing while some of the passengers managed to swim ashore or were rescued.

Dozens of people die each year in ferry accidents in Bangladesh, a low-lying country that has extensive inland waterways and lax safety standards. 

DHAKA: At least 24 people were killed and dozens were missing after a boat packed with Hindu devotees sank on Sunday (Sep 25) in Bangladesh, in the worst waterways disaster to hit the country in more than a year.

The bodies recovered so far included 12 women and eight children, said Jahurul Islam, district administrator of northern Panchagarh, where the accident occurred.

“The rescue operation for those missing is ongoing,” he said. The ferry was taking devotees to a Hindu temple.

Islam said he did not know the exact number of people missing, but passengers said more than 70 people had been on board.

Police said some 30 people were still missing while some of the passengers managed to swim ashore.

Hundreds of people die each year in ferry accidents in Bangladesh, a low-lying country that has extensive inland waterways and lax safety standards.

At least 26 people died in April last year after an overcrowded ferry collided with a cargo vessel and sank on the Shitalakhsya River outside the capital Dhaka.

QUESTIONS ON ROHINGYA

Climate is not the only issue on which Bangladesh sees inaction from the West.

Around 750,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a scorched-earth campaign against the minority group by troops in neighbouring Myanmar, a campaign that the United States has described as genocide.

While the world has saluted Bangladesh for taking in the refugees – along with 100,000 who fled earlier violence – attention has shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As long as they are in our country, we feel that it is our duty,” she said. But for Bangladeshi hosts, patience is running thin, she said.

Michelle Bachelet, then the UN human rights chief, said on a visit in August that there was growing anti-Rohingya sentiment in Bangladesh.

“Local people also suffer a lot,” Hasina said. “I can’t say that they’re angry, but they feel uncomfortable.”

“All the burden is coming upon us. This is a problem.”

The Rohingya refugees, who are mostly Muslim, live largely in ramshackle camps with tarpaulins, sheet metal and bamboo.

Bachelet on her visit said there was no prospect of sending them back to Buddhist-majority, military-run Myanmar, where the Rohingya are not considered citizens.

But in her interview, Hasina signalled that there were few options other than for the Rohingya to reside in camps.

“It is not possible for us to give them an open space because they have their own country. They want to go back there. So that is the main priority for everybody,” Hasina said.

“If anybody wants to take them, they can take them,” she added. “Why should I object?”