Something's Fishy

Fish vendor Dinesh Kumar explains his preference for the river hilsa from Bangladesh, while customers divulge on its taste.

Homeless hilsa

At Chandpur, about 150 km south of Dhaka, Anisur Rahman has a scientific explanation for the predicament of fisher people like Samaad.

Cultural icon

In Bangladesh, journalist Shankarlal Das recounts that hilsa could be had for a taka some 40 years ago. “During monsoons my father would come home dangling a hilsa from both hands. Mother would then take over.

South Asia

ANTHRAX ALERT: The Bangladesh government recently announced an alert for anthrax, a livestock disease. Anthrax has spread among people because of slaughtering of diseased cows and sale of their meat.

South Asia

Bangladesh shuts gas stations: Bangladesh has partially shut its natural gas filling stations in Dhaka for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Sick mothers, ill children

In a field, a sinewy man bends at the waist, slicing stalks of wheat with a small machete. A mother gently places her infant son, slung in a piece of blue fabric, onto a vegetable scale housed in a makeshift clinic. Two girls walk to school.

South Asia

IRANIAN RELIEF: Iran has signed a deal to export one million cubic metres of natural gas per day to Pakistan.

South Asia

Violence rocks hill tracts: A thirty-year-old dispute over land rights between Bengali settlers and the tribals of Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh escalated last month. Two tribals were killed in army firing and tribal homes in 11 villages of Rangamati district were burnt, allegedly by the army and settlers on February 20.

South Asia

Short on gas: Bangladesh is facing a daily gas shortage of 7 million cubic metre (MCM) due to a cold spell and ongoing power crisis. The country’s industrial units depend on gas supply to produce their own electricity. The holidays in industrial areas have been staggered over the weekdays to manage supplies. Bangladesh’s gas demand is 62 MCM a day; it gets 55 MCM gas.

Flooding out arsenic

For  the last two decades the world has been trying to explain how arsenic leaches into groundwater in the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra floodplain. Solutions, however, are very few. An estimated 100 million people are still at risk from contamination.