Geographical Orientation

I am conducting my fieldwork in Testapara *, a town situated within the greater Rangpur Division of Northwestern Bangladesh. Rangpur is the northernmost division in Bangladesh, bordering most prominently the Indian state of West Bengal and to a lesser extent the states of Meghalaya and Assam. Within this division, Testapara is one of the northernmost towns. The two partitions of Bengal in 1905 and in 1947, as well as the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, had significant impacts on the local populations, leading to mass migrations of Hindus and Muslims into and out of Testapara . The effects of these migrations are most visible in the land ownership in the area, which mainly consists of Muslim families who bought or exchanged land with Hindu Zamindars who moved across the borders. Even today, a significant number of Hindu communities live alongside Muslim communities in the area. Currently, the area is facing an influx of people coming from other parts of Bangladesh, due to relatively cheap land prices and an increasing NGO presence. Concurrently, people are emigrating from Testapara to other parts of Bangladesh to find work in major cities or more affluent agricultural regions. 

Testapara has a population of  214,317; 49% of whom are women and 51% are men (2001 Census). The town serves as the Upazila or sub-district center and serves as a small but important focal point for businesses and administration for the surrounding village clusters. The town is connected with other parts of the country with a bus stand and a train station. In between lies the administrative center, housing the Testapara police station, the local government (Union Parishad) office, and the sub-district (Upazila) office. One of the largest office buildings in the area houses the government livestock department, which staffs a veterinarian. Around the administrative center are a primary and secondary school, a degree college, and a vegetable and meat market known as the Testapara Bazaar, which leads to the train station. The market on the opposite side, near the bus stand, contains the town’s medical dispensaries (for both animals and humans), stationery, electric, and electronic stores. This market is simply known as the Testapara bus stand. Both markets are lined with tea stalls and small restaurants. The two biggest mosques in Testapara lie near the town’s administrative center and near the Bazaar.

My own residence is near the administrative center in a two story building. I live upstairs in a room next to the local CARE Bangladesh office and the landlord lives downstairs. I have dinner with him every day and use the opportunity to clear up the much confusion that arises during the daytime when I am in the field. I also have a student who helps me with the Rangpuri dialect of Bengali and consequently my own limitations with fluently communicating more complex ideas in standard Bengali without resorting to using English words. His home is also in one of the communities I am working in.

The town lies alongside of the Testa river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, starting in the Indian state of Sikkim. Along its banks, clusters of houses can be seen from where men throw their nets into the water to catch small fish. Embedded in the river lie island chars where communities live without much of the infrastructure found near the town. Corn, which is more adaptive to the sandy soil, can be found more frequently than rice here. Most men from the char find work outside near the town or as far as Dhaka, Tangail and Noakhali, leaving many women to tend to their homesteads and livestock. On the particular char that I am working in, the government has set up housing for the many landless people that inhibit the island. Currently, many of these houses are mainly being used for the storage of grains and fodder since this are some of the sturdiest and most waterproof structures in the area. Many families have decided to build thatched huts right next to these structures for their own shelter.

I have chosen to work in two other field sites other than the char I have mentioned above and both of them are situated on the mainland. One of the areas is a village cluster located within a 5 minute walking distance from the bus stand and the other is located on the banks of the river and near the Testa Bridge which connects Rangpur district with Lalmonirhat district. I have chosen to work here as well in the char for two reasons. The first is to a compare of the political economy of the two areas, specifically examining how remoteness and migration effects men and women’s work roles. The second reason is to complicate the dichotomy (including my own) between the char and the mainland. In recent years, there is been a tendency for government and NGO based development projects to dichotomize rural Bangladesh into char and mainland areas. Projects associated with organizations such as UNDP, Concern Worldwide, CARE Bangladesh, as well as many local NGO’s have concentrated their efforts to help populations living in the char areas. Moreover, rural Bangladeshis themselves have their own perceptions of the char and the mainland, and of the people that inhibit these areas. I hope to explore meaning making at this particularly interesting intersection, which is formed at both local and transnational levels.

*I am using the pseudonym Testapara to protect the location and identity of my interviewees.

Seasonal Orientation

The ongoing interviews have been occurring in the midst of the Boro rice harvesting season when people have been busy cutting, threshing, and cleaning the husks. Those who can afford hired labor have men working in their fields cutting rice while women stay near the homestead tending to the harvested crop, carefully pouring the rice husks against the wind so that the dust is carried away.

Cattle are left to graze on remaining shrubs and plants on the harvested paddies while women and men dry the harvested rice stems so that they can be used as cattle feed. Many use the town’s asphalt as a space to dry the stems, while others use the yard around their homestead. Both men and women are often seen doing this work in the town’s main streets, even if men are more likely venture out into the bigger roads which are more likely to stay dry and exposed to sunlight. Cattle are tended to mostly by women when men are out working in the fields. These activities have a particular significance because they influence and are influenced by recent advances in agricultural technology, fluctuating harvest seasons, cultural norms about men and women’s work, and a specific type of transhumance of cattle. These topics will be elaborated on later.

Bangladesh has three main rice harvesting seasons—Amon, Aush, Boro and each of these correspond to the months of the Bengali calendar. The table below demonstrates how the months of the 2012-2013  Gregorian years correspond to the months of the Bengali year 1419 and the rice harvesting seasons:

Gregorian months	Bengali months (modified for Bangladesh)	Harvest seasons (information collected during my interviews)	Harvest seasons for the seeds produced at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute[1]
14th April, 2012	1st Boishakh, 1419 (Pohela Boishakh or “the first of Boishakh” which is the Bengali New year)	Boro	Boro
15th May, 2012	1st Joishto,1419	Boro
16th June, 2012	1st Ashar, 1419		Aush
17th July, 2012	1st Shrabon, 1419	Aush	Aush
18th August, 2012	1st Bhadro, 1419	Aush	Aush
18th September, 2012	1st Asshin, 1419		Amon
18th October, 2012	1st Karthik, 1419	Amon	Amon
17th November,  2012	1st Ogrohayon, 1419	Amon	Amon
17th December, 2012	1st Poush, 1419
15th January, 2013	1st Magh, 1419
13th February, 2013	1st Falgun
15th March, 2013	1st Chaitro		Boro

According to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)[2], each season corresponds to a certain type of rice grown in a certain ecosystem. Rice varieties grown in Aush are suitable for “Upland” (higher elevation) areas, rice grown in Aman is suitable for “rainfed lowlands” and Boro rice is grown mostly on "irrigated land". The total land used for rice cultivation in Aush, Aman, and Boro seasons in Bangladesh is 1.3, 5.7, and 3.4 million hectares respectively, making Aman the biggest harvest of the year.

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[1] http://www.brri.gov.bd/info_services/Rice%20calendar_10.pdf

[2] http://archive.irri.org/Aerobic_Rice/adb_south_asia/countrysites.html