The Humans of River

Course Code and Name: MSJ11201 English for Media

Bangladesh is a country that is known for the countless of rivers it has. It has more inland water than land and people so normally a lot of lives are dependent on these rivers. Be it paddy, rice, fish or jute, all of which are integral part of Bangladesh depends heavily on rivers. Water transport is also one of the important sectors of the economy. However, as time went by and technology advanced the demand for these water transport started decreasing. There was a time when people used boats as their means of transport. But now with increased infrastructure like bridge and roads people prefer using the land transports than the water transports. Although the regular people have happily moved on to better transport, the people who used to earn through these transports could not.

Kholil Mia, aged 50, a boatman, lives near Basila-Waspur ghat, is in this profession for 30 years. Whether people relying only on water transports to people riding boats for recreation purpose, he has seen the drastic change in the demand of water transport. He has no fixed income and whatever he earns it barely lasts a day. By the time the situation changed, he wasn’t able enough to shift to some other jobs hence he has accepted his fate.

In the year 2009, after opening the 708-metre-long bridge Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced that the boatmen would be rehabilitated. This could have improved their livelihood that they have lost due to the construction of Shaheed Buddhijibi Bridge. However, it been almost over a decade but no such thing has happened and their lives are still the same and if possible, even worse.

There are nearly 200 boatmen who lives near the Basila-Waspur ghat and if we try to count the boatmen of Bangladesh more than one third of people whose living depend on their little boats. The improvement in infrastructure may have improve the lives of many, but a huge section of people is suffering every day.