Pinaki Roy

A worker hacks away at a pipe-like object at a small scrap shop in Old Dhaka’s Islambagh. The sound of his hammer crashing against the pipe is instantly followed by bits of plastic flying off in all directions. Flecks of yellow and red tint the air.

A new research shows coastal flooding will hit nearly 42 million people in Bangladesh by 2050, meaning that the situation is likely to be worse than what was feared earlier.

It is called “body contract”, under which you do not need to pay a dime before reaching your destination. But as soon as you are there, your family members have to make the payment.

The government had announced a 20 percent incentive on rice export and a Tk 3,000 crore subsidy for farmers to buy agro tools. It had also doubled duties on rice import and nearly tripled its paddy procurement from farmers.

Gani Mia is a farmer with no land of his own. He grows paddy, jute and other crops in others’ fields. His story, though fictitious, is in school textbooks and etched in the minds of many. It stands true for a large number of the country’s farmers, especially the marginal ones.

The required level of moisture content set by the authorities has become another big headache for Boro growers hit by falling prices, as it makes most of them ineligible to sell their produce to the government.

Two government lists of farmers as Boro paddy suppliers are not what they look like. Many of them are anything but farmers. They include shopkeepers, a contractor and even a former city councillor engaged in a profession other than paddy cultivation.

A little over a week is left before the Eid-ul-Fitr but that can hardly excite the paddy growers in Naogaon as they remain preoccupied with falling prices and debts.

A flurry of activity yesterday afternoon set the Local Supply Depot at Mohonpur apart from other depots in Rajshahi. While farmers were found reluctant to take paddy to most depots, some half a dozen labourers were seen at the Mohonpur depot, unloading sacks of paddy from a truck.

The number of Bengal tigers in the Bangladesh part of the Sundarbans has increased slightly, according to a latest tiger census.

A big portion of the wild elephant population in southern Cox’s Bazar is at risk of being wiped out, experts say. The mammals are confined to small patches of hilly forests in Inani-Shilkhali area as Rohingya settlements have taken over their migration corridors that lead to parts of Bandarban and Myanmar.

Exhausted and terrified, Saifur Rahman, employee of Amraa network office on the 17th floor of the 22-storey Faruk Rupayan Tower in the capital's Kamal Ataturk Avenue, sat on the pavement near the building.

Archaeologists have found crop seeds as old as 2,500 years in Bogura's Mahasthangarh.

The government has approved multiple power projects near hilsa sanctuaries in Patuakhali coastal area, posing a threat to the breeding and nurturing of the national fish.

“I am requesting all leaders and activists of the BNP and its front organisations and alliance partners not to stay at home or go to work. Also, don't sit at any tea stall or any crowded place near the streets and campaign after evening until further instruction.”

Stepping into Chuadanga on Sunday afternoon, the first thing that stood out was the absence of “sheaf of paddy”, the electoral symbol of the BNP.

Some locals now keep boats, not cars, in their garages. Before going out to work, people here always check the tide schedules. During the high tide, businesses come to a grinding halt while students attend classes sitting on high benches as the ground floors of schools go under knee-deep water.

For Bangladeshis, there is nothing to fear about Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC), Indian Minister of State for External Affairs General Vijay Kumar Singh (Rtd) said yesterday.

The graphs look chilling. A red line sharply shooting north, crossing a purple, a yellow, a blue and a green. “That's what dengue looks like this year,” said Dr Ayesha Akhter, in-charge of disease control room at the directorate of health, pointing to the red line representing the number of patients this year.

This Padma is not the river they know. At Naria of Shariatpur, 20km from the Padma Bridge construction site, it has changed abruptly for sure. Once relatively calm and quiet in the area, it turned into an all-devouring river in just a few years.