Community-built raised settlements are offering thousands of families a safer place to live as annual floods and erosion intensify across northern Bangladesh

A char is a temporary arrangement between people and a river that owes them nothing.

For char residents, this unequal exchange is not new.

There are plentiful cases of land-grabbing and violence for control over new char or khas land in the country.

Bangladesh is a riverine country and where there is river, there are often chars (shoals). Chars are essentially shallow lands in the river that rise when the water level decreases. Sometimes a char rises and stays visible for years before fading back into the river. Leaving aside the definition, chars can be great places to travel.

In the contemporary discourse on Bangladesh, its cultural legacies have overtaken its identity as a land of six seasons or as a riverine country.