A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh VillageA quiet violence today stalks the villages and shanty towns of the Third World, the violence of needless hunger. In this book, two Bengali-seaking Americans take the reader to a Bangladesh village where they lived for nine months. There, the readers meets some of the world's poorest people - peasants, sharecroppers and landless labourers - and some of the not-so-poor people who profit from their misery. The villager's poverty is not fortuitous, a result of divine dispensation or individual failings of charachter. Rather, it is the outcome of a long history of exploitation, culminating in a social order which today benefits a few at the expense of many. |
Contents
THE MAKING OF A VILLAGE | 9 |
BEHIND BAMBOO WALLS | 73 |
THE CLASSES | 123 |
The Padlocked Storeroom | 135 |
Husains Ambitions | 144 |
The Trials of a Poor Peasant Family | 160 |
The Death of a Landless Labourer | 169 |
WHO WORKS? WHO EATS? | 177 |
Land and Labour | 194 |
The Double Edge | 214 |
Common terms and phrases
acres agricultural Aktar Ali Aktar Ali's Allah Amtari Anis's asked Awami League bamboo Bangla Bangladesh Bangladesh Government Bengali Betsy bidi Borobari brother cloth co-operative crop daughter deep tubewell Development dewani Dhaka Dosutari East Pakistan economic father fields food aid Hari harvest Hindu Hosen Ali Husain husband India irrigation Islam jackfruit Jagnath Babu Jamiluddin Johir Ali's Jolil's jute Kamal Katni kilo Komla Kulchu Lalganj land reform landless labourers landlords large landowners live look lungi Mahmud Haji marriage married merchants middle peasants Mofis moneylending mosque Mujib Mukti Bahini Muslim Mymensingh Nafis Nafis's neighbours never night Noyatari officer poisha police political poor peasants rich Roshana sari sell Shaha Shahida's sharecroppers Sharifa small farmers sold taka told town tree tubewell tubewell project village wage labour wife woman women World Bank Yusef zamindar