Meeting the BIG dreamers!

This week I went to a very remote island village of northern Bangladesh. I have been in villages here in Rangpur and Thakurgaon also, but they are in fact, not that much like a village. They have electricity, access to road, hospital, school etc. However, the Brahmaputra island area (known locally as Char) has many villages which are not only remote from the mainland Bangladesh, but also most disadvantaged and neglected from the so called mainland and the regime in Dhaka.

Government is scarcely present in the region. There are virtually no government services. No schools, no clinic, nothing. And this region is the home for eight hundred thousand people.

Some NGOs are working there and providing services to the people. An integrated development project called Char Development Programme (CLP) is underway and we were visiting the place to get to know about their services and programmes they are running.

Finally, we went to a school run by the local community. There were almost 30-40 students in a class. They were energetic and smart, but were badly hit by poverty and destitution like some other children in South Asia and Africa. They sang song for us, they performed an amazingly good parade and danced as well. We introduced ourselves and in turn they also introduced themselves. While they were introducing, we asked them as to what they wanted to be in the future. Most of them wanted to big engineers, the rest chose doctor, teacher, pilot, army and so on.

I really wish that these dreamers will be able to achieve their dreams. If conditions are favorable, what they are dreaming is not impossible. However, if pace of reform and progress remains like this, most of them, sadly, will end up being rickshaw pullers, laborers,petty farmers or some of them will be swept away by river which runs madly just few meters far from their homes.

It is not only a challenge of Bangladesh, but many countries in the global south will have to think and work seriously to reduce poverty from the region and offer more opportunities to their people.


The visit was kind of reflection of my childhood for me. I was lucky to be relatively well off than those kids, but I also have the same experience of studying in a small room with too many kids with insufficient study materials and infrastructure and so on.

I personally donated some money to the school so that those kids will be able to get some educational materials at least for some time. Briefly speaking, I also told them about some similarities between their life and my childhood and told them to study hard despite all unfavorable conditions they have.


They gave a long applause and said us bye bye. I'm back from that village and preparing for another field work, but those little kids are still running in my mind.