Development of agricultural output of Bangladesh in 2019 US$ since 1961 Agriculture is the largest employment sector in Bangladesh, making up 14.2 percent of Bangladesh's GDP in 2017 and employing about 42.7 percent of the workforce. The performance of this sector has an overwhelming impact on major macroeconomic objectives like employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development, food security, and other economic and social forces. A plurality of Bangladeshis earn their living from agriculture. Due to a number of factors, Bangladesh's labour-intensive agriculture has achieved steady increases in food grain production despite the often unfavorable weather conditions. These include better flood control and irrigation, a generally more efficient use of fertilisers, as well as the establishment of better distribution and rural credit networks.
Although rice and jute are the primary crops, maize and vegetables are assuming greater importance. Due to the expansion of irrigation networks, some wheat producers have switched to cultivation of maize which is used mostly as poultry feed. Tea is grown in the northeast. Because of Bangladesh's fertile soil and normally ample water supply, rice can be grown and harvested three times a year in many areas. The country is among the top producers of rice (third), potatoes (seventh), tropical fruits (sixth), jute (second), and farmed fish (fifth). With 35.8 million metric tons produced in 2000, rice is Bangladesh's principal crop. In comparison to rice, wheat output in 1999 was 1.9 million tonnes (1,900,000 long tons; 2,100,000 short tons). (Full article...)
Image 2
Tea garden in Sreemangal
Bangladesh is an important tea-producing country. It is the 12th largest tea producer in the world. Its tea industry dates back to British rule, when the East India Company initiated the tea trade in the hills of the Sylhet region. In addition to that, tea cultivation was introduced to Greater Chittagong in 1840. Today, the country has 166 commercial tea estates, including many of the world's largest working plantations. The industry accounts for 3% of global tea production, and employs more than 4 million people.
The tea is grown in the northern and eastern districts, the highlands, temperate climate, humidity and heavy rainfall within these districts provide a favourable ground for the production of high quality tea. (Full article...)
Image 3
Banglapedia:theNational Encyclopedia of Bangladesh is the first Bangladeshi encyclopedia. It is available in print, CD-ROM format and online, in both Bengali and English. The print version comprises fourteen 500-page volumes. The first edition was published in January 2003 in ten volumes by the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. with a plan to update it every two years. The second edition was issued in 2012 in fourteen volumes.
Banglapedia was not designed as a general encyclopedia but as a specialized encyclopedia on Bangladesh-related topics. For the encyclopedia's purposes, Bangladesh is defined as the territory comprising ancient Eastern India, Bengal Sultanate, Bengal Subah, Bengal Presidency, East Bengal, East Pakistan, and the independent Bangladesh, in historical succession. (Full article...)
Bangladesh Railway (Bengali: বাংলাদেশ রেলওয়ে) is the state-owned rail transport agency of Bangladesh. It operates and maintains all railways in the country, and is overseen by the Directorate General of Bangladesh Railway. The Bangladesh Railway is governed by the Ministry of Railways and the Bangladesh Railway Authority with a reporting mark known as "BR".
The Bangladesh Railway system has a total length of 3,600 kilometres (2,200 mi). In 2009, it had 34,168 employees working for the operations. In the year 2014, Bangladesh Railway recorded a ridership of 65 million passengers for a total of 8,135 million passenger-kilometres, and transported 2.52 million tonnes of freight racking up to 677 million tonne-kilometres. (Full article...)
Image 6
Satellite image of the cyclone near landfall on May 2
The 1994 Bangladesh cyclone was a powerful tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. The cyclone closely followed the path, strength, and time of year of a deadly cyclone in 1991 that killed more than 138,000 people. The 1994 cyclone formed on April 29 as a depression, which organized and intensified significantly over the subsequent few days. On May 2, the cyclone attained winds of 215 km/h (135 mph), according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). That day, the storm made landfall in southeastern Bangladesh, and rapidly weakened over land, before dissipating on May 3.
Ahead of the storm's landfall, about 450,000 people evacuated to storm shelters built since the 1991 storm. Upon moving ashore, the cyclone dropped 190 mm (7.5 in) of precipitation and produced winds of 278 km/h (173 mph) in Teknaf Upazila. Total storm damage was estimated at $125 million (1994 USD). The cyclone damaged or destroyed more than 78,000 houses, leaving about 500,000 people homeless. Along its path, the storm killed at least 350 people, including at least 126 fishermen from Thailand who were lost and presumed killed. In southeastern Bangladesh, the cyclone wrecked Rohingya refugee camps, killing 85 people. The Bangladeshi government managed the country's response to the disaster, providing food, clothing, and medical care. (Full article...)
Image 7
The Bangladesh genocide (Bengali: একাত্তরের গণহত্যা, romanized: Ēkātturēr Gôṇôhôtyā, lit. '71's genocide', Bengali: বাঙালি গণহত্যা, romanized: Bāṅāli Gôṇôhôtyā, lit. 'Bengali genocide') was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis, especially Bengali Hindus, residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Razakars. It began on 25 March 1971, as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence from the Pakistani state. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence. In their investigation of the genocide, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists concluded that Pakistan's campaign involved the attempt to exterminate or forcibly remove a significant portion of the country's Hindu populace.
The West Pakistani government, which had implemented discriminatory legislation in East Pakistan, asserted that Hindus were behind the Mukti Bahini (Bengali resistance fighters) revolt and that resolving the local "Hindu problem" would end the conflict—Khan's government and the Pakistani elite thus regarded the crackdown as a strategic policy. Genocidal rhetoric accompanied the campaign: Pakistani men believed that the sacrifice of Hindus was needed to fix the national malaise. In the countryside, Pakistan Army moved through villages and specifically asked for places where Hindus lived before burning them down. Hindus were identified by checking circumcision or by demanding the recitation of Muslim prayers. This also resulted in the migration of around eight million East Pakistani refugees into India, 80–90% of whom were Hindus. (Full article...)
Image 8
Procession march held on 21 February 1952 in Dhaka
When the Dominion of Pakistan was formed after the separation of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, when the British left, it was composed of various ethnic and linguistic groups, with the geographically non-contiguous East Bengal province having a mainly ethnicBengali population. In 1948, the Government of the Dominion of Pakistan ordained as part of Islamization of East Pakistan or East Bengal that Urdu will be the sole federal language, alternately Bengali writing in the Perso-Arabic script or Roman script (Romanisation of Bengali) or Arabic as the state language of the whole of Pakistan was also proposed, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Bengal. Facing rising sectarian tensions and mass discontent with the new law, the government outlawed public meetings and rallies. The students of the University of Dhaka and other political activists defied the law and organised a protest on 21 February 1952. The movement reached its climax when police killed student demonstrators on that day. The deaths provoked widespread civil unrest. After years of conflict, the central government relented and granted official status to the Bengali language in 1956. (Full article...)
Image 9
Bangladesh became a full member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) on 26 June 2000, and played its first Test match against India later that year. Before then, it had been an associate member of the ICC since 1977, competing in six ICC Trophies, the leading One Day International (ODI) competition for non-Test playing nations. The country has enjoyed some success in ODI's and Twenty20 Internationals (T20I) since its promotion, but has struggled to perform in the Test match arena. Recent years have seen the nation improve tremendously however, and it is beginning to establish itself as a powerful force in the cricketing world. (Full article...)
The cyclone formed over the central Bay of Bengal on 8 November and traveled northward, intensifying as it did so. It reached its peak with winds of 185 km/h (115 mph) on 10 November, and made landfall on the coast of East Pakistan on the following afternoon. The storm surge devastated many of the offshore islands, wiping out villages and destroying crops throughout the region. In the most severely affected upazilaTazumuddin, over 45% of the population of 167,000 were killed by the storm. (Full article...)
Image 12
Shahbagh (also Shahbaugh or Shahbag, Bengali: শাহবাগ, romanized: Shāhbāg, IPA:[ˈɕaɦ.baɡ]) is a major neighbourhood and a police precinct or thana in Dhaka, the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. It is also a major public transport hub. It is a junction between two contrasting sections of the city—Old Dhaka and New Dhaka—which lie, respectively, to its south and north. Developed in the 17th century during Mughal rule in Bengal, when Old Dhaka was the provincial capital and a centre of the flourishing muslin industry, it came to neglect and decay in early 19th century. In the mid-19th century, the Shahbagh area was developed as New Dhaka became a provincial centre of the British Raj, ending a century of decline brought on by the passing of Mughal rule.
Bangladesh has achieved significant advancements in political empowerment, ranking seventh globally with a commendable gender parity rate of 55.2%. Over the past 50 years, the country has witnessed a woman serving as head of state for an impressive duration of 29.3 years, which stands as the longest period in the world. Gender parity in school enrollment has seen significant improvement. Bangladesh has also put in place regulations to protect women's rights and privileges. As access to education for women increases, the momentum to boost women's participation in the labor force continues to grow. Bangladesh has experienced a substantial transformation, marked by the gradual expansion of opportunities for women over the past few decades. Multiple factors have converged to bring about transformative advancements in women's empowerment within the nation. (Full article...)
Sitakunda is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in Bangladesh. During much of its history, it was ruled alternatively by various Buddhist rulers of Myanmar in the east and Muslims rulers of Bengal in the west. For a brief period in the 8th century, it was ruled by the Buddhist Pala Empire of India. The eastern rulers originated from the Kingdom of Arakan, the Mrauk U dynasty, Arakanese pirates and the Pagan Kingdom. The western rulers came from the Sultanate of Bengal and the Mughal province (Suba) of Bangala. European rule of Sitakunda was heralded by Portuguese privateers in 16th and 17th centuries, who ruled together with the pirates; and the British Raj in 18th and 19th centuries, who unified Sitakunda into the rest of the Chittagong District. Diderul Alam is the Current Member of parliament of Sitakunda (Full article...)
The Bangladeshi government has begun to implement a foreign policy that pursues regional economic integration in South Asia and aims to establish Bangladesh as a regional hub of transit trade in Asia. (Full article...)
.jpg)
