AnAidWorker

I don’t know how it happened. For years, people in the NGO world only talk about economic growth, development and progress. It did not matter how we achieved it or what price we had to pay for this so-called development. Donors poured in hundreds of millions of dollars as long as it showed economic growth and upward movement in the poverty index. As long our so-called under developed world rushes to be a part of new liberal economy and billions of peoples join the market.

We were told that if we grow more, we could sell it to world market and enjoy the good and great things that market has already produced for us. For a glimpse of the clad clothed women telling us about the new fragrance, we destroyed another pieces of forest. For a test of frozen cold water from the slick and slim refrigerator, we stop growing rice and started to grow shrimp on our land – a land that cannot grow anything else ever since. For a speedy ride to distance on the gas guzzling yet proficient cars, we imprisoned our rivers and built bridges and roads.

Many tried to warn us not be mesmerized and amused by this shiny new world. All those who ever even showed slightest doubt against this new world, we banished them. We all followed the piper from Hamilan. People of our part of the world paid greatly of our sin. Everything we know is in the verge of extinction.

I get angry when I hear that the huge portion of Bangladesh, the country I grow up may be under sea in fifty years. Along with the world, people in Bangladesh will face more and more floods, cyclone and drought. However, unlike those who had promised us the great new world, we have nothing to face these natural disasters. We destroyed everything that could protect us from these calamites; our rivers, land, forest, environment for all that is shinny and glamorous. I guess that is our punishment of selling our souls to the devil. That is our sin that we were amused by these promises so easily.