Today is Hartal day. For those of you who are not familiar with this bizarre phenomenon, a hartal is a strike which immobilizes an entire country. If you ignore a hartal, or if you accidently end up at the wrong place at the wrong time you can face brutal violence (last Sunday 3 people lost their lives). Since my arrival to Bangladesh, two and a half weeks ago, this is now the third (!) hartal. Today is thus the third day in which we cannot go into the field, and interviews have been cancelled (these days turned out to be very effective for doing work on our joint paper).
Having packed my bag for tonight’s flight I have now some time to reflect upon the last two weeks.One of the things that, apart from the insane hartals, has struck me over the last two weeks is the incredible sensitivity and dynamics of the Delta. When looking at the past, as I’ve tried to do in the Dhaka workshop, but also when looking at the current state of affairs in the South West delta, as we’ve done in the Khulna trip, it became more and more clear that in this Delta physically and socially only a small thing is needed for a systemic change. Physically this clearly visible in the (literally) meters of sediments that are deposited in river beds and tidal basins. Socially this is for example shown by the incident last June in which members of parliament visiting the area where attacked and their cars being set on fire.
In all this trip was very interesting, intensive, fruitful but also a bit bewildering. In the field I work in, people write about beautiful terms like wickedness, complexity and resilience. My feeling after this trip is that for Bangladesh complexity is an understatement...
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