Cyclone that broken down a farmer’s dream

Nizam Mollah, a 45-year-old farmer from Magura district earns his living by farming crops at others' lands on subleasing basis. 

In this out-going Boro season, he cultivated paddy in three bighas of land at Atharo Khada, his village. 

At the starting of the cultivation season he dreamt of a lot, including setting up a new house and a deep tube-well at his premise as his wife has to put up with negligence while she goes to collect the drinking water from neighbour's tube-well. 

His eyes were full of hope and he felt that his dream was about to be materialized as the fields gave a bumper crop. 

But it is an irony of his fate that all his dreams have broken down within a single night's disaster. The paddy fields went underwater and the supper cyclone Amphan flooded the area.

He could not even harvest a little part of the crops from his land. Once again the cyclone left him as a destitute farmer. 

"Amid the fear of pandemic crops were our only lamp of hope. Now that is also destroyed," said Nizam Mollah with eyes full of tears.

Wiping his eyes, the heartbroken farmer said: "It is like a double disaster for me. I don't know how I will feed my five-member family."   

Nizam Mollah is not the only case, around 50 farmers in that village suffered from the cyclone very extensively. All of their farmed crops are damaged. 

Around 80 percent households in the village earn their living from farming and agricultural work. Of them, 40 percent family are depended on the agriculture while most of them are farming on others' land on subleasing basis. Boro and Aman are the two major crops that they cultivate. 

Natural calamities like heavy rain and even storms are not new obstacles in farming activities for the farmers in Magura district. 

This time, however, they feel that they are destroyed as the cyclone hit while the low-income people were struggling with the global Covid-19 pandemic, which has a slowed-down business and daily work.

The cyclone left them depended on government relief to survive. 

Due to geo-location Magura district is comparatively less prone to natural disaster as the world's largest mangrove forest Sundarbans is situated in the south of the district. 

Every time the Sundarbans first face the cyclone and left the district undamaged. Therefore, the farmers' in the district were less cautious of the latest cyclone.

"We could have saved some of our crops if we realized the extensiveness of the cyclone; and now we are counting the compensation of that mistake," said Nizam.  

However, farmers like Nizam Mollah are trying to be re-energized to pursue a new life. 

He is trying to cut the drowned paddy and get it to home. He also started thinking of new crops that can be grown on the submerged land. A new struggle opts to start. 

Courtesy: Shahriar Shawon, Former President at Dhaka University Mime Action (DUMA)