Rupananda earns a doctorate degree

Rupananda Roy was born in the hill district Rangamati of Bangladesh. Her father’s work brought them to Dhaka where she passed her secondary and higher secondary schools exams. She then went to Australia on a scholarship and excelled in her studies there. Finally, last year she earned her PhD degree.

Rupananda Roy is of the Chakma ethnic community. Her academic achievement has created history. There are over 50 ethnic minority communities in Bangladesh and she is the first woman among them to earn a doctorate degree.

This young woman earned her PhD degree from Australia’s University of Adelaide. Speaking from there over the phone, she said she was feeling a mixture of joy and pain. Her joy was being the first woman to earn this distinction among the ethnic minorities and her pain that it took so long for this to materialise. It pointed to how women of these ethnic communities lagged behind in higher education.

Rupananda is from Rajbari in Rangamati town and is the younger of Bikram Roy and Bipasha Roy’s two children. Her father Bikram Roy is a retired government official.

Rupananda was admitted to the sociology department of Dhaka University in 2007 and received a scholarship from the Australian government in 2009. She earned a first class Bachelor’s degree from the University of Adelaide in 2012 and decided to go on further for a doctorate degree. Her PhD topic was an evaluation of the policy for Bangladesh’s migrant workers.

Rupananda explained her choice of topic: “Whenever I would return home, I would see a large number of migrant workers queuing up at the immigration desk. We would get through easily, but they would have to wait interminably. They would be yearning to see their loved ones, and the wait was painful. I wanted to get to the bottom of this problem.”

Her teachers were pleased with Rupananda’s selection of topic for her thesis. It highlighted the political and social influences on implementing Bangladesh’s worker migration policy. An important observation of her research was that since reverting to democratic rule in 1990, the country’s political leadership took up tangible policies against poverty. This presented fresh opportunities to migrant workers. However, she observed, the government should increase services and facilities for the migrant workers immediately and ensure proper implementation of the policies.

Rupananda spent six months in Bangladesh working on her thesis. She submitted her thesis in December 2016 and was awarded her degree on 12 September last year.

She expressed her gratitude to her parents, in-laws and the government of Australia for all their cooperation. Father Bikram Roy was overjoyed. “Her merit has been rewarded,” he said, “She was always hardworking and this has paid off.” Rupananda’s husband Ripon Tanchyanga is a physician. They have a 10-month-old daughter Parnita.

Chittagong Hill Tracts, from where Rupananda comes, had been rocked with unrest for over two decades. Despite development work since 2003, the area still falls behind national standards. It is this backwardness that made Rupananda all the more determined to work in the development sector. She wants to work for the people. General secretary Adivasi Forum, Sanjeeb Drong, said that Rupananda is an inspiration for the women of the country’s ethnic communities.

Rupananda is now working on publishing a book based on her her dissertation. Once that is done, she will return home.