Charu Tudu, 60, has just a handful of toasted rice and a salted cup of tea the entire day. After working from morn till the evening, he returns home starving. A plate of rice awaits him. This is his life for six months of the year. The other six months he gets to eat rice twice a day. Charu Tudu is not the only one living in this manner. Almost all 26 of the families living in the village Shantipara are in the same predicament. Everyone of this village in Rajshahi's Godagari upazila is of the indigenous Kole community.
The Kole community settled in this village five years ago. They use to work on the land of Bangalis in the neighbouring village Babudying and would live there. When they were evicted from there, they settled on khas land in Shantipara. Says Charu Tudu, "We named the village Shantipata, but there is no 'shanti' (peace) here for any one of us. Who knows when we are told to leave this place too?"
The Kole community is very small group among the indigenous people of the plains, but neither the government nor any private organisation has reached out to them. They have received no government's relief assistance.
The Prime Minister's Office has a fund termed 'Development Assistance for Special Areas (except Chittagong Hill Tracts)' for ethnic minorities. Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Khaled Hossain says that last Tk 900 thousand was allocated for the 40 thousand indigenous people of Godagari. That means Charu Tudu and the others were allocated Tk 22.50 per head. But no one in the village Shantipara saw any of that money. Why? UNO Khaled Hossain tells Prothom Alo, "It's such a small allocation. How many people can we pay?"
According to the Bangladesh Indigenous People's Forum, there are about 2.9 million adivasis or indigenous people in the country. Two thirds of them are of the plains, totalling about 20 lakh. The government or aid agencies haven't taken any tangible initiative to improve their living standards.
In 2013 there was a Tk 160 million allocation from the Prime Minister's special assistance fund for the two million indigenous people of the plains. That amounts to Tk 80 per head. Leaders of the plain land indigenous people, economists, international development agencies and even a minister, termed this allocation as a 'mockery towards the indigenous people by the state' and 'unjust'.
Bangladesh has been making progress over the past two years in poverty alleviation and other social indicators. However, the indigenous people of the plains have not benefitted from this. Economist Hossain Zillur Rahman calls these people the "missing poor."
The sixth five-year plan speaks of the "ethnic minority", saying that the "extreme poor" exist amongst these two million. How is this poverty among the indigenous people of the plains? In a research termed 'Life and Land of Adivasis' carried out by Professor Abul Barakat in 2009, it was said that 60 percent of the indigenous people of the plains were in extreme poverty. At the time, 39.5 percent of the rural people were in extreme poverty. The research covered 13 indigenous communities in the northern region, Greater Sylhet and Mymensingh region.
The Prime Minister's Office provided Tk 700 million in development assistance over the past five years to the indigenous plains people. Sanjib Drong, General Secretary of the Bangladesh Indigenous Peoples Forum has said that this allocation is "an extreme mockery to the plains indigenous people by the state and a sign of negligence."
Yet the government's annual allocation to the development sector of the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs alone was Tk 2.69 million. More than half the people of Chittagong Hill Tracts are Bangali. That means for half of them, that is about 900 thousand hilly area indigenous people, the allocation was Tk 1.35 million.
Hossain Zillur Rahman, Executive Chairman of Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC), says the indigenous people of the plains are marginalised both in situation and in discussions. The government and donors have a lack of knowledge about them. The indigenous people of the hills are given priority over them.
Civil Aviation Minister Rashed Khan Menon, who formerly headed the parliamentary caucus for indigenous people's affairs, tells Prothom Alo, "The meagre allocation does not even reach everyone. It is unjust." He has proposed fund allocation for the indigenous people of the plains in ratio to their numbers and a separate land commission for them.
(Prothom Alo's Chapainawabganj staff correspondent Anwar Hossain has provided valuable information for this report.)