Bart Schultz
The first time I flew to Dhaka via New Delhi. The last part of the flight I looked out the window and saw the landscape changing from dry to wet. I was shocked by what I saw. Huge rivers and flooded lands. And that at the end of the dry season. My PhD student took me from the airport to the guesthouse in Dhaka where I stayed for a night. The next afternoon we would fly to Barisal, from where we would drive by car to a town near his study area - Polder 43/2A. There we would stay in the guesthouse of the Bangladesh Water Development Board. In fact the Bengal Public Works Department, but only for water. On Sunday morning we would visit Polder 43/2A and fly back to Dhaka at the end of the afternoon, where we would have the necessary discussions for the rest of the week and discuss the set-up of his thesis.
Saturday morning, before leaving for Barisal, the Bengali co-supervisor gave me a two-hour lecture on water management in Bangladesh and the donors' lack of understanding of the specific situation of this country. It was a perfect introduction to the local conditions. The man was member of almost all the water committees in Bangladesh at the time, and was eager to contribute to the study. I was very happy with this, because he was not only very knowledgeable, but also very influential and that is not unimportant in Bangladesh.
In the afternoon we left for Barisal in a nice plane - twenty seats. I sat at the window again and flew over large expanses of water. Where there was land you could still see where the old river branches had been. I started to feel short of breath. What will happen to the polders in the long term if the sediment continues to come down through the rivers in these incredible quantities, and polder drainage is unfeasible with the rainfall amounts in Bangladesh? We landed in Barisal and were nicely met for our ride to the town near Polder 43/2A.
At that time, Bangladesh had about 100 million inhabitants - now it is about 165 million - making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Well, that was also noticeable. Everything was swarming together on the road and a kind of slalom was the only way to get through everything by car. During our journey of more than two hours, we had to take a ferry across a river three times, the driver had to hit the brakes twice for a crossing cow, and we had to stop three times for an inextricable knot of rickshaws, carts, cars, trucks and buses and, while waiting for a ferry, we watched a local sale of medicines for which the merchant first sang a long song to promote them. In short, a lot of 'local colour'.
At the guesthouse it turned out that they were no longer expecting us and there was no food, so we went to a restaurant further into the village. This was no longer accessible by car and we climbed into a rickshaw two by two. The man who got me had no luck and had to give up on two slopes, so I stepped out to make his journey not too difficult. The restaurant was completely impossible to find for outsiders, because you just had to go through a narrow corridor and up a staircase without any indication that you would end up in a restaurant. Anyway, this turned out to be the case and we ate in an almost unlit restaurant. The Bengalis kindly informed me that they did this because of the quality of the food, which was not very reassuring, but fortunately I did not suffer any symptoms.
The next morning we left early by speedboat to Polder 43/2A. Bangladesh has so many polders that they don't give them a name, but a number. Still, I thought this was a shame, a beautiful name is more appealing. The polder was 5,000 hectares and there were six inlet and outlet sluices. The polder had been completed in 1987 and was therefore about 12 years old at the time of our visit. We stopped at the first sluice and went ashore. The sluice had three tubes with a vertical sliding gate on one side and a flap gate on the other. These types of flap gates open automatically when the outside water level is lower than the water level in the polder and close automatically when the reverse is the case. The flap gates were no longer there, but the sliding gates were still there. Only the mechanism to open and close them was broken on all three. Upon arrival we were immediately surrounded by about forty farmers who were apparently curious.
We visited several interesting places in the polder and had a meeting with the farmers. They were very interested in the study and came up with all kinds of problems and proposals. This also led to a lot of discussion among themselves. All in all we got a good picture of the polder.
We returned to Dhaka for further discussion on the set-up of the study. I asked what the polder water level actually was. This is the preferred water level that is aimed for in the watercourses in the polder during the year. In our country this is usually quite simple. It is the same water level all year round, or there is a summer water level and a winter water level, with the summer level usually being slightly higher than the winter level. My question led to confusion, because it turned out that, despite the hundreds of polders that were constructed, this was not a commonly known concept. After some discussion, this was actually considered an important point and we agreed that determining an optimal polder water level would become an important part of his study.
His study has now been successfully completed and he has determined the optimal polder water level. This was quite different from what we are used to in the Netherlands, because other interests, such as fishing, a much larger role for irrigation and larger surface level differences within the polders, played a role. Hopefully his findings will be widely applied in practice, because this can be very important for the well-being of farmers.
