This is the dollar-side of the development. But the dark side should never be in oblivion. Since shrimp culture started to surge, however, local conflicts crept up with grabbing of land, environmental degradation developed, considerable number of people were dashed below the poverty line and a host of adverse impacts were impinged thereupon. The imputed costs of such hazards should be added to the revenue earnings to arrive at sustainable development of the sector. There are many newspaper stories that I have been hearing for a long time about the socio-economics and politics of shrimp culture. In fact, if one scans through the news and views relating to deteriorating law and order situation in greater Khulna one could, perhaps, come to the conclusion that the lion's share of these deteriorations owe to shrimp cultivation and related issues.

While in Khulna, in connection with PETRRA sub-projects, I visited Coastal Development Partners (CDP) office. CDP, along with 15 other small NGOs, act as partners of the various projects that Poverty Elimination through Rice Research Project or PETRRA tends to support. Mr. Akhtarul Alam Tutu heads this organization. The posters pasted on the wall of the office gave me the impression that CDP is involved mostly with issues relating to the poor. It is not a micro-credit organisation as classical definitions of NGOs would suggest but an organisation engaged in facing human rights violation, environmental hazards, repressions on women and above all, highlighting human values. And of late, the organisation associated itself with the dissemination of rice diversity technology to the poor in the coastal areas.

It is there where I came across the 'unknown' costs of shrimp culture that CDP has been striving to dig out. It goes beyond the calculus of the principles of profit maximisation. I have newspaper clippings with me for August 2003. Throughout the month, cases of terrorist attacks, human rights violation and other vices surrounding shrimp culture are reported almost on every day. Only during the last three years, I was told, 55 persons were killed, and 42 incidents of assaults and 17 instances of poisoning of fish/shrimp ponds took place.

Hearing the horrors, I showed interest to visit some shrimp ponds called Chingri Gher -- the places I have never visited before. Next day, I drove to the ghers located in a village named Magura Ghona under Dumuria Thana. A narrow semipucca road passes through the heart of the village and I had to step down from the vehicle for a walk of a kilometer or so to the ghers. My a priori reasoning suggested that people of that village should be relatively better off than others since infrastructure development and other linkages connected with shrimp culture should shower positive externalities to the villagers (besides the fact that they could increase their earnings from the culture).

As I stood at the fag end of the village, I could see vast tracts of lands turned into ghers by developing polders. These are agricultural land that historically the people of that locality leaned on to meet the food security need by producing rice. In the past, when cultivation of crops was the mainstay, ecological balance was maintained, indigenous technologies were adopted and an egalitarian approach to the preservation of common properties was in evidence. But gone are those days with the advent of shrimp cultivation. Unplanned growth of the projects, absence of proper regulations and above all, lack of governance grievously gave way to an unsustainable development.

My hypothesis turned out to be wrong as I began to talk to the villagers. People of the village that I met seemed to be perturbed, panicky and powerless in the face of known man-made catastrophies. They informed me about three phases that shrimp cultivation passed through over time. First, there was a time when the owners of the ghers -- with money and muscle power -- used to grab lands of the poor without paying them a penny. This was the early stage of the so-called "blue revolution" and a business of the "big". Second, then came a time when collective farming was developed in some places but the poor were deprived of their due shares from the farms. And now, in many places, small farmers are themselves doing the cultivation -- instead of renting out land -- to eke out a living but problems mounted rather than mitigated.

One example should suffice to show the severity. Recently, a 6 km long canal was occupied by goons to develop ghers and cultivate shrimps in the water of the said canal which is a common access resource passing through nearby villages. Water flowing to and from was stopped building barrages and thus causing a host of adverse impacts. The poor villagers objected to this barrage in the canal and are being threatened by the powerful mastans. Some of the villagers were reportedly put under criminal cases. While the police were looking for those poor villagers to arrest, they were, allegedly, least interested to kick out the devils from the dens. As I was told, huge sums of money from the goons and the powerful gher owners force them to pay a deaf ear to the 'development' that took place in the canal.

More interestingly, the day I visited the spot, the local MP came to the place to remove the barrage and thus allow the access to common resources by all people. This was an appreciable job done by the local MP. But unfortunately, no sooner had he left, the villagers complained, the barrages inside the canal came up again.

I was told that the rent from leasing out land for shrimp cultivation -- Tk.1200/bigha -- is much less than that for rice cultivation. The soil fertility is seriously affected due to the intrusion of the saline water into the fields and the yield rate is down by 20-30 per cent. Witnessing a decline in the yield of agricultural crops and the lack of access to common resources, poor farmers are gradually forced to fall upon leasing out land for shrimp cultivation. There are no winter crops anymore- pulses, oil seeds and vegetables and the collapse of the cattle raising has had serious economic and nutritional consequences not usually counted in the economics of shrimp culture. " There have been many reports of khas lands (government owned lands) being used for shrimp farms illegally by influential members of the society, sometimes in possession of false property deeds, and in some cases with the support of the local police or government officials. Violence and intimidation towards small-scale shrimp farmers in order to appropriate their lands is also reported to be widespread", says one report on shrimp cultivation and its impacts.

And to visit some of the developing countries counting on shrimps, look at the following observation. " Shrimp farmers in Thailand left behind an ecological desert. These farms are hardly useful for other economic activities. Outside investors are enriched, local people are pauperised. Development runs above the heads -- very little trickles down to them".

I recall that few years back, Bangladesh shrimp exports faced a shrink following EU objections to some of the aspects relating to production and distribution. Quite obviously, the buyers need not be blamed and gracefully some of our exporters took the pains to upgrade their processing plants and production process. The wake up call helped create an atmosphere where the non-economic costs of shrimp cultivation deserve attention.

The above-mentioned observations should not be taken as a negative attitude towards shrimp cultivation and export. After all, we all want dollars but not at the cost otherwise. We want that the growth of shrimp cultivation should take place under a regime where (a) access to common properties are not encroached upon; (b) small farmers have the freedom to reap home the rewards from shrimp cultivation; (c) productivity of agricultural land is not adversely affected and (d) the rules of the game is such that both economic and non-economic costs are duly calculated to point to a sustainable development of the sector.

To this effect, many steps need to be on board but allow me to cite a few: (a) the industry should fully acknowledge its responsibility of using the best of resources to ensure environmental sustainability, economic viability and social equity; (b) there should be an unrestricted access for third party monitoring all aspects of production, distribution and technology used; (c) there should be improvement in pond designing, water exchange and pollution control; (d) existing farms should comply with national land use polices, strategies and legislation; (e) future development of the sector should be based on consultation with local community; (f) specific commitments to uphold human rights should be at the top of the agenda and finally (g) all farms should fall under the Seal of Quality to meet the environmental and humanitarian needs of the industry.

I now draw the attention of the readers to news paper reporting of 15 days of July to justify the title of the write-up: Shrimp culture: Deaths and dollars. In fact, the following reports are just the tip of the iceberg. Everyday, on average, one incident of death or other crime was reported to take place in greater Khulna. Perhaps this drives home the point that deaths and dollars have unfortunately become regular phenomena:

July 1: Tk. 1 lac stolen from shrimp farmer in Demra, Bagherhat (Janakantha)

July 4: Firearms and ammunition seized from a shrimp farm in Rampal (Daily Sebok)

July 10: Court cases filed by widow against 10/12 persons for the murder of Yakub, a shrimp farmer (daily Sebok)

July 10: fries worth Tk. 100,000 looted from shrimp farm in Rampal upazila (Daily Purbachal)

July 12: A gang fired at Abdul Malek (48), a shrimp owner from Zamira village, phultala upazila (Daily Sebok)

July 14: No arrests following the murder of shrimp farm owner in Phultala upazila.

The government should take the situation very seriously before the vital sector gets sick when, perhaps, deaths will occur but dollars would flee.

Abdul Bayes is Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University