Consigning monga to the museum!
Sebastian Zug, Student of Bochum University, Germany
Monga is still a very serious problem which is affecting an alarmingly high number of people mainly living in greater Rangpur every year. Serious interventions to specifically address monga were very rare. Coordination of activities by the Focal Area Forum in northwest Bangladesh has improved the efforts to combat monga. In the past few years various actors came up with new innovative projects. Promoting lacquer cultivation is a brilliant idea, since it can provide reasonable income for local farmers during monga. The establishment of paddy banks is an important alternative to relief and a milestone in combating exploitative money lending practices. Agriculture is the only relevant income source for most of the people in the monga affected regions. The optimisation of agricultural production bearing monga in mind is therefore the right path. In his article Dr. Shamsul Bari describes the currently most important initiative in this field. The harvest time of aman rice will be shifted into the monga period by introducing a fast growing rice variety and the drum seeding technology. Besides generating employment for the people during the problematic months of Aswin and kartik, the projects will have additional positive side effects like the possibility to cultivate an additional crop after harvest. Prior to the monga period they suffer from an additional seasonal shock, which is created by the floods. A project aiming on the high and medium lands can therefore only be a contribution to alleviating monga, rather than the breakthrough to end it, because the most affected regions cannot be covered by the project. The major actors of this project BRRI, RDRS and RIB have proven their capacity, expertise and commitment to fight poverty by developing and implementing this project. If they come up with an agricultural project, which improves the income of people living on the low lands, they would consign monga to the museum hopefully in the near future.
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