Land expropriation and displacement in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper examines land grabbing in Bangladesh and views such seizures through the lens of displacement and land encroachment. Two different but potentially interacting displacement processes are examined. The first, the char riverine and coastal sediment regions that are in a constant state of formation and erosion, are contested sites ripe for power plays that uproot small producers on their rich alluvial soils. The second examines new patterns of land capture by elites who engage gangs, corrupted public servants and the military to coerce small producers into relinquishing titles to their ever more valuable lands in and near urban areas. These historically specific and contingent land grabs draw attention to in situ displacement, where people may remain in place or experience a prolonged multi-stage process of removal. This contrasts with ex situ displacement, a decisive expulsion of people from their homes, communities and livelihoods. In both the char and peri-urban case, we signal new forms of collective action in response to involuntary alienation of land resources in a rapidly and violently transforming political economy. We conclude with a caution against naturalizing displacement, casting it as an ‘inevitable’ consequence of changing weather conditions in the former and population dynamics in the latter.

Keywords:

• displacement
• land expropriation
• enclosure
• land grab
• char
• violence
• Bangladesh

Notes

¹See, for example, Borras et al. (2011), De Schutter (2011) and Peluso and Lund (2011).

²These global media will be counterpointed by more localized media reports from Bangladesh to offer a window on the various expressions of land predation in the country. Such reports offer a portal on the everyday land violences that attend to life at the two sites of interest – the chars and peri-urban spaces.

³The 1951 Convention on Human Rights ‘offers a general definition of the refugee as including any person who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return there or to avail themselves of its protection, on account of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group, or political opinion’ (Goodwin-Gill 2008). The Convention does not address internally displaced persons. In 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement were ratified by the U.N. and define IPDs as ‘persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border’ Global Database: Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement 2007). The involuntary character of one's departure and the decision to remain in one's own country are the two main elements determining who is an internally displaced person. According to some, however, IDPs remain hard to define and quantify and thus receive only ad-hoc attention (Stavropoulou 1998).

⁴These figures exclude some small islands including Bermuda, Maldives and Malta, or Singapore, Hong Kong and Bahrain.

⁵Agricultural land is the share of land area that is arable, under permanent crops and under permanent pastures. Arable land includes land defined by the FAO as land under temporary crops, meadows or pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow. See also http://www.tradingeconomics.com/bangladesh/agricultural-land-percent-of-land-area-wb-data.html for slightly different figures [Accessed 25 April 2011].

⁶ In situ displacement or close approximations to it have appeared in other research (e.g. Feldman et al.2003, Doutriaux et al.2008).

⁷Trading Economics, Agricultural land (% of land area) in Bangladesh. Available from: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/bangladesh/agricultural-land-percent-of-land-area-wb-data. html [Accessed 25 April 2011].

⁸While land grabs play a prominent role in this process, erosion, salinization, mangrove loss and the inland effects of storm surges contribute as well, as they have historically.

⁹Illegal measures, sometimes blatant and sometimes subtle, are not limited to Bangladesh (see, for example, Borras and Franco 2010).

¹⁰Bangladesh's Institute of Water Modeling (IWM 2009), with Danish financial assistance, found the country needs at least US$4.17 billion (Tk 287,634 million) for polder construction to save the lives of coastal people from combined sea-level change and storm surge. ‘There will be water-logging on 18 percent of land in the country's costal region by 2050 while on 25 percent by 2100 even if the embankments are raised at least by 4–6 metres', the study says (Daily Star 2009). The IWM report also notes that according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sea-level change will wipe out more cultivated land in Bangladesh than anywhere in the world. By 2050, rice production is expected to drop by 10 percent and wheat production by 30 percent in response to water logging.

¹¹Floods, droughts and cyclones are familiar forces on Bangladesh's delta. An estimated one million people are displaced by riverbank erosion each year (Zaman 1991).

¹²According to the USAID (2010, 4), ‘Bangladesh has a long history of inequitable access to land. In rural areas, one percent of landowners own more than 7.5 acres. Ten percent of landowners own between 2.5 and 7.5 acres. The remaining 89% of landowners own less than 2.5 acres. Thirty-nine percent have less than .5 acres. This inequity exists despite a series of land reforms in the 1950s and 1960s that included tenancy reforms, imposed ceilings on landholdings, and provided for the distribution of public land to the landless'.

¹³Contributing to such landlord behaviors are the cumbersome and expensive registration requirements that impede land transactions. An individual or entity (either domestic or foreign) purchasing a real estate plot in a peri-urban area near Dhaka City can expect to pay 10 percent of the value of the property for registration and face long delays in completing the transaction.

¹⁴The reappearance of lands on account of alluvion, when such lands were earlier lost by diluvion, is a special case. Here, title and interest of the original tenant or his successor's interest are protected if such lands reappear in the same place within 30 years of their loss (Ali 2003).

¹⁵At least indirectly, exceptions to this assertion do exist, e.g. Lynch and Alcorn (1994) and others who document the squeezing of the bio-physical resource base that enabled the ‘historically dominant livelihoods’ that depended on it (Miah et al.2010). The same observers tersely state: ‘presently, the whole region is on the verge of degradation largely because of frequent natural disasters, human activities and global climate change’ (p. 427).

¹⁶As one newspaper article acknowledged, the DC [District Commissioner who is the highest ranking regional officer] had to be removed for failing to protect an archeological site – which finds its parallel in care about land as well as residents (see Daily Star 2011f). In another instance, the Supreme Court summoned a general secretary of the Awami League who sought to build a private hospital on the ground currently home to a temple (New Age 2011a).

¹⁷Collaboration among members of government, political parties and large landowners is not a completely new strategy of accumulation; but during this time it came to enjoy a degree of autonomy whose roots lie in how political party formation and a new policy environment reshaped by earlier forms of inequality.

¹⁸The country's need for foreign exchange shaped government support for the garment sector, perhaps one reason why they ignored some of the questionable practices of factory owners. Support for the sector also came from the Multi-fiber Agreement the country enjoyed for preferential treatment of their exports. Together, these practices aided in legitimating the significance of the new emergent class of entrepreneurs.

¹⁹Some members of the expatriate community, particularly those from well-off families, also face land grabbers and poachers (Siddiqui 2009), often of their familiy members left behind such as the elderly who are unable to fend for themselves in protecting their landed property and the tenants who may reside on it.

²⁰The cost of undertaking land preparation and control is extremely high so that only those with the resources able to do so can participate in such endeavors. Note too the housing structures that are proximate to the canal suggesting the ways that some buildings may fail to meet building codes.

²¹In some cases, struggles occur when people try to build brick factories on agricultural land creating major ecological problems for residents in the area (Daily Star 2011e).

²²Notwithstanding often violent struggles and strikes over wages, rights, and worker safety, the BGMEA has been able to keep wages below the national minimum and to secure for Bangladesh the status as the country with the lowest wages in the world, despite thirty years of policy reform intended to improve living standards and economic growth.

²³Notwithstanding often violent struggles and strikes over wages, rights, and worker safety, the BGMEA has been able to keep wages below the national minimum and to secure for Bangladesh the status as the country with the lowest wages in the world, despite thirty years of policy reform intended to improve living standards and economic growth.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelley Feldman

We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments, the participants at the Global Land Grabs conference at the University of Sussex for their thoughtful engagement with the issues, and Wendy Wolford for her encouragement.