November 21, 2009
UTNE READER

Hope for Bangladesh

A homegrown movement rewrites rules for Third World development

September/October 2001
By Craig Cox, Utne Reader 
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There often seems a kind of inevitability to modernity, a sense in the developing world that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will eventually drag every last village kicking and screaming into the low-wage, high-margin world of global corporatized capitalism. But the people of Gorasin, Bangladesh, aren’t buying it.

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As Bill McKibben reports in Mother Jones (May/June 2001), Gorasin has become ground zero in a remarkable citizens’ movement that seeks to rewrite the rules of Third World development. "Is there some alternative to Progress?" McKibben writes. "Gorasin is one of those places that suggests there might be."
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At the center of this revolution is the Nayakrishi, or "New Agriculture," movement, which arose a decade ago in response to villagers’ concerns about pesticides. Its goals run counter to the strategies of every major international development agency. Neither grandiose nor despairing, Nayakrishi promotes farming methods developed over millennia to sustain local economies and strengthen local culture, McKibben explains. So, rather than pursue the Singapore or Thailand models of development, based largely on urbanization, cheap labor, and agricultural exports, Nayakrishi puts its faith in Bangladesh’s fertile soil.And why not? Despite a national history dominated by civil war, perennial flooding, and other disasters (Bangladesh is "a 10-letter word for woe," says McKibben), the country still manages to feed its 130 million people. "People say that it’s a miracle Bangladesh can survive its food and energy crises, that it somehow perseveres," says Sajed Kamal, a local solar energy expert. "The real miracle, though, is that you could contrive a way to have a food crisis. If you stick something in the ground here, it grows."
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