After reaching Bogra, I have to hire a rickshaw again, then board a local bus, then a rickshaw van, and finally a few yards on foot. Need-lees to say, the journey is not only irritating but also costly and time-consuming.

Although I do not have a strong attachment to the village, I miserably fail to prevent myself visiting it frequently, although I have been an urban citizen for more than 30 years. However, to me those visits are not mere pleasure trips but opportunities to know the real problems of the villagers, and their hopes and expectation. Those who read one or two of my pieces in the Daily Star might have noticed that I always try to depict the experiences I gather from the public sphere.

During my two-day stay this time, I came across a cross-section of people. I will narrate here some of the issues I learned about, and I think this will give you an overall socio-politico-economic picture of rural Bangladesh.

Pointless felling of a 50-year-old banyan tree
After reaching the local bus stop from Bogra, I took a rickshaw van to reach my village, 6 km east of the bus stand. I was moving through a rural zigzag road, although it was mostly metalled. I could hardly feel the brunt of the sun as sprawling branches of roadside trees shaded the road. But after about 4 km, the next one km up to the bank of a river is straight and almost treeless.

However, there was a big banyan tree on the western side of the river named Sukhdaha. On its eastern side, there is a bazar and a primary school, mosque etc. From the rickshaw van, as I looked forward, I saw that the riverbank was barren. The banyan tree was so big and luxuriant that it could be seen from a km away. When I asked the van-puller about the tree, he informed me that it was cut down a week back.

I felt very sad, and a sort of pain surged through my heart. The banyan tree and our generation in the locality had grown up almost simultaneously for nearly the last 50 years. We have a lot of memories centering the tree. I stopped for a while at the barren site of the felled tree and paid my homage to it.

I looked around but could not find any reason for felling the tree. A small, 16 ft wide bridge has been constructed over the river. Compared to the bridge, the breadth of the existing approach road is almost double, and there was no need to cut the tree at this moment, as there is no possibility of introducing bus service on the road for at least the next 10 years.

Then why was the tree felled? The van pullers who were waiting for passengers under the open sky (earlier they used to take rest under the tree) said that a contractor with the aegis of some unscrupulous LGED officials felled the tree for financial gain.

Dr. Yunus and his political party
Whenever I go to the village, the villagers invariably asked me to describe the latest political situation in the capital. This time it was no different. The next morning, I dropped into a village adda of 20-25 people. After the exchange of pleasantries, the first question I faced was whether Dr. Yunus was still sticking to his decision to float a new party.

As I asked: "What is the problem, if Dr. Yunus does politics?" one of them hurled an invective against the pioneer of micro-credit. "Go and tell him to come here to seek vote we will give him a befitting lesson," some others said angrily.

"Why are you so angry at Dr. Yunus? He is doing a tremendous job by giving credit to poor people. He is trying to take you out of poverty," I argued in favour of Dr. Yunus terming him a genius and an honest person.

"Poverty eradication? Look at this house (pointing to a thatched house). Its roof and fence were made of CI sheet. Sufia (the owner of the house) had to sell the sheets to repay the loan she borrowed from an NGO," said the firebrand of the adda. He complained that about 100 people of the village have been caught in the vicious cycle of loan and repayment, and they would have to sell all their movable and immovable property to get rid of the loan. The economists who don't have any vested interests can initiate a genuine research on the outcomes of microcredit in our country.

It was the day before Dr. Yunus's announcement that he was not going to float his planned political party. On May 3, when Dr. Yunus announced his latest decision, I found grounds to agree with my co-villagers who wanted to give him a befitting teaching. Dr. Yunus probably got the messages from the grassroots.

Electricity
I could hardly sleep at night as there was no electricity connection in our house. Almost all the houses in the village, except four to five, were given electricity connections. The Reb officials did not give connection to those few as they declined to pay a good sum of money as bribe.

As I raised my nighttime misery before the adda, others, almost in a chorus, narrated the same experience. Although they have power connection, they hardly get electricity supply at night. All the consumers of my village, and surrounding villages, got the same Tk 92 bill as metre charge for the month of March.

Price of essentials
Potato is being sold at Tk 19 per kg, beef at Tk 180 per kg, kerosene at Tk 50 per litre, palm oil at Tk 72 (soybean is at all not available and palm oil is being sold as soybean) per litre, lentil at Tk 72 per kg in the local bazar.

The villagers said they were turning into vegetarians as both meat and fish had become so costly that it was not possible for them to buy those. For example, a few years ago, four to five cows were slaughtered in our bazar every hat day. But now, not a single cow is slaughtered as it is beyond the capacity of a villager to buy a kg of meat at Tk 180.

As I asked for the reasons for the hike, they said that the price of potatoes rose because huge quantities had been stored by the owners of the potato crackers factories (several factories have been set up in northern districts), and two export-oriented meat-processing plants bought cows -- one at Thakurgaon and other at Sirajganj.

"A 35 gm pack of potato chip sells at Tk 10. There is no problem for the chips factory owners to purchase potato at Tk 50 per kg," one said, holding the urban people responsible for the unusual price hike. In contrast, locally produced vegetables are being sold at throwaway prices. For example, brinjal is being sold at Tk 8, Pui at Tk 2, and a middle-sized sweet-gourd at Tk 15-20.

Khaleda-Hasina
People are disillusioned with both Hasina and Khaleda. Those who were once hardcore supporters of BNP have now became speechless, hearing about the monumental corruption of their leaders, especially of Tareq Rahman. I enjoyed a debate on the corruption of Awami League and BNP at the adda. Finally, one drew a conclusion that those who go to Lanka, become Raban. The villagers are happy to know that some of the big fish were caught and are being tried.

Nazrul Islam is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.