Where it all began

Samta: Arsenic Dushone Akranto Ekti Gram, Manjuara Parvin, The University Press Limited

JUST a few years ago, the Bangladesh (and several international) media were awash with the news of several parts of the country being afflicted by a variety of illnesses brought about, totally or partially, by the drinking of arsenic-rich water.  Then, as other news began to dominate the headlines of newspapers and TV channels, and also probably because the dire situation related to arsenic poisoning had improved enough, the news was relegated to the inside pages, and, that, too, on the rare occasion.  If the scenario has indeed become significantly better, then that credit belongs primarily to the heroic efforts of a relatively small number of caregivers, both local and international (specifically, Japanese), who have dedicated themselves to tackling a very serious problem.  Samta:  Arsenic Dushone Akranto Ekti Gram has been written by one of those caregivers, Manjuara Parvin, detailing her own involvement in the programme run by the Japan-based NGO Asia Arsenic Network (AAN), which focuses solely on arsenic-related problems.
AAN started working in Bangladesh in 1997, and Parvin joined the organization at the very beginning as an everyday worker.  Through this association she got to learn about, in her words, the illness called 'arsenicosis', which originates from drinking arsenic-rich water, come in close contact with people suffering from it, and the opportunity to take care of them.  She was born and raised in Samta, a village of Jessore, a number of whose inhabitants had been afflicted with the disease (even she had shown early symptoms, but had been cured), and whose story was carried in the print media in early 1996.  The news came to the attention of the National Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine (NIPSOM), whose officials visited the village in September 1996 (although, in the Preface, she states that NIPSOM became interested in the then unknown disease --- in Bangladesh --- called arsenicosis in December 1996).  AAN then got in touch with NIPSOM, visited various localities of Bangladesh that had been affected by the disease, and eventually settled on Samta, with NIPSOM's concurrence, as the place to center its activities of research relating to underwater arsenic contamination, health issues, and treatment of arsenic-related diseases.
Parvin devotes the entire first chapter on giving an account of her village and her family.  Parts of it are anecdotal, others recounted from personal experience, and a few are endearing (maybe even enduring for at least some time to come) folklores.  Some of the stories deal with the supernatural, which had happened in her village as told by villagers and her elderly family members, and, at least on a couple of occasions, from her own personal encounters.  They will strain the skeptic's credulity, while feeding the flight of fancy of the imaginative, sensitive, or romantic minds.  Her multiple encounters with poisonous snakes attest to her sagacity and quick reaction in dealing with them.  The village was once, when the British raj was still prevailing in India, under the tyrannical dominance of two Hindu zamindars from the same family, who, even though they liked Parvin's father because he had designed the main door of their mansion, did not fail to mistreat him.  They went over to India following partition by the raj.
One of the striking features of the first chapter is the contrast it presents between the way of life and living conditions in Samta before the mid-1990s, and after, an account that reflects the story of the Bangladeshi society in general.  While the differences can be measured in terms of the ushering in of the age of globalization and its principal catalyst, the Internet, they can also be viewed in terms of relative prosperity.  Parvin talks in sketchy detail about agriculture, food habit, modes of attire, education, the use of television and shallow tubewells in Samta, and shows how much the lifestyle of the villagers has improved from the time when the age of globalization and the Internet had not yet established its foothold on the village.  In this section Parvin evinces the ability of not only being observant about the marked changes that had taken place in the village, but also about the preferences of the audiences of TV shows. For example, the viewers in the village prefer to watch the foreign (read:  Indian) channels over the Bangladeshi ones.  The females like to watch Poshchimbanga and Indian (read: Hindi) drama serials more than anything else.  
Particularly interesting in the context of her topic is the section on shallow tubewells.  Before the 1970s, the inhabitants of Samta had no knowledge of the use of shallow tubewell water for cooking and drinking purposes.  They used the water from ponds, rivers and rivulets, and wells.  As a result, they often used to fall victims of water-borne diseases like cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, and typhoid.  Since there was a dearth of qualified doctors, the afflicted villagers went to the lone homeopath who prescribed herbal medicines.  Mortality rate was fairly high, and gradually people learnt about the water-borne diseases and their origins.  Eventually, they had shallow tubewells dug in almost every family home and used the water pumped out of them.  Ironically, in Samta (as in several other places across the country), a new disease, directly linked to arsenic that was mixed in the water coming out of the tubewells, was proving to be more deadly than the other water-borne diseases.  The upshot of the appearance of the disease and the knowledge of the carrier was for the villagers to go back to the 1970s and the centuries-old practice before that!  They have gone back to the ponds, rivers, rivulets, canals, and wells for water to drink and cook in.  They have come full cycle and gone back to the past, or is it the future?  Learning from past experience, the villagers now purify the water by using filter, boiling, or using bleaching powder.  The author is, nonetheless, apprehensive that even in water from deep tubewells, arsenic would be found.  Then, she contends, water (purified) from ponds and rivers would be the only safe means for drinking and cooking.
Parvin talks extensively and lovingly about the expatriate Japanese and Bangladeshi doctors of AAN who had given so much of their time and effort to combat the arsenic-related diseases, and to look after those who had been afflicted with them.  Among several of these caregivers, the names of Kaguyuki Kawahara, Dr. Sk. Akhtar Ahmed, Sachie Tsushima, Hiroshi Yokota, and Dr. M.H. Faruqee stand out.  She extols the Japanese photographer Jin San, who used to help out the families of arsenic-stricken patients with money, something that the affluent of Samta did not do.  In a different context, she makes another telling point.  In 1997 she was elected a Union Parishad member, and, in that capacity, had proposed that funding be made available for the construction of a paved road from Jamtola Bazaar to Samta Bazaar.  She was told that she could have her wish on payment of Taka 40,000 to the local Member of Parliament.  She was so mortified that she vowed never to run for public office again.  Parvin is convinced that people in Bangladesh run for public office for their individual and party's benefit.  They do not much care for the general populace's welfare.  
However, the author has her own personal moment of success when, in Japan in 1998, as a participant in the 3rd Forum on Arsenic Contamination of Ground Water in Asia, she succeeded in getting her proposals accepted on establishing an arsenic center in her locality for the treatment and service of patients, and for them to receive medicine free of cost each month.  The author noted the similarity in Samta's experience with that of the Japanese village Toroku, whose people had also had suffered from arsenic-related diseases.  She observes with satisfaction how AAN's project had been expanded to include Dhaka, Jessore, and Sharsha upazilla.  She is pleased that, in a traditional society where almost any change is hard to come by, the villagers have agreed that, more than agriculture and pisciculture, uncontaminated drinking water is of greater signifance.
Manjuara Parvin has not written a book that will shake the academics or the movers and shakers of the country.  It is a story of a person who has been involved with tackling a deadly disease that has affected a good number of people in different parts of Bangladesh, including her own village of Samta.  But she writes with feeling and resolve, and this book is as much a story of her own triumph over adversity as it is of a concerted effort at defeating a deadly disease.  One can do worse than going through Samta: Arsenic Dushone Akranto Ekti Gram.

Shahid Alam is an actor, educationist and former diplomat