Bengal Delta

Chapter-3: Economy and Society: The Myth and Reality of ‘Sonar Bangla’ summary (page 39-
56)

Md.Mahroof Hossain, ID -003

The third chapter focus on ecology and how ecology provides opportunity for the production and
commercialization of crops, the impact of ecology and commercialization of agriculture, and the
process of agricultural development and how human well-being influence the social formations
in the region. In this chapter Iqbal endorses about the fluvial strength of Bengal Rivers, which
offered two important eco-system services. Rivers creating new land by depositing silt and the
sheer volume and velocity of the rivers that drained to the Bay of Bengal kept the salty seawater
at bay, sustaining a fresh water ecosystem. Iqbal shows that the influence of the river system in
the creation and fertilization of land was of considerable importance in territories. It shows that
although productive exploitation of the agro-ecological zones of eastern Bengal had been under
way from the pre-colonial period, the region seems to have been specially favoured by nature
since 1830s.

This chapter discuss about the production of rice and jute. It analyzes the three broad varieties of
rice: aman, aush and boro. It also explains how jute has earned as commercial product in Bengal
and how people of Bengal benefited from jute production. Jute cultivation, production and export
were in its heyday until the early twentieth century.

The third chapter describes the role of rivers in trade and transport of goods in Bengal delta.
Markets in Bengal were mostly riverside phenomena and were generally accessed by boat. It also
explains how the creation of new markets by the grantees or leaseholders in the Sundarbans
expanded the scope for cultivators to sell their produce without such barriers. The waterways and
country boats remained extremely important elements in the marketing of deltaic produce, even
though steamers and railways offered strong competition towards the end of the century.

This chapter talks about that although the railway began to penetrate East Bengal in the
nineteenth century, country boats continued to carry the majority of both rice and jute. The water
system in this region increased the importance of its economic role. This part of the book
endorses that an understanding of the dual impact of the nineteenth century’s formative ecology
and commercialization of agriculture is important to a proper perspective on agrarian and social
decline in late colonial period.

This chapter also illustrates how ‘depeasantinization’ was accelerating by the 1890s and resulted
in the emergence and growth of numbers of vulnerable sharecroppers and landless labourers over
the following century. Iqbal in his book talks about the ‘Dufferin Report’, a government report of
1888 on the condition of the ordinary people of eastern India. This chapter endorses how the
‘Dufferin Report’ divided the social groups into eight classes and talks about each classes. This
chapter also gives clear ideas of what ‘Landlessness’ meant in eastern Bengal in the nineteenth
century. A ‘landless person might not have had enough land on which to produce rice or jute on
commercial basis, but he might nevertheless have possessed some land around his bastu or home.

The introduction of the permanent settlement Act of 1793 in Bengal by the early East Indian
company authorities as has been widely noted which shows how it produced the ‘parasitic land
owning zamindar’.

The author argues at the heart of which was the independent peasant cultivator who spurred the
production of agricultural surpluses in jute and rice and developed innumerable commercial
markets in the region.

Strength of this chapter: By reading this chapter the reader can have the knowledge that how
bazars and boats were the backbone of trade, commerce and communication in Bengal.