Himu's Window

  The deep tube-well of Issoripur village in Godagari upazila. Amid lax monitoring by the authorities, many deep tube-well operators have been depriving small farmers in Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj and Naogaon of their fair share of water for irrigation. Those operators delay releasing water from their pumps, which leads to frequent crop loss for the farmers. Thrown in a situation they simply cannot cope with, the farmers are then forced into selling their land or leasing out land to others. Many of them leave farming for good and become day labourers to survive. In many cases, the tube-well operators, who have money and political connections, buy those land or take them on lease to grow their own crops, The Daily Star has learnt after talking to several such farmers as well as experts and development activists in the Barind region. On the other hand, the well-off farmers, who pay the operators extra money, are supplied with the irrigation water on time, they also said. On Wednesday, two

Robi Mardi Another farmer who drank pesticide in Godagari upazila on Wednesday died at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital last night. Robi Mardi, 27, son of Goyanath Mardi of Nimghutu village in Godagari, had been hospitalised since Wednesday night, hospital employees said. Robi's cousin Abhinath Mardi, 36, died at his home in the same village on Wednesday night after also drinking pesticide. Both men belong to the Santal community. Abhinath Mardi On Thursday, after police recovered Abhinath's body from his home, Additional SP Iftekhayer Alam of Rajshahi said in primary probe police found that the two had drunk the pesticide for not getting water for their farmland. Locals had said Abhinath and Robi badly needed irrigation water and were being ignored by Shakhawat Hossain, the operator of the Barind Multipurpose Development Authority's (BMDA's) deep tube-well in Ishwaripur village, for over two weeks. On Wednesday afternoon, they took pesticides with them and visited Sha

      Birendranath Sarker                                       Suresh Kumar Pandey It was a dark summer night of April 2, 1971. Everyone was tucked away in their homes because of the ongoing curfew. On that silent night, a twenty-one year old Shoven Kumar Roy went to bed early, unaware that life, as he knew it, wouldn't be the same anymore. Around 11:15pm, Roy woke up as if he felt a jolt. He had heard the rumblings of a jeep pulling over at their two-storey residence in Rajshahi town's Fudkipara. From the jeep a Pakistani soldier with a rifle stepped out, shouting --"Where is Pandey?" -- in his native tongue. Panicked, his father, Suresh Kumar Pandey, the then vice-chairman of Rajshahi Municipality, rushed to open the gate, in fear of aggravating the soldier's temper. Birendranath Sarker Roy, his brother and mother followed closely. Their hearts were racing as they watched Pandey converse with the soldier. The conversation was short, and the soldier told him to

A farmer in Rajshahi's Godagari upazila died on Wednesday after he and his cousin drank pesticide, police said. In primary probe police found that the two had drunk the pesticide for not getting water for their farmland, said Additional SP Iftekhayer Alam of Rajshahi, adding that the matter was still under investigation and that police have recorded an unnatural death case. Both men belong to the Santal community. Abhinath Mardi, 36, died at his home the day after he took the pesticide, said Kamrul Islam, officer-in-charge of Godagari Police Station. The deceased's cousin, Robi Mardi, 27, is undergoing treatment at the Rajshahi Medical College Hospital, the OC added. Police recovered Abhinath's body from his home yesterday morning and sent it to RMCH for autopsy. According to police, eye-witnesses and locals, the two cousins drank the pesticide near a deep tube-well of Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) at Ishwaripur village of the same union around 5:30pm. H

A huge crowd of readers gathered at Rajshahi's Circuit House yesterday, amid a sea of books. The book fair -- Pustak Poth -- did not expect that it would have to welcome so many people. This whole arrangement was the initiative of a group of school students, who collected 8,000 books from others in the last month to distribute them among residents for free. And those very books vanished in just four and a half hours. Hundreds of residents, young and old, stood in long queues to get their books. Not only volunteers, but police also had to help manage the overflowing crowd. "We're happy to witness the overwhelming response to our idea," said Md Hasin Anjum, one of the organising students. Everyone was allowed into the fair, but the visitors were asked to collect a maximum of two books and a magazine. The fair started at 11:00am and was scheduled to end at 5:00pm, but organisers had to end it at 3:30pm, after running out of books. Four students of different schools -- Ha

In the immediate aftermath of February 21, 1952, residents of Rajshahi went to work and built a Shaheed Minar near the Muslim Hostel premises of Rajshahi Government College. The Shaheed Minar still stands today, though not with as much prestige as Dhaka's Central Shaheed Minar is afforded. In fact, the entirety of Rajshahi city doesn't have a Central Shaheed Minar, which means on the International Mother Language Day, people pay homage to the martyrs at the ones at Bhubanmohan Park Memorial and the court area. In light of this, Language Movement veterans started demanding the preservation of the Muslim Hostel Shaheed Minar, which led Rajshahi City Corporation to take up a project in this regard in October 2018. One Sabera Enterprise was tasked with the construction works, which were slated to be completed by June 2020. But four-and-a-half years have passed by and the project is yet to finish. According to RCC, the work was estimated to cost Tk 50 lakh, which was later revised m

  রাজশাহীতে পদ্মা নদীর পাড়ে তিন কিলোমিটার হেঁটেছি। পথের ধারের অভিজ্ঞতাগুলো বিভিন্ন পর্বে ভাগ করে আপনাদের সামনে তুলে ধরছি। রাজশাহী বোয়ালিয়া ক্লাব থেকে শুরু করে পদ্মা নদীর বাঁধের উপর দিয়ে সিমলা পার্ক, সিএন্ডবি মোড়, চিড়িয়াখানা হয়ে রাজশাহী টেনিস ক্লাব, এই তিন কিলোমিটার। দেখুন জীবনবৈচিত্র আর ঐতিহ্যের মাঝে আমার ভ্রমণ।