Iftekhar Iqbal

Environment has been key to Dhaka’s birth and rebirth, growth and development as well as its urban predicaments. Recently, Dhaka’s environmental issues have led to public debates drawing a lot of interest.

After conducting a year-long survey of landscape, possible routes and profitability, Macdonald Stephenson, a Scottish engineer, proposed the first Indian railway scheme in 1845.

Wars are not just about strategy, diplomacy, weapons, death and destruction of human life, but also about the way it affects natural environment.

Politics, patriotism, and palliatives for economic woes—all expressed themselves centrally in terms of the land and landscape of Bengal. The new province therefore fell apart and Bengal reunited.

There is no instance in the world where after decades of experience of citizenship and of exercising the rights to electing their representative to parliament an entire population becomes stateless without security to life, property and honour, except of course in Nazi Germany.

First, when it came to the ecological question, the two-nation theory, on which the partition was claimed to be based, was muted as seen in Punjab and Bengal where the question of partitioning the water bodies took the centre stage. Second, the immediate aftermath of the partition left thousands of people dead and millions homeless and filled with gruesome trauma.