Jhagrapur: Poor peasants and women in a Bangladesh Village

Abstract

In the opening pages of Jhagrapur: Poor Peasants and Women in a Bangladesh Village, Dutch authors Jenneke Arens and Jos van Beurden comment that it would take “academic acrobats” to understand Bangladesh village life from a distance. The same holds true for the international experts and government bureaucrats who design development strategies for the country. Too often their ideas, incubated far from the villages, gloss over such basic dynamics of village life as conflicts between classes, the struggle over land and the subjugation of women. But ignorance is bliss for those who seek technical solutions to social problems, so it was not surprising that the Catholic volunteer aid agency (Christian Organization for Relief and Rehabilitation) which commissioned Jhagrapur refused to publish it when they read the results. It was simply too controversial.