In a column for Daily Bangladesh, journalist, columnist and researcher Shafiqul Islam Khokon calls on the government to declare 12 November "Coastal Day" (Upakul Dibas). The views are the writer's own.
He recalls that on 12 November 1970 a cyclone and storm surge laid waste to the coast of what was then East Pakistan. Known as the Bhola cyclone, it killed about 500,000 people by various estimates. Winds of about 185 km an hour and the surge swept away homes, fields, cattle and fish enclosures, with Tazumuddin in Bhola and much of the south hit worst. Many in the new generation, he writes, do not know this history.
The column notes that the lives and livelihoods of some 50 million people are tied, directly or indirectly, to Bangladesh's roughly 710 km coastline, which matters greatly for food security, marine fish and shrimp, farming, salt, forests and trade. Yet cyclones, surges, river erosion, salinity, waterlogging and a lack of drinking water are constant; in places salt is ruining farmland, elsewhere waterlogging has stopped crops for years.
Khokon lists the run of disasters from the 1991 cyclone through Sidr, Aila, Mahasen, Roanu, Mora, Fani, Bulbul, Amphan, Yaas, Sitrang and Mocha to Remal in 2024. After each one, he observes, there is a brief round of relief and damage counts before the coast fades from view again, while people's losses and debts remain.
A designated day, he argues, would make the state, administration, media, researchers, development workers and the public think about the coast together at least once a year. He proposes that it be not just a commemoration but a day of commitment to protecting the coast, securing people's rights and sustainable development, and that the coast be seen as a region of economic promise, not only of disaster.
Born on the coast himself, he writes that he tries through journalism to report its problems and prospects every day. His single demand is that 12 November become Coastal Day. The image shows the Bhola cyclone from space on 11 November 1970.
Photo: NOAA / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: Daily Bangladesh
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