Eighteen Bede women in Khulna leave nomadic life to run small businesses

Eighteen women of the Bede community have left a life of travelling from village to village and settled with their families at Seven Number Ghat in Khulna, where they run their own small businesses. Their story was reported by Arifur Rahman, Jagonews24's Khulna district correspondent, on 8 March 2025, International Women's Day. The women were earning a living by selling cloth, making bags, running grocery shops, selling vegetables and rearing goats, and had enrolled their children in schools and madrasas.

The women told Jagonews that they used to practise singa (traditional cupping) and put on snake shows, which meant moving constantly between villages. During the Covid-19 pandemic people would not let them into their homes and treated them with contempt, and they even had to beg. After the pandemic, in 2022, they took 10 days of training at the non-governmental organisation Rupantar. With its support they then started businesses of their own, selling saris and cloth. Their income had grown, they said, and people who once gave them no room now treated them warmly.

Khodeja Begum said she gave up the old work about three years earlier and began rearing goats. When one goat died she sold the other and started a cloth business. Keya Khatun buys cement sacks, makes bags from them and sells them. She said she used to earn money from snake shows and had also had to ask people for money; now she lives in peace.

Kapali Begum said the women did not want their children to return to the hard life they had come through, and that was why they kept working. Minara Khatun said they used to be unable to marry their sons and daughters outside the community and had lived within a closed circle; now they ran businesses and were respected. Many others in the community wanted the same, she said, but lacked the opportunity, so the women were asking for government help, which she believed would let many more make the change.

Swapan Kumar Guha, founder and executive director of Rupantar, told Jagonews that members of the Bede community were very hard-working. During the ten days of training they were never a minute late, he said, and it was their own determination that changed their circumstances. Rupantar, whose office is at Shirishnagar in Khulna, has worked in development since 1995. It uses community media and folk theatre to carry development messages and works on the rights of children, young people, women and marginalised people.

The Bede are a nomadic community of Bangladesh, many of whom traditionally lived on boats. A June 2022 report in The Business Standard described snake catching and selling, snake charming, monkey shows and magic tricks as their customary livelihoods, and noted that many families were moving from boats into permanent homes. In November 2024, Bonik Barta reported, citing a survey, that there were about 75,702 Bede people in Bangladesh.

According to the same report, the Department of Social Services began its "Bede and backward community livelihood development" programme as a pilot in seven districts in the 2012-13 fiscal year and later extended it nationwide. The programme provides for:

• a monthly allowance of Tk 500 for people aged 50 or over who are unable to work and in need
• student stipends of Tk 700 at primary, Tk 800 at secondary, Tk 1,000 at higher secondary and Tk 1,200 at tertiary level
• training for alternative work, followed by Tk 10,000 in rehabilitation support and a travel allowance

Bonik Barta also reported that, for lack of coordination, these projects had not delivered their intended benefit. The change in the lives of the 18 Khulna women came from an NGO's training and their own work, and what they asked was that others in the community be given the same chance.

Photo: Mithun Ahmed / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Bonik Barta, The Business Standard, Rupantar