THE ATLERNATIVE APPROACHES TO DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF THE CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS (CHT), BANGLADESH

Bidita Jawher Tithi

The Chittagong Hills Tracts (CHT) is in the southeast of Bangladesh and is a unique territory in the country with mountains and beautiful landscapes. It is a part of an eighteen hundred km mountain range which runs from the eastern Himalayas in China to the Western Myanmar. The province of the CHT consists of three districts – Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban – surrounded by the Chittagong and the Cox’s Bazar plains stretching along the Bay of Bengal on the west, by the Indian states of Tripura and Mizoram on the north and east and by the Arakan region of Myanmar (Burma) on the south and southeast. The region is home of twelve minority communities (indigenous peoples or Adivashi) who are different from the majority Bengalis in terms of ethnic origin, physical features, languages, culture and religion1.

This study is on the development of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Last summer, I had the opportunity to work as a research intern with the non-government organization, Integrated Development Foundation (IDF), in CHT. I researched on different programs that had been implemented by IDF to explore causes of their success and failure. During my internship, I learned that there have been many ‘development projects’ undertaken by the government and civil society in the CHT. All these projects promised economic development and a decrease in the poverty level. However, very few of these initiatives have produced the promised results.

In this work, I will show that the main reason behind the failure of the projects was the particular development approach adopted2. I will analyze the main development programs over the past 50 years. The discussion of the past approaches is important as the United Nations Development UNDP is on the verge of implementing a $50million dollar development project in the CHT. In 2003, the government of Bangladesh and the UNDP started a project for promotion of development and confidence-building in CHT. The main objectives of this project are to build capacity, enhance the roles of the CHT institutions and facilitate confidence-building to attain grassroots and multi-community development and to facilitate confidence-building. It is perhaps not so surprising that the indigenous people are skeptical about this initiative as they have generally not benefited from past development projects.

1 Schendel, W., W. Mey, A. Dewan, 2001, The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland, The University Press Limited, Dhaka 2 Easterly, W., 2006, The White Man’s Burden: Why The West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have done so much ill and so little good, The Penguin Press, New York