“These days, it’s better to look poor and be safe, than look rich and be a victim.” When Anthony Liccione said this in one of his books, we are sure he did not consider that in a lawless situation rich and poor are equally unsafe. Adversely affected poor people in the Aila-hit southwest coastal area have resorted to making a livelihood on the forest resources of Sundarbans, making them vulnerable prey to gangs of dacoits controlling the famous forest and extracting tolls for allowing access.
Poor locals informed reporters that they have to pay tolls on a daily basis in order to gain mere access to the forest and a failure to pay results in kidnappings and a fight to pay ransom. Due to the excessive demand for tolls by the robbers, pressure on the endangered mangrove forest has increased as fearful locals scatter around and look for extra resources to make a living and pay tolls. According to reports, poaching and illegal logging has also escalated on account of the robbers’ increased networking and dishonest activities. Taking advantage of the utter lack of monitoring by the local administration, the dacoit gangs have created their own network consisting of agents who collect and pass information around over phones. They go as far as to issuing ‘forest permits’ (that are nothing but 2-10 taka notes consisting of signatures from relevant gang members) which in turn allow the locals to conduct their work, that too only after they have paid the toll.
bKash agents or other electronic cash transfer platforms situated nearby sea a lot of unfortunate business as honey collectors, fishermen, crab catchers, loggers, poachers and many others working in the forest pay tolls around 40,500 taka or more routinely through them to different gangs in order to avoid harassment. Sometimes gang members deny toll payment and demand for tolls again. On lucky days if honey collectors collect maunds of honey worth 1.44 lakh taka and are not robbed of their collected honey, they spend 30,000 taka for collection costs, paying back lenders, paying illegal toll money of 40,500 taka to the gangs and finally are left with a dismal 9,700 taka to live on.
Even though the Bangladesh Coast Guard is in pursuit of the gangs, but it is alleged that due to lack of cooperation between the other administrative bodies and for speedy location change of the robbers, not much headway has been made for stopping extortion by the robbers. The indifference of authority charged with the responsibility of monitoring the situation is evident here like any other area of public life.
