From Our Foreign Correspondent

My first view of Bangladesh was in 1977 when I joined the staff of the R.I.H.D. Hospital, classified as a Technical Assistant for the Overseas Development Ministry it reverted to an Administration in the Foreign Commonwealth Ministry with the return of the Conservative Government in 1979. These appointments are financed by the O.D.A. and an orthopaedic surgeon can usually manage only a 4 to 5 weeks absence from a busy practice. As I am retired I have always spent 3 months and in all have spent 18 months in Bangladesh, five in the pleasant winter months but, in 1 984 in the hot humid summer when, as in many other years, major flooding led to very many deaths from drowning, loss of crops and the evacuation of many homesteads. Only in Sylhet in the extreme East and in the Hill Tracts behind Chittigong is there any high ground, the remainder of Bangladesh consists of the delta and the lower reaches of the three rivers, the Ganges, the Bramaputra and the Meghna. The area of Bangladesh is about 60 per cent of the United Kingdom, the population over 90,000,000 resulting in a density of population in the dry season three times that in this country. When the land is very largely flooded the population density is immensely greater and in the cities overpowering and consisting almost entirely of men and boys as the women in this Moslem country mostly remain indoors, even the shopping being done by the men. In the country all houses and farms are built on the highest available land and most are able to withstand the annual flooding; the roads are constructed above the level of the surrounding fields and river banks are raised; disatser overtakes the area when these banks are breached. The annual flooding is an essential part of the annual agricultural cycle and produces the main rice crop which is planted by hand as individual seedlings (8" tall) when the fields are covered with no more than 6" of water. This main crop does not require irrigation and is harvested by December. Crops of rice are also grown on the banks of rivers as the water level falls and areas are left of suitable depth for progressive further planting. Relatively simple pumps operating from the river suffice for irrigation of these later crops. With so much warmth and sunlight three crops in a year are possible but only with irrigation schemes. On one side of the road one can see a virtual desert while on the other, deep well water pumps sustain a luxurious growth of rice and other crops. Finally, as the water rises in the