Huge information about Madhyanagar

Madhyanagar is a land dominated by floodplains with seasonally flooded tectonic depressions known locally as haors and smaller water bodies known as beels. TANGUAR haor, Buala , Saldigha Beel, Shonir haor are notable. People’s livelihoods and culture are largely dominated by the haor economy where agriculture & beel fisheries play very vital role. Although the beel has a wide range of resources, the people at large have not been able to benefit from them. 

Launch ghat of Madhyanagar Bazar

Madhyanagar is in Sunamgonj district under Sylhet division of Bangladesh and six miles away from India. The river Sumeshwori runs through it.
Madhyanagor (SUNAMGANJ district) with an area of 496.03 sq km, is bounded by Meghalaya State (India) on the north ,DHORMOPASHA upazila on the south, TAHIRPUR and JAMALGANJ upazilas on the east, KALMAKANDA and Barhatta upazilas on the west.


Annual average temperature: maximum 33.2°C and minimum 13.6°C; annual rainfall 3334 mm. There are many haors and beels in Madhayanagar.


People and population:


Madhyanagar has a population of 1,68,669; male 50.89%, female 49.11%.
Density of population is 1266 per sq km. Literacy rate is 35.9%.
Religious context is Muslim 63.62%, Hindu 35.95%, others 0.43%

Madhyanagar Bazar

There are also some 6,643 ethnic affiliation of Garo and Hajong , in Moheshkhola of north Bongshikunda.


Educational Institutes:


The major schools of Madhyanagar are:
Madhyanagar B.P. high School & College
Madhyanagar Girls Junior School
Madhyanagar Govt. Primary School
Bongshikunda Momin High School
Chamardani High School
Moheshkola High School.
.
Unions:


Madhyanagar comprises 4 unions:
Madhyanagar Bazar
Chamardani
South Bonshikunda
North Bongshikunda


Notable Personalities:
Biplobi Lal Mohan Rai

Shahed Ali, author and novelist
Momin Talukder
 Mustak Ahmed, Associate Professor Dept. of Civil Engineering, SUST,
Amena Khatun, Lecturer Dept. of Anthropology, SUST


Archaeological heritage:


Chamardani jame Moshjid
Moheshkhola Kalibari Mondir


Other Factors:


Main occupations Agriculture 47.01%, fishing 3.99%, agricultural labourer 27.05%, wage labourer 2.79%, commerce 7.17%, service 2.09%, others 9.9%.
Land use Arable land 20287 hectares; fallow land 142 hectares; single crop 80%, double crop 10%, triple crop 10%; cultivated land under irrigation 85%.
Land control Among the peasants 32% are landless, 29% small, 25% intermediate and 14% rich; cultivable land per head 0.13 hectare.
Value of land Market value of first grade arable land about Tk 5000 per 0.01 hectare
Main crops Paddy, potato, onion, garlic, chilli, mustered seed, tisi (linseed) and vegetables.
Main fruits Mango, black berry, jackfruit, banana, papaya, Guava,olive, watermelon.
Fisheries, dairies, poultries Fishery 50, poultry 200, dairy 3.
Communication facilities Roads: pucca 1.5 km, semi pucca 3 km and mud road 60 km.
Traditional transport Palanquin, bullock cart. These means of transport are nearly extinct.
Manufactories Flour mill 32\, ice factory2, saw mill 2, auto rice mill 1.
Cottage industries Bamboo work 500, goldsmith 15, blacksmith 30, potteries 470, wood work 700, welding 10, tailoring 400.
Hats bazars and fairs Total number of hats and bazars are 14; fairs 5.
Main exports Paddy ,fish and dry fish.
NGO activities Grameen Bank, BRAC, ASA, Anirban Sanchay O Sarbik Unnayan Samiti .
Union family welfare centre 2.


External links


http://www.sunamganj.co.uk
http://www.sunamganj.com
Banglapedia article on Sunamganj District
Amader Jhigli

some scenery of Madhyanagar area

প্রাইমারী সমাপনী পরীক্ষা শেষ করে হল থেকে বের হয়ে আসছে ক্ষুদে  ছাত্র-ছাত্রীরা

 সুমেশ্বরী নদীতে সূর্যাস্ত

এই সেই জাঙ্গাল যা ভেঙ্গে গিয়ে মধ্যনগরের মানুষদের অথই জলে ফেলে দিয়েছিল

Beel

Little boys of village go to Beel for catch fish

Beel  a large surface waterbody that accumulates surface runoff water through internal drainage channels; these depressions are mostly topographic lows produced by erosions and are seen all over Bangladesh. The term beel is synonymous to baor, and familiar in greater comilla, faridpur, dhaka and pabna districts. Beels are small saucer-like depressions of a marshy character. Many of the beels dry up in the winter but during the rains expand into broad and shallow sheets of water, which may be described as fresh water lagoons.

Beels can be formed due to many causes. In some cases a string of them is found along a line of drainage, suggesting that they are the remains of some great river, which centuries ago deserted its channel in favour of a new one somewhere else. In other cases, they are probably due to the action of rivers, which by centuries of silt deposits have raised their beds and marginal banks so high that they flow above the level of the surrounding area. The land between a pair of parallel rivers thus forms a kind of trough in between. The rivers, on the other hand, cannot overflow their banks into these depressions as they themselves are locked within their channels by high levees.

In the active floodplains of the Surma-Meghna, the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, and the Ganges-Padma river systems, there are several large and small beels. In Bangladesh, there are thousands of beels of different sizes. Some of the most common names are chalan beel, gopalganj-khulna beel and arial beel. Most of these large beels have shrunk quite considerably in recent decades. For instance, in the early 19th century Chalan Beel used to cover an area of about 1,085 sq km but it was reduced to 368 sq km in 1909, of which only 85 sq km remains underwater throughout the year. It has since shrunk to only 26 sq km.

In the deeper beels nothing is to be seen but water, often dotted with chars or enclosed by high lands with villages and trees on them. Many of the villages are completely isolated during the monsoon, when the only mode of transport is a boat. Not surprisingly, these beels form a serious obstacle to transport by land as roads can be constructed across them only at a great expense. The roads again have to be strong enough to withstand the pressure of water, which may be as much as 3.05m in depth.

Beels are mainly fed by surface runoff water. A few larger ones are fed by floodwater during the wet season from the parent river channel. Regionwise, in the northwest some beels of considerable sizes are Bara Beel at pirganj, Tagrai Beel at kurigram, Lunipukur at rangpur, Bara Mirzapur Beel at narail and Keshpathar at bogra. The old river course of atrai is marked by some beels, viz Chakchaki, Sabul, Ghugri, Kanchan, Manda, Utrail, Hilna, Kumar and Shona. In the southern region, important beels are Boyra, Dakatia, Bara, Kola, Patla, Chatal and Srirampur. In the central part, Katla, Chatal, Nagarkanda, and Chanda are important beels. In eastern areas, such beels are small in size. In the northeast, beels of Haor Basin (Sylhet Basin) area merge together in the wet season appearing like vast bodies of water. Normally, beels remain deeply flooded for most of the wet season and the rims are primarily used for either boro cultivation or deepwater rice. Like baors, beels are also important wetlands and regarded as valuable fish and wildlife habitat. [Mohd Shamsul Alam and Md Sazzad Hossain]

something about haor

Tanguar Haor Haor bowl-shaped large tectonic depression. It receives surface runoff water by rivers and khals, and consequently, a haor becomes very extensive water body in the monsoon and dries up mostly in the post-monsoon period. In Bangladesh haors are found mainly in greater Sylhet and greater Mymensingh regions. During monsoon a haor is a vast stretch of turbulent water. The word haor is a corrupt form of the Sanskrit word Sagar (sea). In Sylhet and northeast Mymensingh, the people pronounce the Bangla letter ৸স৹ (sa) as ৸হ৹ (ha), and some times ৸গ৹ (ga) as ৸হ৹ (ha). Thus sagar is sounded haor. The haors are of tectonic origin and possibly connected with the rise of madhupur tract. beels do not subside but haor basins do. In its original form, the haor basin comprising the floodplains of the meghna tributaries would have consisted of a rich mosaic of permanent and seasonal lakes and ponds with abundant aquatic vegetation. But through gradual sedimentation, the basin becomes shallower leading to the formation of reeds and sedges. This resulted in providing enough food and shelter for fish and other aquatic, fauna and attracted the migratory birds which, in their turn, added to the fertility of the waterbodies by their excreta promoting rich growth of phytoplankton and macrophytes thus partly contributing to the process of eutrophication. The haor basin is bounded by the hill ranges of Meghalaya (India) on the north, the hills of Tripura and Mizoram (India) on the south, and the highlands of Manipur (India) on the east. The basin includes about 47 major haors and some 6,300 beels of varying size, out of which about 3,500 are permanent and 2,800 are seasonal. Numerous rivers rising in the hills of India provide an abundant supply of water to the plains and cause extensive flooding during the monsoon upto a depth of 6m. Small permanent water bodies within the haors are called beels, which occupy the lowest part of the depressions. During the dry season, most of the water drains out leaving one or more shallow beels which become mostly overgrown with aquatic vegetation or completely dry out by the end of dry season exposing rich alluvial soils extensively cultivated for rice. The surma and kushiyara in association with other minor hilly streams like manu, khowai, Jadhukata, piyain, Mogra and Mahadao form the dense drainage network of the haors. The rivers are primarily responsible for providing inputs - rainwater and sediment load to the plains including haors. The plains remain flooded for about 7 to 8 months. During the rainy season, the haors turn into a vast inland sea within which the villages appear as islands. Occasional high winds during July to September generate large waves in the haor, which may cause considerable damage to homesteads. The entire Sunamganj district, major portion of Habiganj district, some parts of Sylhet Sadar upazila and Maulvi Bazar district are covered by many haors. In greater Sylhet the most prominent haors are Saneer haor, Hail haor, Hakaluki haor, Dekar haor, Maker haor, Chayer haor, tanguar haor, and Kawadighi haor. The haors are considered the most productive wetland resources of Bangladesh. The basin supports a large variety of wetland bio-diversity and works as natural reservoir as it plays a key role in basin water resources by regulating water flows of the Meghna river system. Also, the haors are noted sanctuaries of both permanent and migratory birds. With the recession of floodwater, a large variety of small fishes, oysters, water snails and bivalves, and pasture spread over the surface attracting a large number of migratory birds. These birds use the haor as temporary resting and roosting ground before moving elsewhere. The swamp forests, which were once dominant with the flood tolerant tree species like hijal (Barringtonia acutangula) and Koroch (Pongamia pinnata), have been reduced to a few small patches. The haors are also important fishing grounds of the country. In the past century or so, when the population pressure was less, most of the rim-lands of the haors remained as cultivable wasteland and was used for extensive grazing in the dry season. As population increased, boro cultivation expanded onto these marginal lands leading to a large area being drained. Thus, the very existences of these wetlands are now threatened. [Mohd Shamsul Alam and Md Sazzad Hossain]

 

Information about tanguar haor

Tanguar Haor

Tanguar Haor a large haor lies within Sunamganj district extending over 10 mauzas of Dharmapasha and Tahirpur upazilas of the district. The mauzas covering the Tanguar haor are (1) Jagadishpur, (2) Bhabanipur, (3) Lamagaon, (4) Ramsinhapur, (5) Mahajampur, (6) Maindag, (7) Mayajuri, (8) Bhangachara Purba, (9) Noagaon, and (10) Tanguar Haor. The haor consists of 120 beels of various sizes. The area of Tanguar haor including 46 villages within the haor is about 100 sq km of which 2802.36 ha is wetland.

Amazing beauty

The haor is an ideal place for the migratory birds. Every winter about 200 types of migratory birds come to this haor and make their temporary habitat here. Once upon a time the zamindars of Sunamganj area used to make cruise into this haor with large Pansi boats for hunting birds.

The haor is an important source of fisheries. More than 140 species of fresh water fishes are available here. Among them the notables are Air, Gang Magur, Baim, Tara Baim, Gutum, Gulsha, Tengra, Titna, Garia, Beti, Kakia etc. In the 1999-2000 fiscal year, government earned Tk 70,73,184 as revenue only from fisheries of the haor.

Hijal (Barringtonia acutangula), Karach (Pongamia pinnata), Gulli, Balua, Ban Tulsi (Ocimum americanum), Nalkhagra (Phragmites karka) and some other important threatened species of freshwater wetland trees are available in this haor.

Most of the inhabitants of the Tanguar haor are landless or marginal farmer. As the haor allows single crop throughout a year, seasonal unemployment problem is very acute here. But the farmers harvest high yield because of the richness of the soil though the lands are single cropped.

The haor is cyclone prone as it located at the foothills of the Khasi-Jaintia Hills and a number of hailstorms also occur. Therefore at times crops get damaged. Except the levee or the kanda areas of the haor the other lands of the haor are used as pastureland. In the past the levees were deeply covered with trees. But afterwards the areas were deforested widely to meet the demand of additional lands for settlement and cultivation, which caused environmental degradation, and loss of biodiversity of the haor.

In the past few decades the total environmental settings of the Tanguar haor has degraded a lot. In consideration of its environmental importance and heritage, the government has decided to save the large haor by symbolizing it as an internationally critical environment area and listed the haor as a 'Ramsar area' under Ramsar Convention. In accordance with this, the government has taken massive plan to restore the natural environment and heritage of the Tanguar haor by conserving its water, improving agriculture and fish production, and making the haor secured zone for birds and animals. The government has also decided not to allow any developmental or commercial activity within the haor area that is harmful for the sensitive environment of the haor. Besides these, the government has banned on digging any well for gas or oil within the 10 km area of the haor. The natural beauty of the Tanguar haor attracts the tourists and the haor can be turned as an important tourist place.