Bangladesh is the most densely populated country on earth, with 146 million people in an area the size of Wisconsin. The capital, Dhaka, has over 10 million people, while the second largest city, the port city of Chittagong where the WorldTeach program will be located, has 2.8 million. A large population, a turbulent history, and more than its share of natural disasters have presented challenges for this small but important country that is nestled east of India, on the Bay of Bengal, at the mouth of the Ganges River.
This Muslim country is now a parliamentary democracy, one of the few democracies in the Muslim world. The region which today is the nation of Bangladesh has had a very long and rich history and culture. The region was first mentioned in the ninth-century BCE epic story Mahabharata. For centuries Buddhists were the ruling class in the region, to be supplanted in the thirteenth century by Muslim rulers. During the European age of exploration, several nations came as traders and missionaries, including the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. It was, of course, the British through the British East India Company that prevailed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and then in 1859 the British Crown took over.
When the British ended colonial rule in 1947, British India was partitioned into two states divided along religious lines: Pakistan and India. Bangladesh formed part of Muslim Pakistan and was called East Pakistan. Never really empowered by West Pakistan and separated from it by over 1,000 miles and vast cultural differences (including a different language), the region by 1971 was engulfed in brutal warfare between the Pakistani Army and Bangladesh Freedom Fighters. By the time independence was achieved in late 1971 the economy was in shambles and civil society in tatters. During the first decade of independence the country was further challenged by assassinations, coups and attempted coups. According to UN reports, managing corruption remains a challenge in this seventh most populated country in the world. However, Bangladesh is also the home of one of the most important innovations for developing countries today, the famed Grameen Bank. This revolutionary system of giving micro-loans to poor people, especially to women, was established by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, a strong supporter and member of the Bangladesh Board of Advisors to the Asian University for Women.
Bangladesh has suffered from severe repeated natural disasters; worst were the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 when five million people died, and in the more recent times a catastrophic cyclone in 1970 that killed a half million people. Repeated flooding of the several rivers, especially the Ganges, whose deltas form much of the low-lying plains of the country, are the sources of repeated catastrophes as are the flood-causing monsoons, tornados and droughts.
In 2006 the per capita GDP was $456, life expectancy was 63 years, and the literacy rate stood at 63%. Ninety-eight percent of the population is Bengali, and 88% Muslim. Most Bangladeshis work in agriculture. Rice and jute are the primary crops. Crop diversity is expanding, with wheat, maize, and vegetable production increasingly important.
