The gift of inequality
The three decades of Bangladesh tell us a great deal about the successes and failures of overseas aid, says Chris Brazier.

The Poverty Line
A poem about aid and the poor
by Tarapodo Rai.

Bangladesh – a brief history

When dollars swim freely
Shahidul Alam visits the homes of a
rich man and a poor boy and compares their lot.

Poison in the well
Arsenic has been found in the water from tubewells installed by aid agencies. But, asks Asa Zaman, why were they silent about it for so long?

AID – THE FACTS
With facts about Bangladesh inset.

Guess who’s
coming to dinner
Bill Clinton’s visit to Bangladesh revealed a lot about Western commercial pressure and US paranoia. Naeem Bangali tells the story.

Local heroes
Indigenous aid organizations like the Grameen Bank have grown very large very fast. But are they losing touch? asks Afsan Chowdhury.

Bangladesh – a photo essay
by Drik Picture Library.

Everything smelled of money
Eight working-class children who are training as photographers give their impressions of the world of aid agencies.

Slash and burn
Aid has delivered nothing but alienation to the indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Amena Mohsin reports.

It is 30 years this month since Bangladesh declared its independence from Pakistan. This seemed an eminently suitable moment at which to bring to fruition a long-cherished idea of collaboration between the NI and Drik Picture Library. The New Internationalist has been in existence for almost exactly the same amount of time as Bangladesh. Drik was created in 1989 not just to showcase and promote the work of Bangladeshi photographers but as an organization, like the NI, committed to justice and social change. Drik’s growth in the 1990s has been phenomenal: amongst other things, it is now the hub of a network of photographers and journalists in South Asia and beyond; it launched Bangladesh’s first e-mail network in 1994; and it runs its own degree course in photojournalism.

The two of us as individuals have kept in increasingly close touch, particularly since the advent of e-mail, and we both relished the chance to spend some time working together in Dhaka to plan this special issue. We thought aid – a field of activity chock-full of rhetoric about ‘partnership’ and ‘co-operation’ – would be an eminently suitable subject for us to look at together. This, then, is three decades of aid through the eyes of those who have received it.

Chris Brazier for the New Internationalist Co-operative chrisb@newint.org	Shahidul Alam for Drik Picture Library shahidul@drik.net