Memories Of Underdevelopment

ongoing...

2017-2023

Spending childhood and adolescence in my grandparent’s house, I only got warmth from that place. Not just from one house or a yard, but from a whole village. Now, when I go back to that Morichbunia village, I only get the heat of development which ruined the land, the economy, the people’s last asset, and everything possible.

Payra Power Plant Project started in 2014, and since then the Dhaankhali Union of Bangladesh has been facing ruins every day. Visibly the loss was only of lands. But losing lands also changes shelter, culture, agriculture, memories, kinship system, and even identity. Where home is by default connected to identity, this process of changing the ownership of lands can’t be separated from the local politics of cultural inclusion and exclusion. Apart from human life; the ecosystem, local plants, rivers, and other animals are also the victims of this destruction. The community ultimately didn’t even get the promised jobs, homes, land, or proper compensation.

A large number of people shifted, leaving their ancestral houses behind. The houses and lands are there, but those who were supposed to bring the life there don’t exist there anymore. This mega project left the land with the elegy of memories. While looking at the traces of development with migrational trauma in their head, people in my hometown now see only the dust and dense air of coal-based power plants.

Memories of underdevelopment delve into the complexities of identity, belonging, and loss experienced by individuals whose homes have been transformed by large-scale development projects, highlighting the profound social, cultural, and environmental consequences of such endeavors.