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The Indefatigable Educator

By Dr. Bruce Currey

Born in Satashia, Gopalganj, three years before panchaxer manvantara (the famine of 1943), Professor Biswas learned from, reflected upon and shared knowledge of water and life on the ever changing Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna river system for eight decades. He even retained some deltaic sediment on his shoes as an exalted Member of the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC).

One aspect that never changed through those eight decades was his all round integrity. That was not just his probity in public office whether at the Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) or BPSC, but his humble self cultivation. He conversed with everyone: awed by none and intimidating to none.

It was this conversational conviviality that made him the quintessential interdisciplinary scholar at least four decades before interdisciplinarity became fashionable. While his theoretical training was in engineering and technology, he was always the first to engage in an আড্ডা adda, or conversation with economists, sociologists and anthropologists about irrigation management. His academic office was in the Department of Irrigation and Water Management and his home was in Mymensingh, but he was often seen in the field walking along the low bund or ail separating, one plot of fluorescent green aman seedlings watered from a shallow tube well, from another dusty brown plot scorched by drought. He not only developed a cadre of leading scholars at BAU, but he supported the Rural Development Academy in Bogra, always giving encouragement to the initiatives of young students, just as his tubewells nourished the shoot apical meristem of rice. He was a regular visitor to the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) in Dhaka, not only to the irrigation section, but to all Council members, constantly negotiating for improved on-farm research and strengthening links with the universities.

I remember and pay humble tribute to Professor Biswas for his sustained support to the nascent Rural Social Science Network (RSSN) encouraging open critical discussion from all philosophical viewpoints as symbolised in Professor Sattar Mandal’s translation of 'Pothikreet Arthinitibid. Professor Biswas upheld the probity of the unique RSSN doctoral student selection process, keeping it free from corruption and at that time each and every PhD trainee returned from abroad to Bangladesh.

Amidst the civil turmoil at the end of the Bangladesh military dictatorship, propped up by the international donor community, a US$ 10.2 billion loan for a “Flood Action Plan’ (FAP) of massive flood protection structures was foist upon the people of Bangladesh to ensnare future generations in debt. The allure of the apparently large loan of US$ 10.2 billion tempted the integrity of many other international and national ‘experts’.

However, the late Dr. M. M. Rahman, Executive Vice Chairman, BARC and Professor Shapan Adnan, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council and RSSN members held a seminar and then wrote a critical review of the Flood Action Plan entitled ‘Flood Plain Agriculture’.

Professor Biswas, trained as an engineer at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology had completed his doctorate in the United States.

He knew that the US Army Corps of Engineers had invested not just $10.2 billion dollars, but US $250 billion in building massive flood protection structures on the Mississippi-Missouri system. Like many others he knew that the expensive Mississippi structures had again failed to protect in 1983.

But living in Mymensingh on the old distributary of the Brahmaputra River, Professor Biswas, with his indigenous knowledge, was also fully cognizant that the main Brahmaputra river had fourteen (14) times more erosive power than the Mississippi-Missouri system. With this knowledge, he supported the RSSN আড্ডা adda.

Professor Mozibur Rahman Biswas’ integrity will long endure!

Dr. Bruce Currey is an associate research fellow at University of Geneva.