TITLE : TALE OF A TRAVELLER

This is the tale of a rural traveller. In connection with my work I had the priviledge of visiting villages in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. At times, it was the best of all times, at others it was the worst of all times. Sometimes it was a spring of hopes at other occasions it was a winter of despairs.

I had the opportunity to observe how the fellow workers functioned, how much they were busy, what they were busy for ? At times I was an actor at others I was a spectator and sometimes a helpless on-looker.

I have put on record my own observations and my own interpretations of the rural development programmes, both government sponsored as well as non-government initiated, the prograslmes which were considered successful as well as failures.

I have done my observation and my recording for my own understanding of the past, present and possibly the future. Anybody investing his time may at times find himself with me, and by chance if that miracle happens I will humbly hope that he/she will do his/her best to make the life of the villagers a bit better than before, a bit easier than before, a bit happier than before.

I most humbly dedicate this to the memory of a great son of this soil of Bangladesh- a friend and a colleague, Mahbub Alam Chashi, who added the word Chasi" only to confer respect to those who do the most honourable job of producing food, fibre and fuel for the millions in Bangladesh. Chasi wanted to make his countrymen indepandent of begging from foreign agencies and foreign countries. Shall we ever be ab]e to earn that sense of self-respect ?

Thanks are gratefully offered to Mrs. Keith Gorey, the wife of the Senior Technical Advisor to the Academy, who with great patience and unequal editorial skill put random thoughts together to make it a tale of a traveller, to NIr. Golam Morshed Akhter and Mr. Manjurul Alam whotook great pains in proof reading and helping the printers to complete their job in time.

M. Nurul Haq.