Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 4

Volume XXII Issue IV Version I 62 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 © 2022 Global Journals A An Ecocritical Reading of Syed Manzoorul Islam’s Shakuner Dana expense of environmental stability and ecological balance. In Vandana Shiva’s words, The ideology of development is in large part based on a vision of bringing all natural resources into the market economy for commodity production. When these resources are already being used by nature to maintain her production of renewable resources and by women for sustenance and livelihood, the diversion of resources to the market economy generates ecological instability and creates new forms of poverty for women (196-97). The market-oriented ideology of development affects developing countries including Bangladesh, which become targets of multinational corporations and international financial institutes with global outreach. Development agendas of the so-called third world countries are aligned with the prescription of such global economic players. The environmental degradation caused by many of the development programs is often neglected. People, especially women depending on nature’s bounty for livelihood, are massively affected by such development activities. The local corrupt and opportunistic political and bureaucratic elements, as evidenced by the local representative Safar Ali and the NGO head Dr. Irfan Malik in Shakuner Dana , join hands with international financial players to sell development agendas to the ordinary people. More often than not, they neglect the ecological damages their projects may cause to the local environment and geography. However, the narrator of Shakuner Dana sees through such thinly veiled assaults on the environment in the context of the proposed CMB project in a downstream region of Bangladesh. The narrator writes, ‘The Dutch expert says, “The CMB project is a suicidal one. If the project rolls off from documents and government files onto the field, that is, it gets implemented, the whole CMB area will turn into a gravesite” (Islam 21).’ The crux of the problem is that the implementation of the project proves to be an undoing of the local people, whose life and livelihood will face jeopardy. The anxiety about such consequences is repeated throughout the novel. For instance, Orin remarks, ‘It’s such a big project, but the profit it may generate will end up in the pocket of a few. People, who generation after generation, have been fishing in the water bodies like the Mainar Bil, the Patachala Chhora, the Ghuinga Canal and the Tishna river, and cultivating paddy and other crops in the land scattered here and there, will get uprooted and lost forever in the name of development (Islam 22).’ It is imperative that our collective predicament caused by such corporate occupation and exploitation of natural spaces, crucial to the survival and sustainability of human and non-human beings, should be stopped. e) Environmental Crisis Exposed According to Glen A. Love in an essay in The Ecocriticism Reader (1996), ‘The most important function of literature today is to redirect human consciousness to a full consideration of its place in a threatened natural world (Love 237).’ The novel Shakuner Dana does precisely the job of drawing attention to an imminent threat to the natural space of the CMB area with all its ecological realities, posed by the anthropocentric development program to be initiated under the proposed CMB project. As a consequence, the environment of the project area is susceptible to encountering seismic change. If infrastructural development occurs ignoring geographical particularities of the site and downplaying environmental implications of such misadventures, then a number of negative changes are likely to happen. Through damming up of rivers and canals, the natural flow of water will be manipulated. Ample evidence suggests that such human interventions in the name of water administration are oftentimes counterproductive and responsible for the death or decay of water bodies. Destruction of a water system in an area means the gradual extinction of fish and other water species in addition to other non-water species such as birds depending on them. Disturbed water flow can cause river erosion jeopardizing the habitation of ordinary people turning people into environmental refugees. In this regard, Azam, an important character of the novel reflects: ‘If village Sitakut drowns (as a consequence of the project implementation), he will go to Dhaka along with his parents and sister Rupa. Dhaka is a big city, and there are hundreds of opportunities there (Islam 50).’ Every year, such environmental refugees, although they may not be officially designated so, crowd towns and cities in Bangladesh. The agriculture of such affected areas can be hit hard, and consequently, the extraction of underground water for irrigation and other cultivation purposes has a broader environmental cost. The natural cycle of cloud formation and rain gets disrupted, which impacts weather patterns leading to conditions in which desertification and untimely deluges are extreme case scenarios. In the context of the novel, the proposed development project in the CMB region will cause an environmental catastrophe if implemented. f) Ecofeminism in Shakuner Dana The term "ecofeminism" was coined by French feminist Françoise d'Eaubonne in 1974. Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy mentioned in their introduction to the book Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy (1998), ‘Ecofeminism is a practical movement for social change arising out of the struggles of women to sustain themselves, their families, and their communities. These struggles are waged against the “maldevelopment” and environmental degradation caused by patriarchal societies, multinational corporations, and global capitalism (Gaard and Murphy 2).’ Patriarchal hegemony and anthropocentric exploitation of the