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After the fall of Burma on 10 March 1942 the British government extensively implemented scorched-earth policies in Bengal like denial of rice and boats. The British government had inadequate defense equipment to resist Japanese attack in Bengal. After the Japanese invasion supply of Burmese rice suddenly stopped. Faridpur district used to import rice from Burma. The Burmese conquest created an immediate and serious crisis for several rice imported districts and coastal districts of Bengal. Hence, none of the districts of East Bengal could escape its brutal clutches and severity recorded in Chittagong, Dhaka, Faridpur, Tripura, Noakhali, Bakargonj and so on.

Among the affected districts of Bengal, Faridpur has been chosen as study area due to severity of famine. This study addresses the famine scenario of Faridpur. Data has been collected from primary and secondary sources. Content Analysis Research method is used to test reliability and validity of the data. Historical Analysis Research method has been followed in this study.

Finding of the study shows that the government relief issues, ignorance of warnings, political nepotism and denial policy of British government intensified the famine of Faridpur district. The wartime tactics adopted by the colonial government aggravated the famine situation. This article has shed light on the government war time policy, activity and some impacts of British decline in Burma that fueled the famine in Faridpur district.

This study is my original research work and has not been published else where.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the present status of information and communication technology (ICT) in Bangladesh and to represent the scenario of growth and development of ICT in relation to the evolution of the information explosion with the aim of providing better library and information services in Bangladesh.

Documentary sources and direct observation are the major methods of this article.

To achieve the millennium development goal and to face the information revolution, Bangladesh needs a special information infrastructure. There is also an immediate need to make a dedicated decision to ensure an appropriate electronic‐communication environment in the country to facilitate the use of ICT to disseminate information, building communication, marketing products and publications, and earn revenue through e‐commerce.

The paper will be of value to researchers on Bangladesh who wish to learn more about the state of ICT in the country, as well as to librarians wishing to improve their services.

This paper presents comparative studies of modern transportation systems in the Bengal Delta and British Borneo. To meet the demands of the new modes of resource extraction, the British colonial rulers introduced a new transportation system in both regions and built roads, railways, and navigational routes connecting major commercial and political centers. There has been little research into the historical connections between modern transportation and environmental changes in colonial South Asia and Malaysia. When modern transportation was introduced, environmental consequences were rarely considered. As a result, significant ecological changes and declines were unintentionally caused. The environmental changes brought about by these transportation systems in these two regions were not the same one from the other. For example, railroad construction harmed the plains and waterways in the Bengal Delta, whereas, in British Borneo, rubber plantations for the global market harmed the rainforests.

This paper attempts to understand how the interaction of natural disasters and human behaviour during wartime led to famines in three regions under imperial control around the Indian Ocean. The socio-economic structure of these regions had been increasingly differentiated over the period of imperial rule, with large proportions of their populations relying on agricultural labour for their subsistence.

Before the war, food crises in each of the regions had been met by the private importation of grain from national or overseas surplus regions: the grain had been made available through a range of systems, the most complex of which was the Bengal Famine Code in which the able-bodied had to work before receiving money to buy food in the market.

During the Second World War, the loss of control of normal sources of imported grain, the destruction of shipping in the Indian Ocean (by both sides) and the military demands on internal transport systems prevented the use of traditional famine responses when natural events affected grain supply in each of the regions. These circumstances drew the governments into attempts to control their own grain markets.

The food crises raised complex ethical and practical issues for the governments charged with their solution. The most significant of these was that the British Government could have attempted to ship wheat to Bengal but, having lost naval control of the Indian Ocean in 1942 and needing warships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean in 1943 chose to ignore the needs of the people of Bengal, focussing instead on winning the war.

In each of the regions governments allowed/encouraged the balkanisation of the grain supply – at times down to the sub-district level – which at times served to produce waste and corruption, and opened the way for black markets as various groups (inside and outside government ranks) manipulated the local supply.

People were affected in different ways by the changes brought about by the war: some benefitted if their role was important to the war-effort; others suffered. The effect of this was multiplied by the way each government ‘solved’ its financial problems by – in essence – printing money.

Because of the natural events of the period, there would have been food crises in these regions without World War II, but decisions made in the light of wartime exigencies and opportunities turned crises into famines, causing the loss of millions of lives.

New trends in global trade including rise in services, global value chains, and the digital economy are opening up important economic opportunities for women. Trade has the potential to expand women's role in the economy, decrease inequality, and expand women's access to skills and education. Trade can dramatically improve women's lives, creating new jobs, enhancing consumer choice, and increasing women's bargaining power in society. In Bangladesh economy, the women led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) play a noteworthy role by providing services and goods, creating employment generation particularly for women (UN Women, 2020). According to an ILO report, the majority of female-owned SMEs in Bangladesh are involved in the trading sector, followed by the manufacturing and service sectors (Fatima, 2023). This chapter is based on the case studies on 50 women entrepreneurs in various levels in Bangladesh and 10 key informant interviews of government officials, business associations, academics, researcher, microcredit organizations. This is encouraging that due to government's women friendly policies and organizational supports along with better networking through social media in Bangladesh, more and more women of various backgrounds in Bangladesh are coming to business though still concentrated on few traditional areas but they are making space for themselves and creating employment for poorest segment of women and educated young women.

This study aims to investigate the determinants of the food security status of participants and non-participants of livestock extension services living under similar socioeconomic conditions as livestock farming households in the Feed the Future zone of Bangladesh.

Cross-sectional data of 906 farm-households extracted from a total of 2064 from the Feed the Future representative Bangladesh Integrated Households Survey 2018 were used. A triple hurdle model combined with a structural equation model were used to analyze the data. The causal relationship between food security status, livestock extension services, technology adoption and women's empowerment was investigated by estimating structural equation modeling with second-order latent factors.

The results indicate that livestock extension services have increased livestock technology adoption and have a positively significant (p < 0.01) relationship with household wealth, food security, welfare and women's empowerment.

The results suggest that livestock extension services have an impact on new technology adoption and enhancing women's empowerment; thus, the services should be widely made available in the region.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2021-0647.

Since 2009, e-government has been high on governmental agenda in Bangladesh. Seen as a vehicle for improving governance and service delivery, it is also presented as a key to fighting poverty and achieving the millennium development goals. Thus, the goals of e-government remain broad and ambitious. Can a developing country such as Bangladesh realize its e-government vision? The purpose of this paper is to explore this and other related questions seeking to draw lessons that the Bangladesh experience may offer.

The paper draws primarily on secondary information, complemented by primary data gathered from various sources. In addition to an extensive review of secondary sources, necessary information was derived from websites of relevant government departments/agencies and through interviews and conversations with selected government officials having intimate knowledge on e-government projects at the field and local levels.

The paper demonstrates the ways in which various e-initiatives have transformed traditional administrative systems and practices, notwithstanding the nation’s limited overall e-development. It also shows how e-innovations have helped tackle some complex challenges, thereby adding to convenience and benefits to service users. A major conclusion of the paper is that although e-government is yet to make a breakthrough in governance and service delivery, it has set the wheels of change in motion.

E-government must be seen as a long term project, it must attract high-level political support and it requires fruitful collaboration between the public, private and non-governmental actors.

This paper adds to the limited knowledge in the field. Lessons learned from the Bangladesh experience have much relevance to other developing countries with similar socioeconomic circumstances. The policymakers and practitioners are expected to benefit from the insights of the paper.

Due to several unique characteristics, such as high tensile strength, low extensibility, high frictional resistance, biodegradability, eco-friendliness and cheapness, Jute ranks second just after cotton with respect to its worldwide consumption and production. To overcome the difficulties of the existing Jute grading procedure, this paper aims to focus on the application of decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (MABAC) methods for evaluation of 10 Tossa Jute fiber lots based on strength, defects, root content, color, fineness and bulk density properties.

The DEMATEL method divides all the six physical properties of Jute fiber into cause and effect groups. The most influencing property is also identified. On the other hand, the considered Jute fiber lots are ranked using MABAC method along with the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of each of them.

This combined approach would provide a more scientific and realistic way of Jute grading and evaluation based on various properties of the considered Jute fiber lots. The positions of the superior and the inferior Jute lots perfectly match with those as identified by the earlier researchers.

It is concluded that the adopted combined decision-making tool can be effectively applied for grading and evaluation of other natural fibers with diverse heterogeneous physical properties.