Agriculture Award

Hridoye Mati O Manush (Channel-i) has been honouring the most talented farmers all around the country who have been effective in remarkably changing the fate of people or have shown an extraordinary agricultural instance, which could be imitated by the entire nation. So far, Haripada Kapali (2006) and Kartik Pramanik (2007) have been awarded. This time (2008), from Bagerhat’s Falatita, Syed Keramat Ali will be awarded for his immeasurable contribution for the sweet-water shrimp-farming, which has changed fates of thousands at the southern region of the country. Following is the highlight of the great farmers, so far who were awarded.

Haripada Kapali (Agriculture Award Winner 2006)

Full O’ Wealth-Crop-Flora…Our Heavenly Earth. Our staple food is rice. And the main food crop is paddy.

One day, Haripada found a unique bunch of paddy, which was standing lofty from all the other bunches on the field. This skinny, scrawny and marginal farmer had expanded its seeds in a primitive method. The produce of Haripada’s anonymous paddy variety had beaten all the other paddies of the field.

The variety was later named as ‘Haridhan’.

Channel-i Agriculture Award initiated in the year, 2006. The first-ever Agriculture Award was given as a great honour to the Natural Scientist, Haripada Kapali who is the silent purveyor of the staple food to the people of Bengal. 

Kartik Pramanik

This narrative is fifty five years old. Kartik Pramanik, son of a barber of Tarapur village at Monakosha Union of Shibgonj Upazila in Chanpainawabganj, sowed an atypical kind of a dream while walking on the heated sands. He sowed a ‘Shade-Tree’. Then, he was only ten years old. Now he is sixty five. He doesn’t have any particular account of how many trees he had sown in his lifetime, starting from adolescence, youth till his old age. With his adorable touch, a widespread region is now full of trees and greenery.

Neither Responding to a Call…Nor Being Stirred through a Slogan

In an Eccentric Knot, Kartik and Trees have Intertwined-

There, Nothing is Left Except Irresistible Love for Nature

Channel-i Agriculture Award 2007 was given as a great honour to this Great Soul, Kartik Pramanik who entwined his heart with the unruffled shades of the greenery.   

Syed Keramat Ali

The time was just after liberation. I am referring to Mollarhat-Fakirhat of the Bay of Bengal’s coastal region Bagerhat. It was then a doomed community of salt-water and water-logged areas all around. People had no source of income. They used to eat coarse rice, esculent root of ‘Shapla’ and ‘Shaluk’. And, in some households, quite regularly, food was nowhere to be found. Men used to go to hunt for bird and fish due to extreme poverty. A melancholic cry was all around in the background. It was a just-liberated country. Dear Motherland, the dearest soil and nature- everything was there. Only the poverty just didn’t give up its chase.

Syed Keramat Ali of the Syed Mahalla village was young in age. The identical cry was all over his face too. One day, he was coming back with some little prawns that he collected from nearby river…way towards home by the ridge of the paddy field. It was an incident of taking an unlikely chance. He had spread some of the prawns into the knee-deep water paddy-field and the rest into the other little pond. Whimsical-minded Keramat had almost forgotten this petty memory. Three months passed away after this happening. One day, suddenly he noticed a big shoal of shrimps in the pond. He couldn’t believe his very own eyes! After fetching those, he understood the reality. Then, in a blink, he recalled the little prawns that he had sown. Those little prawns already had become pretty bigger. The story is, somewhat digging out gold coins from beneath the earth. Keramat totally kept his mouth shut and didn’t let anyone know about this pleasing event. Secretly, he had sent those prawns to the market. He earned 17,000 Taka in return! Afterwards, for the next one or two years, he cultivated Galda shrimp in the sweet-water and accomplished tremendous profit, behind the curtain. But, can the success be ever put out of the sight? One after another, following his footstep, Galda shrimp farming in the sweet-water had spread all over the region within few years or so. All the fields of the region turned out to be sweet-water Galda shrimp ghers (Kind of small pond).

Getting the hint of this success tale, during the Mid 80s, BTV’s (Bangladesh Television) Agro-documentary, Mati O Manush (Soil & Men) team rushed there. From then on, the region was being titled as Khulna’s Kuwait. And, Syed Keramat Ali became the Emperor and Monarch of the so called Quwait.

20 Years After…

From that trivial whimsical incidence, the revolution which broke out, that very revolution has now reached a distance, beyond measure. Today, 4,000 Crore Taka export industry is just but the other side of the coin, ‘Shrimp Industry’, where sweet-water Galda shrimp has a part and role.

For which, now, Mollarhat of Bagerhat has now become socio-economically a successful community, where even a down-trodden poor of this area deals in Lakh. Thousands of people are now marching towards the road-map of prosperity, following the footprints of forerunner Syed Keramat Ali.

Syed Keramat Ali has made the soil, water and nature of this huge Southern community very much noteworthy. Our heartfelt felicitations for this Great Soul.