Word: bangladesh
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...since the carnage that accompanied the breakaway of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 had the subcontinent seen such ghastly scenes of horror. After four years of festering protest and a month of mounting violence, India's oil-rich state of Assam exploded in a paroxysm of communal and religious hatred. In the turbulence touched off by opposition to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's decision to hold state elections, some 3,000 people were believed to have been killed, and Indian officials said that 100,000 others had been left homeless by rampaging arsonists who burned entire villages...
...outbreak of tribal warfare caught authorities by surprise, although resentment had been building for a long time against Bengali settlers who had immigrated to Assam from the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh. In the turmoil surrounding the election, dissidents practically shut down the state. They forced shops, banks and government offices in the capital to close as part of an 18-day "noncooperation movement." Mobs stormed police stations, blew up bridges, assassinated one candidate, and blocked roads with huge boulders as a warning that anyone who dared pass risked death...
...read this year at Feb. 21 ceremonies honoring Bengalis killed in 1951, when the fight for independence from Pakistan began. Said Ershad: "The ideals and principles of Islam will be reflected in every sphere of state and national life." Ershad's statement shocked the nation and especially incensed Bangladesh's non-Muslim minority (10% of the population), who saw it as a betrayal of the founding principles of the state...
...political turmoil currently gripping Bangladesh is the latest blow to a country already staggering under huge social and economic problems. Covering an area the size of Wisconsin, Bangladesh has 94 million people, nearly half of them under 16 years old. Desperately poor (per capita income: $123), the country has received more than $10 billion in aid over the past decade, including a total of $1.2 billion this year from Japan, the U.S. and the World Bank...
Despite the furor over his Islamization plans, Ershad has made an impressive start on Bangladesh's troubles. He has revitalized the private sector by returning more than 300 industrial enterprises to private ownership. Ershad has jailed seven former Cabinet ministers on charges of corruption. He has reduced the price of such staples as rice, sugar and wheat, and he hopes to raise food-grain output 25% by 1986, mostly by Introducing higher-yield crops...