The 1987 Flood in Bangladesh: An Estimate of Damage in Twelve Villages z MUSHTAQUE CHOWDHURY INTRODUCTION Bangladesh occupies the greater part of the Bengal Basin, flanked by the Rajmahal hills in West Bengal, India and the Shillong Plateau in Meghalaya, India. The country is poor and is known to the world community as a “perennial basket case”, through the courtesy of the international media. Bangladesh has a long history of natural disasters, such as cyclones, storms, surges, tidal bores and floods. Every year about a third of the country faces floods, which are associated with annual monsoon rains that pour into the entire Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basins between June and October. Such floods are normal and are taken as part of normal life. People do not face much difficulty as they adjust their lives to it, for example, by growing deep water rice and by building house structures on raised land. However, flooding has given rise to calamity a number of times and between 1954 and 1984, major disasters have occurred ten times (Hossain zyxwvu et al., 1987) or once in every three years. The most recent of such devastating floods occurred in 1987 and to many, it was the most disastrous calamity in the past 70 years. The damage due to this exceptionally deep flood was enormous. Nationally the cost has been put as high as 40 billion zyxw taka (or US$ 1.3 billion). To estimate the damage of the 1987 flood at the micro (household) level, the Research and Evaluation Division of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) undertook a survey in twelve villages of two districts. This reports findings from that survey. METHODS AND MATERIALS The Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC has been carrying out a number of longitudinal studies in twelve villages since December 1986. Seven of these villages are situated in Manikganj district in central Bangladesh and five in Joypurhat district in north-west Bangladesh. All the villages were more or less affected by the 1987 floods, the Manikganj villages being most severely affected. Manikganj is close to Aricha where two large rivers, the Jamuna and Padma, meet. Besides, two other small rivers flow through it. On the other hand, Joypurhat is situated further away from the big rivers and is close to the ‘Borendra’ area which is characterised by shortage of water and higher land. The presence of research teams in these villages enabled a detailed study to be undertaken on flood damage and its impact. This report, however, deals with DISASTERS VOLUME zyxwvuts 12 NUMBER 4