Sand Mining and Its Social Impacts on Local Society in Rural Bangladesh : A Case Study of a Village in Tangail District

Abstract

Focusing on sand mining and its social impacts, this paper seeks to examine conict and problems that have been brought to local society by deepening and geographical expansion of industrialization in Bangladesh. In recent years, sand has emerged as important resource in Bangladesh for rapidly increasing construction demand as with the cases of other developing countries. Although sand mining has begun to draw attention from some organizations and researchers, for the absence of previous studies on the matter, it is not clear how it is carried out in actual and what impacts it has on local society in Bangladesh. �is paper explores the process of and actors related with sand mining and business utilizing it, and social impacts of them on local society from a case study in Tangail district. Law and the rule on sediments extraction were not observed at all there; local inuential residents illegally privatized sand and sold it for factory construction. �e external factors such as industrialization allying with power structure in local society, the residents who were at risk of the loss of their property by riverbank erosion were put in the most unfair circumstance.