Rangpur Division

Rangpur Division occupies Bangladesh's northwest corner—the region historically known as 'monga' country, where seasonal food insecurity between rice harvests created a distinctive poverty pattern. The Teesta River, whose waters India diverts for irrigation before they reach Bangladesh, shapes both agriculture and geopolitics: water-sharing disputes remain unresolved despite decades of negotiation. The division borders West Bengal and Bihar, creating cross-border economic connections that partition disrupted in 1947 and subsequent border tensions complicated. Dinajpur city served as a regional center before partition, when its Hindu merchant community largely departed for India. The division's economy remains predominantly agricultural—rice, jute, tobacco—with fewer industrial alternatives than southern Bangladesh. Rangpur city, the divisional capital, lacks the manufacturing base that transforms rural labor into factory workers. The result: migration. Rangpur supplies workers for Dhaka's garment factories, the Gulf states' construction sites, and Malaysia's plantations, creating a remittance economy that sustains families while draining working-age population. The August 2024 political transition affected remittance flows as currency instability temporarily disrupted transfers. Tobacco cultivation in Rangpur demonstrates the tension between cash crops that provide income and the health consequences they create—Bangladesh's tobacco control policies struggle against farmer livelihoods. By 2026, Rangpur's trajectory likely continues as a labor-exporting region: too far from Dhaka for industrial investment, too dependent on increasingly unreliable river water for agricultural intensification, and too connected to national politics to be left entirely behind.