The blog that I found was about how rubber corporations became greedy by prioritizing profits,  instead of caring more about the people and land of Bangladesh. The site that I found my blog from is actually a rather famous site in Bangladesh. It is called Mukto-Mona, and was founded by Avijit Roy. Roy was one of the founders of the blog, who was sadly killed in recent years due to speaking out over the internet. After speaking out, he was attacked by a conflicting radical group that opposed his blogging. The main  bloggers that make up the site try to bring to light conflicting issues that are occurring in the country of Bangladesh.

In the specific blog that I found, Tony Emroz spoke out against large corporations that were seeking to take over villages that contained rubber. Their goal was to obtain the rubber in order to make a profit after production of their main products. He notes that in the 1970’s, people treated land in Bangladesh as a free-for-all reserve of natural goods. Emroz notes that in the Constitution of Bangladesh, Article 23A explains that the land is supposed to be under the protection of the  State. Although this piece of legislation is failing the people, the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord has helped to protect the land. 

The village of Natun-Parra was recently attacked not too long ago, and at the time of the blog they were facing new conflicts between the villagers and Meridian Agro Industries Limited and Lama Rubber Industries Limited. These two firms were interested in the rubber that was located in the village. The firms were threatening the villagers and were clearly more concerned with rubber more than they cared about the people of Natun-Parra. 

Due to networking bloggers, a local army group came to the rescue and helped to protect the villagers from the aggressive rubber corporations. Within the blog, Emroz mentions a human rights leader’s perception of what a true State stands for. The human rights leader’s quote that was included explained how in order for a State to be truly just, they must have the support and backing from the people. This points to the fact that Bangladesh has done a poor job of carrying out Article 23A that can be found in their Constitution, therefore the people do not have as much confidence in their own government. This is because the State is not protecting the land that they said they would help to conserve. 

In conclusion, the blogger notes how the village was indeed rescued by the local army group. He continues to go on about how the State needs to analyze their past failures and use what they’ve learned from their mistakes to their advantage. If issues like this continue to occur in Bangladesh, the citizens of the State may begin to rebel against the current government due to their lack of following their own established Constitution.

After reading the blog, I thought it was interesting to see that even though it was just a village that was involved in the incident, bloggers still brought it to the attention of the internet. I guess they need every inch that they can get if they are trying to really make a difference by using the internet to help change their country for the better. Even though this corporation was most likely quite large, the people that made up the village were likely poor and couldn’t use the technique of boycotting. If the village population was large enough, they could possibly stop purchasing the products and really have an impact no the two companies. With this in mind, it probably made it much easier for the rubber corporations to try and infiltrate the village because there was basically no-one that could pull their economic foundation from underneath of them. Also, it makes me wonder whether or not the two corporations paid someone within the government to go against their own Constitution just so they could get by with out any government enforcement. Luckily the local army force noticed the networkers blog and was there to help defend the helpless villagers.

Following my analyzation of the blog post by Tony Emroz, it makes me wonder whether or not political and organizational corruption was involved with this case. And if it were, why wouldn’t the local army have been notified of the bribe? Was this a slip up in communication? Also, could the networking bloggers have reached out to other influential people with a higher economic status than the villagers so that they could boycott the rubber corporations? I think this would have been a useful technique due to its common peaceful and positive outcomes that can be found in other examples of boycotts. After local armies had to step in to help small villages with land issues, could the people of Bangladesh use the spark from the blog to ignite the fire that could end up changing the accountability of the government and its officials for the better?

http://enblog.mukto-mona.com/2019/08/10/save-tribal-homes-from-corporate-greed/