COTTON-Estimates Go Awry Again

fundamentalist party. In a political environment where parties keep splitting and politicians drift from one organisation to another, the Jamaat had remained a monolithic, tightly disciplined party with fanatically loyal cadres spread almost all over Bangladesh. Its students wing, the Chhatra Shibir, is a well-armed militant outfit which in the recent past has played a major role in terrorising political rivals. Generously supported by aid from the Gulf countries, the Jamaat has been steadily making inroads into the rural society of Bangladesh conjuring up the dream of an Islamic society that is supposed to solve once for all the problems of poverty and unemployment. Mosques built by Jamaat followers which dot the countryside have become centres of fundamentalist propaganda.