Born premature in violence at India's partition in 1947 and separated in the same violence from its Pakistani brother and enemy in 1971, racked by recurring political unrest and coups, regularly struck by devastating cyclones, Bangladesh, the world's most densely populated country, is also one of the poorest.

Despite all those ordeals and the absence of natural resources, it can yet count on a seemingly inexhaustible wealth, its population, whose abnegation, determination and work commands aspiration. This huge hive of activity, nestled in the alluvial plain of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, has managed to develop an original lifestyle, intimately bound to both lazy rivers and their common basin.

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