GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND THE GENESIS OF DISPOSSESSION, INEQUALITY AND MARGINALIZATION IN THE CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS, BANGLADESH

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh lies on the country's international borders with Myanmar and India. The present boundaries of the CHT were carved out of the British colonial empire in 1860. CHT is about 10% of the total land area of the country. Formerly, CHT was a single unified district, but administrative reorganization has led to its division into the three districts of Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. The CHT differs from the rest of Bangladesh, which is a flat terrain. Scattered along this mountain range, there live 11 different ethnic minority groups. The paper entails that smaller ethnic groups are in a disadvantageous, unequal and marginalized position because of the Government's differential treatment of populations through bio-politicial mechanism which have inserted different groups of people differently in the process of development. This situation sometime overlaps with pre-formed racial, gender hierarchies and creates fragmented citizenship for the people of the same country.