At the Indo-Bangla border, sugar is the new cattle

How much do you pay for a kilogram of sugar? Tk170? Tk145?

Wouldn't you be surprised if someone said s/he buys sugar for about half the price, at a rate of Tk80 to Tk85 per kg?

This is exactly what we found at Chorar Bazar in Ronikhai Union, Companiganj, Sylhet, a village located close to the Bangladesh-India border.

While the price of sugar remains high in the country despite international prices going down to record lows in the last two months, illegal traders of the border district are keeping the prices low in the area.

Sugar is sold for Rs40 to Rs46 (Tk53 to Tk60) in India. A 50-kg sack costs around Tk3,000 or less. In the villages near the border, a sack of sugar is sold for Tk4,000 to Tk4,500. 

The price, however, rises as proportional to distance. In Companiganj, the price is Tk5,000 while the same is sold for Tk6,000 in Sylhet city.

Villagers living near the border are involved in this trade in huge numbers despite the highly risky nature of the business.

As the stone quarries of the area shut down one after another after the Mineral Resources Ministry banned stone extraction from five quarries in 2016, and the High Court banned the use of stone crushers at all quarries in Sylhet, many lost business and became unemployed. 

The workers who came from other places for stone work returned years ago but the villagers had nowhere to go, and hardly anything to do.

Even the soil is not suitable for agriculture, as it contains stones just underneath a thin layer of soil.

As the sugar price kept increasing in the country while the price was under control in India, it served as a huge, temporary opportunity for these villagers.

According to local sugar 'traders,' those engaged in physically carrying the sacks to cross the border are paid Tk300 for each sack. The bike riders carry up to four sacks of sugar and get Tk200 per sack. The 'lineman' who keeps an eye on the movement of BGB (Bangladesh Border Guard) and BSF (Border Security Force) gets Tk50. The carry cost increases with distance.

The sugar is transported at night in the Indian part, and during daytime in Bangladesh, a sugar trader said.

For decades, cattle, apart from drugs and other products, was the major smuggling item at the border.

Malini Sur, an Indian anthropologist, in her book 'Jungle Passports: Fences, Mobility, and Citizenship at the Northeast India-Bangladesh Border' detailed how cattle smuggling took a formal look on both sides of the border.

"Unlike the aggressive verbal economy that guided cattle lines in India, documentary practices guided the seizures in Bangladesh. State agents and volunteers who levied the penalty of Tk500 per head of cattle and handed out auction counterfoils to traders made cattle a 'legal' commodity," the author found out.

This continued till 2017 when many cases of lynching and violent mob attacks on Muslim cattle dealers in India made Bangladesh authorities officially announce that Indian cattle could only enter the country through designated animal corridors.

But when it comes to sugar, there is no such arrangement in place, making it more dangerous.

Then why would people engage in work which is so risky?

"What else would they do?" Swadesh, a local restaurant owner in Chorar Bazar, threw a counterquestion.

"About 50% of families of this area have members who are involved in this," he added while frying jilapis in a big cast-iron pan in a gas oven. "This is a temporary work, not permanent."

There were customers in the restaurant, so we asked the questions in a hushed voice. But Swadesh didn't seem to care. We understood why a little later.

Sugar smuggling is so commonplace in the area that when we were asking questions in another bazar in Uttar Ronikhai Union, the shopkeeper, Mozammel, thought we were interested in buying smuggled sugar. Our cover, of course, helped a lot.

Turns out, he was among one of the traders. When asked how much sugar comes in every day through the border, he said it depended on the demand. Mozammel said he could manage sugar if we wanted.

While visiting the area, we came across one or two motorbikes carrying sugar, in broad daylight.

Later in the evening, we also saw some BGB men standing guard in an intersection near the border.

Abir, a teenage three-wheeler driver who took us to places said the BGB men were there to catch the smugglers. The earthen roads are so narrow that we had to leave our car at a bazaar and take the three-wheeler service. The BGB men also faced similar challenges and were on foot.

In the no man's land near Utma Chhara, a beautiful creek with huge boulders traversing the Indo-Bangla border, we saw a group of local men approaching the border.

Arif, a local youth who accompanied us to the creek said they were going to bring sugar from a bazar in Meghalaya. 

Arif said most of the families in his village were involved in the illegal trade.

Both Abir and Arif said their families were in the stone business, owning several quarries. The fate of the well-off families changed when stone extraction was banned in the area.

As the money dried up, Arif left school and became a three-wheeler driver. Abir had the opportunity to continue school as his brother moved abroad to run the family.

"The money we earned did not last long. A case was filed against my brother following a brawl with my uncle regarding a stone extraction site, and we bled a lot of money. He eventually fled the country," Abir said. 

Apart from the destruction of the environment, stone quarries were notorious for conflict over control, and death and injury in huge numbers among the workers due to unsafe operation. 

According to the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), 76 stone workers were killed and 21 injured in stone quarries in Sylhet from January 2017 to January 2020.

The whole area now has large craters everywhere, created from stone mining. The craters leave the land unsuitable for any installation in the future.

Stone quarry lessees, who made loads of money, moved to cities like Sylhet. Others bought farmland nearby and got involved in farming. Abir's family is one of the latter.

Many failed to reinvest the money productively and spent it all over the years. Now, finding no means of living, they engage in whatever work they find, including smuggling.

"We have a neighbour who had crores of taka. He now smuggles sugar. He just headed off to bring sugar," said Abir. "He has 20 murder cases against him."

While talking about the widespread unemployment in the area, Nurunnabi Shohag, a local NGO worker, pointed out the tourism potential of it.

Sada Pathar in Bholaganj is a popular tourist destination in Sylhet; and the nearby Utma Chhara, despite its appeal to adventure travellers, has not attracted many conventional tourists due to the lack of decent road communications.

"Good roads could bring tourists to this area. The beautiful Himalayan foothills of Meghalaya, and the mesmerising white water flowing through the boulders of Utma Chhara are no less attractive than Bichhanakandi," Shohag said. "Tourists could bring income opportunities to the local villagers."

Local Sugar traders said sugar also comes through the borders of Gowainghat and Jaintiapur Upazilas of the district.

Sugar smuggling is very common nowadays, all across the country, and not limited to Sylhet. In recent months, law enforcers have confiscated smuggled sugar from many bordering districts including Netrokona, Cumilla and Sylhet. Traders seem to be most active on the Sylhet border.

TBS' Chattogram bureau says each kilogram of sugar is sold at Tk80 in the border villages due to illegal trade with nearby Indian markets.

Last August, TBS reported that smuggled Indian sugar drove down local market prices in Chattogram. At the same time, local refiners sought immediate action from the government to put an end to sugar smuggling from India. 

In Bangladesh, however, local syndicates are blamed for abnormal price hikes of the product when international prices are under control. 

While writing this story, Times of India reported that over 33,000 kg of sugar was seized by BSF and Meghalaya state police in a joint operation in the South Garo Hills district along the Meghalaya-Bangladesh border on 5 and 6 March 2024.

We used aliases to protect the identity of those who shared information with us.