Bangladesh tries to muffle the siren song of the capital

INDUSTRIAL ZONES, residential developments, clinics and universities—the mayor of Mongla’s ideas for his town’s expansion seem a bit ambitious. Mongla has a mere 40,000 people; his office is in a crumbling building hemmed in by forest. But in five years, Zulfikar Ali insists, Mongla will be a regional economic hub, accommodating thousands of migrants drawn by rapid industrialisation and pushed by the loss of agricultural land to the rising sea. (Already, the sea is eating away at the surrounding low-lying delta region.) “I want to be ready,” he says.