Ashuganj's Century-Old Rice Market
BOC Ghat sits about a mile (1.5 kilometers) northeast of Ashuganj Upazila in Brahmanbaria. For nearly 100 years, this market has been thriving on the banks of the mighty Meghna River at BOC Ghat. Millions of tons of paddy (unhusked rice) are bought and sold here, making it a pivotal Ashuganj Rice Market.
Every day, hundreds of large cargo boats, loaded with tons of paddy, dock at the market. Paddy sellers arrive with small cloth bundles tied around their hands. These bundles contain paddy samples. They spread out mats and untie their bundles, revealing the sample paddy. Buyers then inspect these samples before deciding to purchase.
Rice, made from this paddy, is a staple food for people in Bangladesh. Paddy is also one of the country’s main crops, with the Ashuganj Rice Market playing a crucial role in its distribution.
Paddy Inspection
Buyers inspect the paddy by rubbing it in their palms to extract the rice grains inside. Many then blow on the grains to clean them, and some even chew the rice to taste it. Once the inspection is complete, they negotiate prices using a unique method.
Price Negotiation
Both buyer and seller hide their hands under a cloth, using a clever system to haggle and agree on a price. Farmers and paddy traders come to sell their paddy, while wholesalers, rice mill owners, and husking mill (chatal) owners arrive to buy. Depending on the season, quality, and variety, paddy sells here for 850 to 1200 Taka per maund (approx. 40 kg).
Under the cover of the cloth, the buyer and seller touch fingers to exchange special signals and negotiate. Sometimes they agree on a price, sometimes they don’t. This unique negotiation process runs from 7 AM to 10 AM.
Cargo Boats
Paddy shipments arrive at this ghat not only from various upazilas within Brahmanbaria but also from Sylhet, Sunamganj, Moulvibazar, Habiganj, and Netrokona.
The middle section of these large cargo boats (mahajoni nouka) acts as a complete paddy warehouse. A medium-sized boat can hold about 1400 maunds of paddy. Before unloading, they weigh each sack, with each sack containing 75 kg of paddy.
All unloading activities, including weighing and bagging, take place at the front of these cargo boats. The peak paddy season in Bangladesh runs from Baishakh to Agrahayon (roughly April/May to November/December).
This vast paddy market hums with activity, combining the waterways with these cargo boats, and land routes with trucks, lorries, and vans, alongside thousands of busy people.
Market Laborers
At least 800 laborers work daily at the Ashuganj Rice Market, earning wages for their efforts. During peak season, roughly 100,000 maunds of paddy are sold here daily, while in the off-season, that number hovers around 50,000 maunds. Administrative oversight is very strict, ensuring that work proceeds smoothly without any syndicate interference. In peak season, transactions total approximately 10 crore (100 million) Taka every day.
When paddy sacks are unloaded from the boats, some grains inevitably fall to the ground. For people living below the poverty line, collecting and selling this fallen paddy at the market provides an alternative source of income. Many of these paddy gleaners are victims of river erosion or residents of char lands (river islands).
This practice not only prevents paddy waste but also benefits these low-income individuals. The Ashuganj Rice Market is the largest and oldest paddy market in the northeast region of Bangladesh.
Most of the paddy from Ashuganj is shipped to the numerous rice mills located in Bahadurpur, which are situated on both sides of the Dhaka-Sylhet highway.
Rice Mill Operations
The journey of paddy from Ashuganj continues at the husking mills, or “chatals,” where it’s parboiled and sun-dried. Boro paddy arrives at the chatals from April to June, Aus paddy from July to August, and Aman paddy from November to January. There are approximately 350 such husking mills across Brahmanbaria, with three out of every four located in Bahadurpur.
Tons of paddy are dried in large open spaces. To protect the paddy from sudden rain, workers use enormous covers called “chata” or “tup,” which resemble large, conical straw hats worn by farmers.
Chatal Laborers
Some of the chatal laborers and their families live right at the mills, with their living and eating arrangements alongside the processing area. Many come from far-off places like Habiganj, Sylhet, and Barisal, driven by the need for work. They often work in teams of five: three women and two men. The goal of sun-drying the paddy is to reduce its moisture content to below 12%. There are two types of chatal laborers: permanent and temporary.
Temporary laborers work on a daily wage basis. Each chatal, depending on its size, employs 16 to 20 laborers, with their numbers increasing from November to March. A single chatal can dry between 600 to 700 maunds of paddy per batch (1 maund in Bangladesh equals 40 kg). This work typically happens three days a week.
Advance Payments or Loans for Labor
A unique type of loan, known as “dadan,” is common in these chatals. Laborers can take out a loan against the agreement that they’ll work at that specific chatal the following year, repaying it through their labor at the agreed-upon time. Around 30,000 chatal laborers in this area work under such agreements, often on a “no work, no pay” basis.
Paddy to Rice
Though called “auto rice mills,” many of these mills operate on a semi-mechanized system. Using this method, each mill can process about 150 bags of 75 kg paddy daily. However, the number of these semi-mechanized mills is declining due to the rise of fully automatic rice mills. The entire process, from the Ashuganj Rice Market to the rice mill and finally rice production, takes 7 to 12 days.
Approximately 25 kg of rice is produced from 1 maund of paddy. While the production cost of semi-mechanized rice mills is much lower than that of fully automatic ones, and their rice often has better taste and quality, automatic mills are growing in number. This is because they require fewer laborers and have significantly higher daily production.
A single automatic rice mill requires over 3,000 tons of paddy daily and can produce as much as roughly 300 semi-mechanized rice mills combined.
Conclusions
Rice from these Ashuganj mills is shipped across the country, including to the greater Sylhet and Chittagong regions.
Babul Ahmed, president of the District Rice Mill Owners Association, stated that thousands of maunds of paddy are arriving at the Ashuganj Rice Market daily, with 60,000-70,000 maunds being sold each day. He noted that due to rising temperatures, the paddy’s moisture content is good, allowing traders to get fair prices.
Wet paddy fetches a slightly lower price because processing it yields about 2 kg less rice per maund compared to dry paddy, which retains 2 kg more. However, he added that the prices traders received for wet paddy were still not bad: Boro paddy (Jat 28) sold for 920 Taka, paddy Jat 29 for 900 Taka, and coarse paddy for 810 Taka. Currently, the government’s paddy procurement drive has also begun.
