Bangladesh has a long and glorious history in sericulture as her agro-climatic condition is very favorable for the development of this industry. ‘Bengal Silk’ was very prominent all over Asia. By the early 20th century, Bengal silk was pushed out of South Asian markets, especially by Kashmir and Mysore silk. The partition in 1947 brought about a disastrous condition in the silk industry of Bangladesh, as less than 10 percent of Bengal mulberry area was incorporated into Bangladesh, the then East Pakistan. The Bengal was known as the Ganges silk in distant Italy as early as the 13th century (Ahmed, 1988). Bengal produced much more silk that was used locally, and it boasted a vigorous export trade of both textiles and raw silk (Banerjee, 1990). It was this trade which first attracted European traders to Bengal (Salam, 1981; Davini, 2008, 2009). Gradually European traders started to influence the course of this industry. According to Banglapedia (National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh), by 1835, the British East India Company ran over a hundred filatures in the region and exported about 400 tons of raw silk. Later, private companies took over and the export trade boomed till the 1870s, when because of the epidemic silkworm diseases and technological stagnation Bengal lost most of its foreign markets and Japan emerged as a new major silk exporter. By the early 20th century, Bengal silk was pushed out of South Asian markets, especially by Kashmir and Mysore silk (Ahmed, 1997). By the 1930s, Chinese and Japanese silk started replacing Bengal silk even in Bengal itself. What this meant in terms of employment can be illustrated by the example of the Rajshahi district. In the 1870s, some 250,000 people derived incomes from silk production there; in 1901, the number stood at 41,000 but in 1921 it was less than 600. The partition in 1947 brought about a disastrous condition in the silk industry of Bangladesh, as less than 10 percent of Bengal mulberry area was incorporated into Bangladesh, the then East Pakistan (Banglapedia). This industry was at the verge of extinction producing little more than 100 lbs in the few villages of the Rajshahi District. At that time silk enterprises were not supervised by the government and left in its entirety to local people for the production of mulberry and silk materials. After partition, although the then East Pakistan government undertook a grand sericulture development program under which 10 sericulture nurseries, one silk pilot project and one silk research and training institute at Rajshahi were established, what was lacking was a whole-hearted effort in tapping the full potentials of sericulture and providing adequate incentives to the producers to exploit them (Rahman and Bari, 1985). From 1947 to 1977 sericulture activities were looked after by organizations like Directorate of Industries and BSCIC (Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation). During this post independence period the silk industry received a more focused attention in terms of capital investment, operational policy formulation, and institution building. Immediately after the independence, one of the major policy measures with respect to the silk sector of the country was imposing restrictions over the import of silk yarn and silk fabrics thus providing the long protection of the sericulture sector. Subsequently, with a view to expand sericulture throughout the country the government of independent Bangladesh decided to create a separate organization known as BSB (Bangladesh Sericulture Board) which began functioning from February, 1978 with its headquarters at Rajshahi nicknamed the ‘silk city’. Since the mid-eighties, several NGOs started to promote sericulture and silk weaving among poor rural women with financial assistance from donors and technical assistance from BSB (Huq, 1997). BSB again reformed and renamed as Bangladesh Sericulture Development Board in 2013.
