Electricity is no longer a luxury in rural Bangladesh.
It lights up homes after sunset, powers irrigation pumps, and keeps small businesses alive.
For millions of families, it means children can study at night and farmers can run their machines. Yet this lifeline is now caught in a damaging power struggle between the Rural Electrification Board (REB) and the Palli Bidyut Samities (PBSs). What began as disputes over rank parity, procurement, and governance has spiraled into strikes, dismissals, and sedition charges.
In the process, ordinary villagers the very people this system was built to serve are left anxious about whether their lights will stay on.
Mothers worry about losing refrigeration for food, students about studying in the dark, and shopkeepers about keeping their businesses open. PBS employees feel sidelined and unfairly treated, while REB insists it has followed due process.
But finger-pointing cannot deliver electricity.
Rural Bangladesh deserves better than being held hostage to bureaucratic rivalries and political indecision.
The solution must start with empathy and fairness: dropped cases, reinstated staff, and genuine dialogue to restore trust.
The contentious merger debate can wait.
For now, the priority is ensuring uninterrupted service and treating frontline workers with dignity.
Rural electrification has been one of Bangladesh’s proudest development stories.
Allowing it to falter because of institutional ego would be a betrayal of the people who rely on it most.
It is time for leaders to step up before darkness returns to the villages.