ABSTRACT
The state of Bangladesh, until 1971 East Pakistan, is nestled in the delta complex of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, and is amongst the poorest as well as the most densely populated regions of the earth. It is a country whose natural inheritance is a mixture of fertility and disaster, and whose people are exposed by their poverty to the unimpeded course of elemental forces; rendered naked before the storms. Since records began in the eighteenth century at least 1.2 million Bangladeshis have been killed by cyclones, as many as half a million in the storm of 1970 alone.
