Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"On the map of South Asia, Bangladesh looks like another State of India: the country occupies the area of the double delta of India’s great Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, and India almost completely surrounds it on its landward side (Fig. 8-23). But Bangladesh is an independent country, born in 1971 after its brief war for independence against Pakistan, with a territory about the size of Wisconsin. Today it remains one of the poorest and least developed countries on Earth, with a population of 163 million that is growing at an annual rate of 1.2 percent. Bangladesh remains largely a nation of subsistence farmers. Only a third of the population lives in urban settlements, and more than half of the workforce is engaged in agriculture. Dhaka, the megacity capital (Box 8-16), is home to over 16 million; the cities of Chittagong, Rangpur, Khulna, and Rajshahi are the only other urban centers of consequence. Moreover, Bangladesh has one of the highest physiologic densities (people per unit area of arable land) in the world: 1946 people per square kilometer/5040 per square mile. Not only is Bangladesh a poor country; it also is highly susceptible to damage from natural hazards." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 364-5]