KYOTO -- In Bengali, the word "flood" has a positive meaning, as floods bring fertility to the land.
"Flood doesn't sound like disaster in our language," said Hamidul Huq, founder and executive director of UST, a nongovernmental organization in Bangladesh working to improve the livelihood of rural people, especially women.
"If it comes before the harvest," he said, "it is a disaster, but we want floods for our agriculture."