Md. Tahmid Zami

Md. Rakibul Ahsan was finishing a logo he had designed for a foreign client as the deadline fast approached. Just before he could hit send, Bangladesh's internet was shut down, stranding him and the rest of the country offline.

Student-led protests against quotas for highly sought-after government jobs led to violent clashes that killed at least 147 people in Bangladesh this month.

Junayed Ahmed had bought cows to sacrifice and was looking forward to celebrating Eid-al-Adha with his parents in the city of Sylhet in eastern Bangladesh. But then rain started pelting down, the river Surma began to rise and his house was flooded.

"With knee-deep water in our single-story house and its yard, we just had to postpone the important ritual," said the 25-year-old mechanic.

Campus protests across Bangladesh against public-sector hiring quotas turned deadly this week, illustrating the severity of a jobs crisis in the world's seventh most populous nation.

Protesters are calling for reform of a quota system that reserves more than half of highly sought-after government jobs for certain groups, including women, the disabled and the descendants of veterans of the 1971 War of Independence.

Lashed by torrential rains and scorched by brutal heatwaves, Dhaka's workers - from rickshaw drivers to those working in clothes factories - are exposed more than most to the reality of the climate emergency.

Bangladesh's capital, one of the world's most congested and polluted mega-cities, is home to around 10 million people, including thousands who have fled floods and droughts in other parts of a country that is on the frontline of climate change.

Myanmar's displaced Rohingya are using trade and technology to make the most of life in the world's biggest refugee camp, with aid agencies hoping that odd jobs and blockchain deliver dignity along with extra money.

Seven years after hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas fled persecution at home for the crowded Cox's Bazar camp in neighbouring Bangladesh, and a sharp fall in humanitarian aid has forced new survival habits.

In the factory where Aysha Talukder Tanisa stitches jeans and children's clothes for Western brands, the cooling system has been no match for Bangladesh's longest heatwave in 70 years.

"Some of us - mostly girls - fall sick, vomiting or swooning due to the boiling heat," the 22-year-old told Context by phone from Ashulia, a town near the capital, Dhaka.

As Bangladeshis count their losses from the cyclone that lashed low-lying coastal areas on Sunday, calls are growing for the government to bolster storm defences and aid mechanisms as extreme weather becomes more common.

Strong gales and heavy rain triggered by Remal, the first major cyclone of the year, pounded the coastlines of India and Bangladesh on Monday, killing at least 16 people, cutting power to millions and wrecking homes and livelihoods.

Developing countries are being short-changed of money to prepare for wilder weather and rising seas, according to critics, who say numbers are being miscounted or artificially inflated by donors.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has "hugely overstated" the amount of climate adaptation finance it provided to vulnerable countries, according to a report by charity Oxfam this month. 

With heat-related deaths mounting, the tarmac on roads melting and desperate people gathering in mosques to pray for an end to the deadly heatwave ravaging Bangladesh, the call went out from cyberspace: plant more trees. 

The worst heatwave in seven decades is particularly unbearable in the capital Dhaka with temperatures reaching as high as 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in a crowded city that has been steadily stripped of the trees, lakes and ponds that once offered its residents relief and shelter. 

Religious scholars in Bangladesh say the country should harness the generosity of Muslims around the world and use their charitable giving to help the country adapt to climate change.

They said global faith-based finance could be a crucial way to support poor countries whose needs for funds to adapt to climate change are 10 to 18-times greater than they currently receive.