Current Time in Savar, Bangladesh

Savar lies about twenty five kilometres northwest of central Dhaka in Bangladesh, on the flat alluvial land between the Bangshi and Dhaleshwari rivers. It forms part of the greater Dhaka urban region and has grown from a rural upazila into a dense industrial and residential belt. The landscape is one of low ground, river channels and remnant patches of sal forest, and the climate is tropical monsoon, with a hot humid summer, torrential rain from June to September and a pleasant cool season around the turn of the year.

Several hundred thousand people live in the municipality itself, and the wider upazila holds well over a million, many of them migrants from other districts who have come for work. Savar is one of the great engines of the Bangladeshi economy, at the centre of the ready made garment industry that has made the country the world's second largest clothing exporter. The Dhaka Export Processing Zone here hosts factories producing garments, textiles, footwear and electronics for international brands.

The industry's importance and its difficulties are both associated with the town. In April 2013 the collapse of the Rana Plaza building killed more than eleven hundred workers, the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment trade. The tragedy prompted an international response, with binding agreements on building and fire safety, extensive factory inspections and structural reforms that have significantly changed working conditions across the sector, and a memorial now stands at the site.

Savar is also a place of national commemoration. The National Martyrs Memorial, designed by Syed Mainul Hossain and completed in the early 1980s, rises here in seven triangular planes of concrete that combine into a single soaring form, honouring those who died in the Liberation War of 1971. It is the country's principal war memorial, visited by state leaders and by hundreds of thousands of citizens on Independence and Victory Days.

The area has a long history stretching back well before the modern town. Archaeological remains associated with an early medieval kingdom have been excavated near Rajashon, and the ruins traditionally identified with the palace of Harishchandra Raja lie within the upazila.

Jahangirnagar University, established in 1970, occupies a large wooded campus in Savar that is admired as one of the most beautiful in Bangladesh, known for its lakes, its tall trees and the migratory birds that arrive each winter. The area also hosts the national sports institute, an atomic energy research establishment, a livestock research institute, a military cantonment and a well known centre for rural health and development work.

Transport is dominated by the Dhaka Aricha highway, one of the busiest roads in the country, carrying traffic westward towards the Padma River. Buses, rickshaws and the elevated expressway projects under construction connect Savar to the capital, and Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport is roughly an hour away.

Savar is important as an industrial powerhouse, as the home of Bangladesh's national memorial and as a place where the country's economic transformation can be seen at close quarters.