The National Food‐assisted Works Programme for Water and Land Development in Bangladesh which began as a relief operation in 1975, was designed to evolve gradually into a development‐oriented programme. This complex and largely successful transition offers a study in change of relevance to the current debate on the relief–development continuum. What emerges from a review of the Bangladesh experience is that the transition from relief to development is as complex as it is desirable, and that while there is a ‘continuum of sorts if it can be reached, getting there has lately become more a