Dhaka: A choking city cries for relief

The conscious citizenry have time and again voiced their concern over the way urbanisation was taking place and the wheels of development have defied reason and rational consideration. In absence of clear-cut policies, they complained, shopping plaza, hospitals, clinics, English medium schools, coaching centres and private universities have mushroomed in the residential areas in total disregard of a healthy living. Ominously still, unscrupulous and greedy people believably with political backing have encroached on the river Buriganga and Baridhara-Gulshan, Banani and Uttara lakes as well as Ashulia and Uttar khan haor areas to perpetuate their business interest.Shockingly, every inch of available space, either over land or water is being gobbled up for housing, legally or illegally.

On the other hand, after 35 years of independence, the country's rural areas look as bad as it could be. More than 70 per cent of the people live on almost a pittance, more than half of them are completely illiterate, have no access to sanitation and health care or even clean water. Things are so bad in the countryside that hundreds of thousands of people of all categories pour into the metropolitan cities especially Dhaka everyday because life on the pavements of the city seems somewhat better to them than in those villages that we once admired so much. Dhaka is now a human sea that moves in massive surges. With population now ballooning to almost 13 million, the city is suffering a serious growing pain. Even the footpaths recently constructed in the posh areas are in the possession of hawkers with little space for people to walk.

To meet the mounting pressure of population, the city's skyline now thrusts aggressively upwards seemingly in a bid to pull down the clouds. The city now stretching from Dhanmondi to Banani to Gulshan to Baridhara to Uttara embodies the idea of innovation and achievement in a dazzling range of human endeavours. People of all categories from around the country are streaming into Dhaka, as if it is the only city of activity and business, to test themselves against the toughest competition and to reinvent lives that seem to be so hard, stale and unrewarding in any other setting.

Dhaka is fast becoming a city of the future apparently through building of skyscrapers all around its limits. But as population has swelled in the city, so there has been a surge of violence and crimes. Shockingly, this city now magnifies a myriad of social ills because of administrative inaction and lax enforcement of laws. Conscious citizenry would in no time find Dhaka as one of the ugly human settlements on earth : a city that defies conventional notions of urban planning, human behaviour, rationality and environmental awareness. It is becoming an urban jungle where even new waves of architecture and lifestyle -- not always pleasing to be sure -- are grotesquely on display today. With a huge population it is one of the most crowded cities in the world with facilities rapidly becoming inadequate with every passing day.

In the game of making money mostly at the expense of people's suffering, city planners and utility agencies concerned have forgotten the older part of the city namely Sadarghat , Gandaria, Wari, Nawabpur, Chawkbazar and Hatkhola etc. Paradoxically, other cities like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore in the Asian region with such growing populations are dazzlingly alive. To outsiders, Dhaka, is an urban nightmare with skyscrapers thrown helter-skelter against a backdrop of exhaust fumes, snarled traffic in a tangle of winding streets and towering residential and commercial blocks mixed together.

During the past years, Dhaka has disappeared beneath a vast terrifyingly crowded urban settlements which seem to rise out of a sea of uncollected garbage, choked drains, and potholed roads. Because of the awakening created in the masses garbage disposal in the affluent parts of the city is now being done by community participation but in the less fortunate areas garbage spills out of the houses, restaurants, hotels and market places into the street so that along both sides of it you see pavements covered by household wastes, rotting poultry residue, animal excreta, vegetable peels.

Once a calm and tranquil city, Dhaka now bears a distressing resemblance to a vast filthy construction site. The lure of happy life in the city has transformed it from a sleepy town or a manageable urban centre of the past into a bursting human hive. New arrivals are pouring in at the rate 200,000 a year crushing into an area that constitutes only one per cent of the nation's land. This high migration has been spurred not so much by rural restlessness as by sheer natural catastrophe like floods, cyclone, river erosion and joblessness in villages. Travellers may marvel at the city's gleaming skyscrapers or admire the modern high-rise apartment buildings in Motijheel, Karwan Bazar, Dhanmondi, Gulshan, Baridhara and Banani area but the average family income is only $30 a month. Precisely speaking, behind the blinding glitter of the new millionaires the city is failing bulk of its citizens. Even the basic rudiments of a civic life seem to be evaporating from the city. .

Reports from population census council says that population density in the country is now 2000 persons per sq. mile whereas in Dhaka it would shoot up to a staggering number of 8000 per sq. mile. In view of the land space limitation coupled with great rush of people to the city, construction of multi-storied apartment blocks in an eco-friendly environment with provision for green space, spots for recreation, schools, market and games facilities for children close to these apartments is a call of the hour. But apartment blocks have sprung up in different localities of the city not accessible to motorised transports or even ambulances or fire brigade vehicles. Some of these apartments in different localities of the old town or even in the posh area have been raised on hidden sewer lines or gas pipelines. Neither RAJUK, nor Dhaka WASA nor TITAS Gas nor DCC intervened or made any mandatory check when these blocks were raised or are still being raised in flagrant violation of building codes. Such flouting of rules and regulations and mandatory safety provisions sometimes invites disasters of unimaginable proportions as it did in the Phoenix building collapse in Tejgaon or Savar Garments factory collapse in recent time.

Nobody disputes the fact that the need for construction of such multi-storied flats in the Dhaka city is now a historical necessity because the same space, say five kathas of land that could create living facilities for just one family comprising six members has to accommodate now 80 to 100 families comprising 1000 members at least, and these are being sold like hot cakes because people want to rush into Dhaka to have a secured living, to educate their children and to have hospital facilities when they are sick. Villages have offered them neither income nor good schools for their children nor good doctors and hospital with minimum facilities in their hour of need -- a pathetic situation that can only be attributed to government apathy.

The phenomenal growth in tall building structures in the city areas namely Shantinagore, Paribagh, Bailey Road, Eskaton , Shyamoli, Dhanmondi, Green Road other trhan Gulshan, Baridhara and Banani leaves much to be desired in respect of meeting the environmental needs, management of water, electricity, gas and sewerage connections and lift services. Shockingly, most of the apartment blocks built these days in different locations of the city ignore the safety regulations to be met in different aspects. Experts in environmental and geo-technical engineering apprehend that in absence of proper sewerage line with manageable discharge capacity of the effluents -- toxic and hazardous sometimes -- the existing sewer lines might crumble down after a few years posing a serious threat to health and sanitation of the people at large. With surface drains by the side of the streets getting choked under heavy load of effluents, residents are experiencing a miserable existence.

Four million people commute everyday mostly by motorised transports in an area of 100 miles. Bereft of any subways or mass transit system most needed for such a fast expanding city, Dhaka till now is a harrowing labyrinth of streets and alleys that make no geometric sense in these days of technological innovation and fast movements. On the other hand unbridled development ate away Dhaka's past charm and blanketed it in a layer of blue haze.

Precisely speaking, tall buildings have turned to be an inevitable historical necessity to meet the growing needs of expanding population and urbanization. But shockingly, this city of gardens as the names of different areas like Segunbagicha, Malibagh, Rajarbagh, Madhubagh and Lalbagh imply has become a victim of neglect and policy myopia. With developer-sponsored high rise apartment blocks going apace, government must see that it is pursued with a vision and planning process that ensures quality of life. Undeniably true, ensuring quality of life should be high on the agenda of city planners and city administration. If you are adding population in the city, you are also adding pollution, congestion garbage and water scarcity.

In Bangladesh, especially in Dhaka city till now we haven't seen any concrete action to check the pollution menace. Undeniably true, overcrowding, noxious fumes, power shortage water scarcity and contamination have all played a part in turning this once growing charming city into a choking hell now. But public reaction to all these human factors is mostly mute. And surely unless public takes unanimous stand, Dhaka's decline will continue.

Md Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.