A cacophony of cars, overcrowded streets, garbage, jostling crowds and bustling sidewalks - that’s Dhaka in a nutshell. This is the city we love, the city we hate. The city we love to hate. The city we hate because we love.
What ails Dhaka?
“It stinks,” says Faria Lara, “There is garbage all over, people spit, and the hygiene level is zero.”
This young woman working in Dhaka minces no words when it comes to the city where she lives.
She is joined in by a young teacher Iqbal Hussein. “It’s the dust that gets me the most. And then there is the lack of green spaces. The city is altogether too congested.”
“It’s an overcrowded city. The roads are constantly being dug up,” says Nazneen Nabi, who works for a daily newspaper.
These young persons, all working in the capital city, were answering questions about what they disliked about Dhaka the most.
Why such a negative survey? Despite all the downsides to living in Dhaka, people still live here, still love the city and still have a strong sense of belonging. But it is a piece of news that sparked off this query.
It was the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Annual liveability rating. According to EIU’s latest liveability survey, Dhaka is the second least liveable city in the world. It is only above Syria’s Damascus on the liveability index scale. The five broad categories of the index are healthcare, education, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Melbourne tops the list as most liveable.
There is a propensity to take such international surveys with a pinch of salt. It can’t be all that bad, is the general attitude. Dhaka has its problems, but the second least liveable city in the world? Isn’t that a gross exaggeration? Whether it is an exaggeration or an accurate assessment, the fact remains that the people of the city want change. They want Dhaka to breathe again, to live again, to represent Bangladesh as a capital comparable to any other in the world.
Criticism of the city is essential, if it is to be fixed. And everyone has their pet peeve.
Golam Ali is from Sylhet, but works in Dhaka. He laments, “I suffer for three or four hours on the road to get to office. I can travel home to Sylhet in that time!”
The other gripes voiced include, “It’s dirty!” “The public transport is abhorrent!” “There are beggars all over.” “People pee on the roadside.” “There’s litter everywhere!”
“It’s a matter of city governance,” says Khurshid Mahmud, who writes about politics and governance issues. “City governance is non-existent here. Had such governance been in place, there would be a smooth flow of traffic, the footpaths would be pedestrian-friendly.”
To him, civic behaviour is one of the city’s major problems. Faria chimes in, “And it is worse for women. People harass you on the streets, make lewd comments and worse. You just don’t feel comfortable or safe.”
When it comes to people’s behaviour, IT engineer Mohammad Sajjad is particularly angry at how employees on the lower income rung are treated. “There are security guards in the apartment blocks of residential areas who have to remain on duty for 16 hours at a stretch,” he says. “They are expected to stay wide awake and alert throughout the night and half the day, despite such long hours and are only relieved when the next guard comes on duty. Some landlords even remove any comfortable chairs and just give them a hard wooden stool, to make sure they don’t doze off.” Wouldn’t shorter shifts or additional guards be a better solution, more efficient, not to mention more humanitarian?
“The maids in many households are mistreated too, virtual slaves, meagre wages, long working hours and hardly any leave. There is verbal and physical abuse too, in a significant number of cases,” says Sajjad, listing some of the ‘evils’ of the city.
If we go back to EIU’s broad categories, what do we see?
Healthcare. The public health facilities are undoubtedly is a sad shape. Dhaka Medical College Hospital is a case in hand. Poor people go there for ‘free’ treatment, but there’s nothing free about it. You have to pay the dalals or ‘agents’ to get admission there, and then too there’s no guarantee you will get a bed in the ward. You may be placed in a crowded corridor, that too on the ground. A nightmare. And if you have money, the costliest of hospitals may offer five-star comfort, but the quality of treatment is nowhere proportionate to the money you spend. And so those who can afford it go off to India, Thailand or Singapore for treatment.
Environment. Air pollution, water pollution, sound pollution, you name it, we’ve got it. And this pollution is leading to all sorts of diseases, breathing problems, gastrointestinal ailments, skin disease and more, affecting both children and adults alike. Trees are felled to give way to high rise buildings, canals are replaced by landfills, and the city heaves under the resulting ecological trauma. Such environmental hara-kiri leads to water-logging, floods, rising temperatures and worse. The common sparrow is no longer common. But the stagnant water bodies have multiplied the mosquito population like a pandemic. This leads to dengue, chikungunya and other sicknesses, not to mention the general discomfit of a mosquito-infested environment.
Education. Crammed classrooms and no playgrounds seem to describe the average school in Dhaka city. “Hah!” scoffs the teacher Hussein, “That’s the least of the problems where education in Bangladesh is concerned. And if you want to pinpoint Dhaka, the list of shortfalls in education is endless too.”
To Hussein, one of the major problems is the teacher-student ratio, “The very best college in Dhaka city has a 1:120 teacher-student ration, so you can imagine what is like in the average educational institutions. How can a teacher teach or how can a student learn in such circumstances? Not possible.” Even if the better schools and colleges want to keep the number of students down, they are forced to admit more students under pressure from influential authorities.
Another grievance is the curricula. “It is not contextual,” he says. “The curriculum simply does not equip the students with skills they will need in the future. The textbooks are filled with gross mistakes and the method of teaching is abominable. For example, in the computer classes, the students are taught networking. They do not have a computer in front of them and they just learn the lessons off by heart, most of them not even understanding what it is all about.” Those in charge of the education policy and curriculum make lofty speeches, but when it comes to ground reality, the situation is dismal.
In many private colleges, teachers are hired not for their qualifications (often near non-existent), but for how many students they can get into the institution. “It’s business, pure and simple,” says Nazneen Nabi.
Infrastructure. High-rise buildings of concrete, steel and glass glinting in the sun. Broken roads, replete with ruts and potholes. Palatial villas. Shanties and slums. Sprawling malls, no place to park the cars. Flyovers, over-bridges, underpasses. Homeless huddling on the footpaths. Residential areas with apartment pressed one against the other with not an inch to spare. Infrastructure is high on the priority list of the government, according to the speeches and statements of the ministers, MPs and government officials. But planning? That’s the chip that is missing. As the Dhaka city’s population sees an unprecedented and exponential boom, the infrastructure of the sprawling city emerges totally unplanned, like a crazed hydra out of control.
“There is no light or air to enjoy once you are indoors,” says housewife Julia, living in Maghbazar of the city. “People criticise me because my children don’t play football or any other sport and spend most of the time indoors, playing games on my cell phone or watching cartoons on YouTube. But where can I take them? There is no park anywhere nearby. And the roads are dirty, unsafe and simply not fit for an evening stroll.”
Safe drinking water is almost a luxury. The markets are filled with adulterated food. Fish and fruits are treated with toxic formalin. The rural to urban migration is at an all-time high, but with no support system to accommodate the burgeoning population or to stem the flow. Law and order leaves much to be wanted. Road accidents are on a steady increase, for which even school students took to the streets in protest. Entertainment and recreation are at a minimum, even less when it comes to the lower-income masses. The cost of living is high. The list goes on.
What is to be done? Looking towards other Asian cities, there are lessons to be learnt. Kuala Lumpur has transformed into a city where everyone wants to study, everyone wants a ‘second home’, yet only a few decades ago our universities and medical colleges were full of Malaysian students seeking a better education. Singapore is another case in hand. Perhaps we can take a cue from Singapore’s late leader Lee Kwan Yew. He said, “Give people a fair system of governance and you won’t need to give them any welfare.” The denizens of Dhaka receive neither a fair system of governance, nor welfare.
It is definitely the responsibility of the government to create a liveable capital. However, the onus lies on everyone else too, on the private sector, civil society, on each and every citizen. Pooling the strength of the public and private sectors is essential. It is also a matter of raising public awareness, of growing a sense of pride and ownership in the city.
There is no need to scratch our heads over any international ratings. We just need to join forces, everyone from the helm of power to the man-on-the-street and make Dhaka liveable. We need to make it more than liveable. We need to make it a capital par excellence.
[The interviews in this article are real, but names have been changed for privacy].