Burgeoning floating population in Dhaka city
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Fahim Reza Chowdhury
DHAKA city has a huge and bulging population but a worrisome feature of it is that a big part of this population are shanty and/or pavement dwellers or sheer vagabonds. In other words, they form a floating population of sorts numbering some 4.0 million out of the city's over 14 million people.
This number seems likely to grow further and at a rapid pace as the rate of migration of such people to Dhaka, so far, suggests. A recent media focus on floating people was on their sanitation-related woes. But this is only a partial examination of the every day sufferings that have to be endured by this vast number of poor people. They live a very poor quality life and, more significantly, they tend to make the city very unclean or add alarmingly to the steady deterioration of its environment.
Lack of proper sanitation facilities and the too overburdened state of the public toilet system lead to defecation by such people freely in the open spaces posing a great problem to those assigned to maintain the city in clean conditions. But that is only one aspect of the environmental consequences of having a burgeoning floating population in the capital city.
The floating people are also the reservoirs of many other things that degrade the environment. For example, the underworld engaged in drug trafficking, muggings, robberies and other crimes, find a fertile source of recruits from among these floating people. It is noted that many violent activities in the city are enthusiastically started or participated in by these floating people as a form of indirect ventilation of anger against social and economic injustices they perceive as afflicting them. Thus, the high undesirability of allowing such a population to proliferate while grossly undermine the city's aesthetic appeal.
The first step towards addressing the problem would be one of enumeration. A study may be carried out to ascertain the total number of such people, the rate of their addition to the city's population, what pull factors bring them to Dhaka, how many are temporary residents, rotating between their village homes and the city, etc. After knowing fully the facts and the reasons for their destitution, appropriate policies will have to set in motion.
A major policy response should be decentralisation or building up the current upazillas as local growth centres with various industries, services and other activities there taking off extensively to reduce the temptation of rural people to migrate to Dhaka. Other measures should include creating a large number of shelters for the homeless with the costs being jointly paid for by government and private charities. Landlessness and river erosions are big factors behind rural people coming to Dhaka and other big cities in search of jobs and livelihood. Therefore, these groups should be systematically and comprehensively assisted financially and otherwise to take up gainful activities at their points of origin and postpone or give up the idea of coming to cities.
In sum, any coordinated and big enough move taken to address the phenomenon of floating population in cities -- specially in Dhaka -- can be expected to create notable positive effects by reducing poverty, easing pressures on urban areas and urban living and consequently on the urban environment.
DHAKA city has a huge and bulging population but a worrisome feature of it is that a big part of this population are shanty and/or pavement dwellers or sheer vagabonds. In other words, they form a floating population of sorts numbering some 4.0 million out of the city's over 14 million people.
This number seems likely to grow further and at a rapid pace as the rate of migration of such people to Dhaka, so far, suggests. A recent media focus on floating people was on their sanitation-related woes. But this is only a partial examination of the every day sufferings that have to be endured by this vast number of poor people. They live a very poor quality life and, more significantly, they tend to make the city very unclean or add alarmingly to the steady deterioration of its environment.
Lack of proper sanitation facilities and the too overburdened state of the public toilet system lead to defecation by such people freely in the open spaces posing a great problem to those assigned to maintain the city in clean conditions. But that is only one aspect of the environmental consequences of having a burgeoning floating population in the capital city.
The floating people are also the reservoirs of many other things that degrade the environment. For example, the underworld engaged in drug trafficking, muggings, robberies and other crimes, find a fertile source of recruits from among these floating people. It is noted that many violent activities in the city are enthusiastically started or participated in by these floating people as a form of indirect ventilation of anger against social and economic injustices they perceive as afflicting them. Thus, the high undesirability of allowing such a population to proliferate while grossly undermine the city's aesthetic appeal.
The first step towards addressing the problem would be one of enumeration. A study may be carried out to ascertain the total number of such people, the rate of their addition to the city's population, what pull factors bring them to Dhaka, how many are temporary residents, rotating between their village homes and the city, etc. After knowing fully the facts and the reasons for their destitution, appropriate policies will have to set in motion.
A major policy response should be decentralisation or building up the current upazillas as local growth centres with various industries, services and other activities there taking off extensively to reduce the temptation of rural people to migrate to Dhaka. Other measures should include creating a large number of shelters for the homeless with the costs being jointly paid for by government and private charities. Landlessness and river erosions are big factors behind rural people coming to Dhaka and other big cities in search of jobs and livelihood. Therefore, these groups should be systematically and comprehensively assisted financially and otherwise to take up gainful activities at their points of origin and postpone or give up the idea of coming to cities.
In sum, any coordinated and big enough move taken to address the phenomenon of floating population in cities -- specially in Dhaka -- can be expected to create notable positive effects by reducing poverty, easing pressures on urban areas and urban living and consequently on the urban environment.