Living in Dhaka's immediate neighbourhood

With the liveability of Dhaka City increasingly coming into question, quite a few alternatives have by now been suggested. The World Bank is in favour of development of the city's eastern part around Purbachachal much like Shanghai's Pudong in the east before the opportunity is lost to haphazard growth. This will, it suggested in 2017, require construction of a flood-protection dam similar to the one girdling the western periphery.
The other alternative is radical and hardly gets currency. This concerns shifting of the capital to a convenient place. There are few proponents of this idea. While this is ruled out almost outright, the other option that remains is the decentralisation of administration and building townships and cities with an extra capacity to absorb city-bound migrants.
All this takes into account the precipitous deterioration of Dhaka City's physical environment including the increasing pressure on its utilities. A recent study has only heightened the concern about living in the city. Heavy air pollution is taking away three years on an average from the longevity of its inhabitants.
Chaotic traffic and concrete jumbles with hardly any greenery that Dhaka City today is has forced many of its citizens to move away from the city centre. They feel they will get the breathing space in Gazipur, Bosila, Keraniganj and similar other places not too far and yet to get crowded.
However, the pace of housing has been phenomenal in Bosila in particular. Many people started building their residences about two decades well before the Padma Bridge indicated any sign it could be a reality. They purchased paddy fields which were literally under water. Sure enough, the pace of construction and development has gained further momentum with work of the Padma Bridge project getting steam.
Surprisingly, private initiative has been behind the housing and construction spree. As high as 10-storey buildings now dot the entire area. What is surprising is that the area, once flood plains, has been brought under the Dhaka City Corporation. Except supplying electricity, hardly any other utility service is provided for the inhabitants there. But happily, the entire place has been turned into a decent residential township with roads no less than 25-feet wide criss-crossing it and allowing buildings opening either in front or at the back as residential blocks should enjoy.
However, the area finds itself on the wrong side of the Dhaka protection dam. The Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakhya (RAJUK) has nothing to do with the housing spree. It has not taken up the area for development of housing and the buildings have come up without its authorisation or approval. Those who have built their multi-storied structures have, however, more or less followed the building codes.
It is not at all surprising that the demand for land has gone up and so has the price. Within a decade the value of land in Bosila and adjacent areas has increased six to 10 times. All this is because of the interests of people of the southern and south-western districts, who prefer the area for several reasons. First, they find Dhaka proper too crowded and too unhealthy for living. Compared to this, Bosila is quiet and still has greenery all around. An admixture of rural and urban environment, it is also not far from the city. Courtesy of the Padma Bridge, they will now be able to visit their village homes quite often.
However, what remains a cause for serious concern is the area's viability as an extended organ of the capital. With the melting of polar ice cap and the glacier on the Himalaya, the possibility of devastating floods is on the cards. Most of Dhaka went under flood water in 1988 but then the food protection embankment has mostly saved the city from large-scale deluge caused by the subsequent floods.
What will happen to areas like Bosila and Keraniganj lying outside the embankment? In case the floods are of a short duration, residents there will be able to take the situation in stride but if the water stays for long, the ordeal is likely to be unbearable.
What is intriguing is that the authorities on this issue are playing the role of deaf and dumb entities besides looking the other way. If there is a disaster, they may shirk the responsibility with the ready response that the housing there came up on private initiatives and without approval from the authorities concerned. Quite a good excuse, indeed!