It was an afternoon spell of rain. This type of downpour is not an uncommon phenomenon around this time. Thus the one-and-half-hour downpour accompanied by gusts on Pahela Baishakh was viewed by the residents of the city as a normal part of nor'wester. It was indeed. But the Bangla New Year merrymakers discovered to their shock that the roads were submerged. As a number of streets around the Ramna area, the chief venue of the Pahela Baishakh celebrations, had been off-limits to vehicles, the revellers had to walk home through ankle- to knee-deep water. Even footpaths in areas went under water gushing out of the overflowing drains. In a departure from the usual Pahela Baishakh evening scenario, the one on last April 14 carried elements of annoyance and disappointment. Unexpected sufferings caused by rain and the walks through stagnant water caught people off guard.
The Pahela Baishakh evening this year was different thanks to the largely unwelcome rain. But a lot of people have become stunned as they faced water logging in the city so early. The monsoon proper is still a couple of months away. For many the overflowing of the city streets in a short spell of nor'wester rain portends worse days awaiting the capital.
The city corporations have all along been hamstrung by their inadequate funds and logistics, as well as lack of enough decision-making power, in tackling Dhaka's water logging. In popular belief, the onus of keeping the capital free of the scourge lies with the two local government bodies. There are reasons for believing so. The mayors of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) and Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) on different occasions gave the impression that they can solve the city's water logging problem provided they are given necessary powers. Pledges after pledges came by. They could make good on few of them.
Amid this smokescreen, Dhaka Water Supply & Sewerage Authority (WASA) appears to have volunteered boldly to shoulder the responsibility. According to media reports, the government organisation has assured the city dwellers of enabling them to live in Dhaka in the coming monsoon without going through the malady of water logging. Although it sounds absurd, the WASA authorities have been quoted as saying that the impediments to the problem have been taken care of. At a view-exchange in the capital on April 02, its top bosses told the media that the city's drainage had been restored. At the same time, the remaining 26 canals out of 65 in Dhaka have been cleared of illegal occupation. All this apparently carried the potential for making the city residents take heart.
With the problem's ferocity increasing by the year, the monsoon has emerged as a great urban dread in Dhaka. In spite of series of promises and resolve, the problem remains stuck in the maze of buck-passing among the agencies entrusted with solving the problem. Lack of coordination between the government entities has been pointed out as one of the factors behind the deterioration in the water logging situation. With the authorities concerned pointing the finger at one another, newer areas continued to go under stagnant rain water.
The terrible assaults of monsoon water logging have literally overwhelmed Dhaka in the last few years. Many relatively 'higher' neighbourhoods in the city kept falling victim to the ordeal one after another. In the past the greater Shantinagar, Nayapaltan, parts of Tejgaon, Banasree, Nilkhet and areas in older Dhaka would be hit by the scourge perennially. The situation has worsened in the following years. Thanks to the clogged drains, squatters' settlements on filled-up canals, construction of unplanned structures, etc., have added to the decline in the overall situation.
After a long bout of rain from morning to noon last year, few of the capital's roads and alleys were found unaffected by the scourge. In many neighbourhoods, the rain water remained stagnant for days and weeks. Pedestrians and vehicles had to make way through the fetid water. Outbreak of water-borne diseases, especially related to skin, occurred in places. The city-dwellers experienced on April 14 a fleeting re-enactment of the 'flooding' of the capital of the last year. A worrying aspect of the episode was its potential for unleashing monsoon miseries after a short spell of rain, only weeks before the arrival of rains in accordance with calendar.
Rain-fed and water-logged areas are not an unusual sight in the cities of developing countries. The difference is many of them have been able to cope with the problem successfully. Kolkata in the neighbouring Indian city of Paschimbanga was once notorious for its flooded post-rain roads. Thanks to city re-planning and a political commitment to alleviating the city-dwellers' sufferings, the historic Kolkata could be freed of the scourge that had bedevilled it for long.
Dhaka carries the legacy of being once considered a water-logging-free city. An added advantage of the Bangladesh capital had been its in-city canals. Those were excavated during the tenure of its Mughal administration. Later, the British-era city planners helped the authorities concerned make full use of the canals.
Thanks to the sixty-five canals dug and re-dug by the Mughal and British rulers, flowing of its rain water into the surrounding four rivers remained a common routine spectacle in Dhaka for three centuries. Had the unique canals of Dhaka been operative in the following period, the city could have largely remained free of the water logging problem. Letting the system fall into disuse was, in fact, like indulging in a dangerous nonchalance.
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