Bangladesh capital Dhaka has ranked the second least liveable city in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit annual global survey. Austrian capital, Vienna, has beaten Australia’s Melbourne to be named the world’s most liveable city. The worldwide league table ranks 140 cities on a range of factors, including political and social stability, crime, education and access to healthcare.
It’s interesting that Dhaka has a lower ranking in infrastructure compared to Damascus-a war torn city in a war torn country while having the same rankings in healthcare and cultural environment. While Damascus can excuse itself due to terrorism and civil war, what excuse can Dhaka give?
For it has none. The transport infrastructure is in a big mess. Due to incoherence in planning and prioritising car travel (accessible to only 5 percent of the population) the original Bus Rapid Transit route has to be halved now, causing great inconvenience to the majority of users who had hoped to reach Keraniganj from the Airport in less than an hour. But why were the flyovers, which facilitate the transport of only those who have cars, built is unknown.
Similar problems lie with groundwater extraction. While efforts are made to sustain
water quantity and quality in city water supplies, pumping has caused groundwater levels to drop more than 200 feet over the last 50 years and these levels continue to decline at a rate of upto 9 feet per year. Ultimately this will cause massive subsidence in Dhaka’s elevation as the land will subside.
Already in certain parts of Dhaka land has subsided by as much as 6 inches over a mere decade and a half. On average different parts of the country and areas around Dhaka city are going down by two mm to 16mm annually. The only option to this is artificial recharge-a very expensive process used in Tokyo. Why not start now and save money by keeping more greenery and by utilising river water which has been purified-but for that river pollution must stop.
We only have to look at Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal and perhaps the best case for comparison, we can clearly see it is neither population, nor resource constraint or cultural habits that contributed to the diminishing livability of Dhaka. Ask any old timers of Dhaka-they would sigh and say that Dhaka used to be a beautiful green city even back in the seventies. Back then-Kolkata used to be a city of garbage dumped anywhere on the streets; there used to be frequent load shedding and traffic condition was horrendous. The air of Kolkata used to reek of garbage.
But look how the table has turned. According to a report based on a survey by a Non-government organisation published in the Times of India Kolkata ranks the best among 21 selected Indian cities. You don’t even need a survey to compare Kolkata to Dhaka in terms of livability. It is something our city leaders must take note of.
