(From previous issue)
Increasing Primacy: Increasing Disparity in Concentration of Opportunities: Dhaka, however, enjoys a very distinctive national primacy status, comprising 44.26 per cent of the total urban population, and 12.56 per cent of the national population, in 2011. Dhaka’s population with respect to the second largest city, Chittagong, has risen from 2.47 times in 1981 to 3.58 times in 2011. Also, Dhaka’s population with respect to the sum of the second, third and fourth largest cities in Bangladesh, which are Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi respectively, has increased from 1.50 times in 1981 to 2.26 times in 2011. In fact, population of Dhaka has multiplied almost 6 times in the 30 years period 1981-2011. The strong primacy of Dhaka is not just in its population size, but more so in functional political, economic and socio-culture terms. (At least 50 out of the nearly 120 functioning universities are located with megacity Dhaka). In terms of the economic dominance, Dhaka megacity of estimated to be contributing to over one third (36%) of the national GDP. It was mentioned earlier that the district of Dhaka enjoys very high GDP per-capita, if the Gross City Product of Dhaka Megacity area was calculated, it would reveal even higher, may be over $15,000 per-capita income, World Bank studies have identified this ‘Mountain Peak’ in economic distribution in Bangladesh, a case of lopsided development and regional imbalance.
Table 4: Primacy of Dhaka
Source: BBS, 2014.
Increasing metropolization: The metropolitan cities with populations more than one million also play important economic and socio-politica1 role in Bangladesh. There was only one metropolitan city, Dhaka, in Bangladesh in 1981; but in 2011, the number has increased to four, with Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi, joining the ranks. These four metros account for 63.87 percent of the total urban population in 2011, up from 35.69 per cent in 1981 (Chart 2). The dominance of business services, particularly finance and real estate services is considerably higher in the four major cities relative to the rest of the country (GoB, Planning Commission, Sixth Plan, 2011). A more balanced and desirable pattern of urbanization would demand the growth of a few more metropolitan cities, such as in Barisal, Rangpur, Sylhet and Mymensingh divisions. Such a development now seems emerging with promotion of some Pourashavas to City Corporation status. The political/administrative up-gradation may lead to overall growth of these regional type cities.
Chart 2: Metropolitan Cities: Per cent of urban population: 1981-2011
Rather than having been stagnated, all the four metros have experienced higher population growths in the most recent decade (2001-2011), than in the just previous one (1991-2001) (Table 5). The growth rates of the metropolitan cities also has been more than the urban population growth rates as a whole, underlining the fact that the scope of the processes of urbanization in Bangladesh are as yet unsaturated, and it would be expected to experience rapid urban growth in the coming decades, mainly fuelled by the growth in the metros of Bangladesh. This process is expected to be led by Dhaka the financial, cultural, and business centre of the country, which has grown the fastest among the four metros, despite its large base.
Table 5: Annual exponential growth rates of metros: 19812011
Challenges of Urbanization in Bangladesh
Just as urbanization brings along economic and social benefits, it also poses some serious challenges, especially when it takes place at a pace as rapid as the one in evidence in Bangladesh today. The current and future challenges of urbanization in Bangladesh are many; such as, 1) The Challenge of the Massive Size of the National and Urban Population, 2) Challenge of Spatial Imbalance in Urbanization, 3) Challenge of Enhancing Urban Economic Productivity and Providing Employment, 4) Challenge of Urban Poverty Alleviation, 5) Challenge of Providing Access to Land and Housing, 6) Challenges in Provision of Urban Utilities and Services 7) The Challenge of Education, 8) The Challenge of Access to Health Services, 9) Challenge of Providing Transportation Services; 10) Challenges of environmental Management: Degradation and Pollution, Climate Change and Natural hazards, 11) Challenge of Crime and Violence, 13) Political Social and Cultural Conflicts, 14) Problems of Special Groups, 15) Challenge of Urban Resource Mobilization, 16) Challenge of Institutionalizing Urban Vision, Policymaking, Urban Planning and Planned Urban Development, and finally 17) Challenge of Governance.
Urban Poverty: Deprivations and Rights
In this part of my lecture, I will focus mainly on the challenge of urban poverty and deprivations suffered by the urban poor, particularly in terms of their right to stay in the city, right to work and to livelihood, right to basic needs and services and the right to participate. But first let us have an idea about the definition and the magnitude of poverty in Bangladesh.
Definition of Poverty: For simplification we will depend on the definition of poverty is Bangladesh as put forward Binayak Sen and Zulfiqar Ali of BIDS (2015). They use the monetary line definition of poverty as opposed to the calorie line. The monetary line definition of extreme poverty globally is 1.25 dollars a day. For Bangladesh Sen and Ali use a ‘considerably lower’ than $ 1.25 line but does not clarify as to what is the exact monetary line. They have used the HIES/ BBS data on poverty.
Table 6 Incidence of poverty (head count rate), 1995-96 to 2010
Source: Sen and Ali (2015) based on HIES Reports: BBS, Various years
It is obvious from Table 6 that poverty situation in Bangladesh has improved, significantly between 1995/96 to 2010 in both rural and urban locations and hence also nationally. At the national level the incidence of poverty under the upper poverty line was 53.1 percent in 1995 while it came down to 31.5 percent in 2010. The corresponding figures for the rural areas was respectively 56.7 percent for 1995 and or 35.2 percent for 2010. For the urban areas the shares were 35.6 percent in 1995 and only 21.3 percent in 2010.
In the case of lower (extreme) poverty line, the national status was 35.6 percent in 1995 and 17.6 percent in 2010, the rural poverty situation improved nationally from 39.8 percent on 1995 to 21.1 percent in 2010, while the decline in the urban poverty has been truly dramatic, from 14.6 percent in 1995 to as low as 7.7 percent in 2010.
Sen and Ali (2015) have ascribed to a number of factors which have been instrumental to the remarkable decline in poverty incidence, both rural and urban, these being (i) the role of rising rural wages in reducing extreme poverty in rural areas, (ii) role of urban jobs, particularly in the RMG sector, but also in other sectors, (iii) international migration, and (iv) international transfonnative growth, which include a number of features. One should add the role of various governmental and non-governmental direct interventions, such as that of the access to micro-credit, in poverty alleviation.
The challenge is still there to eliminate extreme poverty and to facilitate the poor in their access to housing, health, education and other services. Both the extreme poor and the moderate poor need support in their struggle to improve their life condition.
BBS data on incidence of poverty by geographic region or district are available for poverty as a whole, but not for urban poverty. Poverty varies from very high incidence of 64 percent in Kurigram and high incidence in such districts as Barisal, Shariatpur, Chandpur, Jamalpur, and Mymensingh, all with poverty incidence of over 50 percent. The incidence of extreme poverty is high in the same districts. Very low incidence of extreme poverty is seen in a number of districts such as Kushtia (with only 1 percent) and Noakhali (3%), Chittagong (4%), Dhaka (58%), Meherpur (5%), Naogaon (7%), Narail (8%), Gazipur (8%), Bogra (11%). There is an expected negative co-relation between level of urbanization and poverty and extreme poverty by district. However the co-relation is only 0.2l48 and – 0.2599 for poverty and extreme poverty respectively. Interestingly some of the districts with very low incidence of poverty do not have high level of urbanization or GDP. For example, Kushtia with only 1 percent of extreme poverty has an urbanization level of only 8.19 percent and GDP of 236 dollars. Similar is the situation in Meherpur district or Rangamati district.
Fig 4: Bangladesh: Extreme Poverty, 2010, Based on BBS, WFP and World Bank
Inequalities Exist in Urban Areas: All citizen’s have the right to basic needs such as to to food, clothing, education, health and shelters. Article 15 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh). Article 32 emphasizes protection of life and personal property. The right to political freedom or freedom of speech and belief are also universally recognized. Even if we limit our focus on only the commonly discussed five basic needs, we find that huge inequalities exist in terms of access to these basic needs by socioeconomic groups of people of a city, more prominently so on large metropolitan areas like Dhaka.
Access to any or all of the basic needs is made easy or difficult, largely through income. It is true that the average household or per capita income in urban (as well as rural areas) has improved many folds in Bangladesh during the last four decades. However, income inequalities have also increased. On a national scale income inequality is expressed by Gini ratio which for the urban areas has gone up from 0.38 in 1988-89 to 0.44 in 2000 (BBS, 2010), (indeed a much higher or adverse ratio than in rural areas). We do not have data since then, but there is no reason to believe that the ratio has improved. Bangladesh at Independence was a country of ‘Shared Poverty’, but four decades later, it is no longer so. A small but influential affluent class has emerged, a growing middle class is in sight, at the same time a huge lower income class and the poor and extreme poor are realities.
We have some income data for households of Dhaka city (excluding the poor and slum dwellers) from a study conducted in 2005 by Dr. Kamal Siddiqui and his team which shows that some 13% of the households in Dhaka had income below 5000 taka a month, 27% each had income of 5000-10,000 taka and 10,000-20,000 taka while 33% of the households had income above taka 20,000 a month. The poor category of households (13%) together with the slum population and other non-slum poor population (not covered by the household survey) would constitute nearly 40 percent of the total population of Dhaka.
The levels of income have definitely improved in each category of population, there are now possibly more people in the middle-class (including lower middle-class). We have three sets of data on the urban poor of Bangladesh, one from BIDS (2010) based on BBS, referring to the extreme poor, the second on urban slum population by BBS (2014) and third (earlier) on slums and non-slum population in urban areas of Bangladesh surveyed by NIPORT and other in 2006.
There are always complexities and confusions about data on urban poor and slum population. We may remain satisfied with the minimum of number of urban poor in Bangladesh which (at 21 % of the official BBS statistics) is at least 8 million and the slum population according to BBS, 2014 survey is 2.2 million, either figure is very large. Our interest is in describing the poor’s access to urban services. We will focus more on their housing rights but also touch upon the other needs
Rights of the Urban Poor
Right to stay in the city: The Constitution of Bangladesh has allowed all its citizens to move freely in any part of the country and to settle anywhere within legal limits (Art.icle 36). This freedom is available also for the poor to move to urban areas and to settle down. However, squatting on public or privately owned land without permission is not acceptable, although the poor, particularly rural destitute migrants are forced to adopt such a practice. This happens in Bangladesh as it happens in large cities of most of the developing countries in the third world.
Right to work: Article 20 (and also Article. 15) of the Bangladesh Constitution guarantees ‘Work’ as a right. Work for an income is essential to livelihood. However, for various reasons, (including absence of political commitment), the government cannot provide employment or work for all, neither can this be done by the forInal private sector. The urban poor naturally have to create their own work, which usually is io the unorganized informal sector.
Right to education and medical care: Article 15 of the constitution provides for basic necessities of life, including education and medical care. Unfortunately, in reality the urban poor are less covered by education service than the rural poor. Literacy rates in urban slums are terribly low and all children do not attend school of them work as urban child labourers, often in hazardous work.
Access to health service has improved, but prevalence of diseases in urban poor settlements are also high due to poor sanitation and other environmental problems.
Right to basic services: For survival and for good health one needs access to safe water and sanitation. These services are in short supply sanitation particularly is highly unhygienic, water supply is inadequate and expensive, except in a few squatter settlements in Dhaka like Korail, where Dhaka WASA has recently extended water service.
Right to Children’s Recreation: Although right to recreation is’ listed among the basic necessities of life in the Constitution; universally accepted as essential to healthy development of chil The lack of playgrounds and open spaces even in Dhaka is always lamented, but the fact that in Korail, the largest slum of’ where about 100,000 people live, there is no more than an multi-purpose open space. Where would their 20,000 children go for games and recreation’?
Right to vote and Right to participate in Decision Making: Bangladesh is a democratic country and every adult has a right to vote. The urban poor and poor in the slums, do enjoy the right to vote. The urban poor and poor in the slums, do however, however, the opportunity to participate in urban decision making is highly restricted. They are hardly consulted before any major development projects are undertaken.
Right to Organize: The Constitution in its Article 38, ensures its citizens to form associations for good reasons. The urban poor, particularly the slum dwellers, have been able to organize their own associations and collective forums. The largest of such organizations is the bMi `wi`ª ew¯Íevmx AwaKvi myiÿv mwgwZ NDBUS, which was formed in 2010 with support of the Centre for Urban Studies (CUS). NDBUS has made efforts to safeguard the interest of their members, numbering over a million, at different times. There are also other Samitis.
Right to Shelter: Shelter is one of the recognized five basic need rights. However, in the urban context right to shelter or housing need some special attention.
Housing is the most critical problem for the poor in cities specially in Dhaka, a mega city. In the absence of government support and in view of the extremely high price of land and exorbitantly high rent in formal and habitable private housing, the urban poor end up managing shelter in low quality, scantily serviced, privately owned slums or by organizing their own illegal habitats known as squatter settlements. The Centre for Urban Studies (CUS) in a survey conducted in 2005 found 4996 slum and squatter settlements in Dhaka city alone (Fig. 5), of which 74 % were slums on privately owned land and 26 % were squatter settlements on government land.
The largest of such a squatter settlement is Korail at Mahakhali, Dhaka (Fig. 6). It occupies about 94 acres of land belonging to three different government agencies and has a population of over 100,000, same as that of Male, the Capital of the Maldives.
Fig-5 Slums of Dhaka, Source: CUS, 2006
Fig-6 Korail Slum, Dhaka. Photo: Dr. Kim Streetfield, ICCDRB, 2005
While private slums are developed as sub-standard housing areas by slum entrepreneurs, or slum lords. Their tenants, the poor, are often asked to vacate their rooms, either to increase rent or for change of use of the land. The tenants are generally at the mercy the slum lord. In case of squatters, the occupants spend their life under constant threat of eviction. Although Article 15 of the Constitution promises shelter for all as a basic necessity of life and Article 32 emphasizes “protection of right to life and personal liberty”, evictions have been organized every now and then.
Slum dwellers have tried to mobilize resistance against such eviction moves, sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they did not. They had to take protection of the law, through writ petition, helped by eminent lawyers like Dr. Kamal Hossain, Barrister Sara Hossain and others. Some NGOs also helped. Lately, eviction threats are less, but not altogether absent. An effort was made by Mr. Saber Hossain Chowdhury, M.P. to enact a Bill in the Jatiyo Sangshad (“Prevention of eviction of slum dwellers and unlawful occupation of Government Land Bill 2009”) to prevent eviction without rehabilitation. The Supreme Court in a verdict in 1999 ordered preparation of a guideline of “no slum eviction without plan of rehabilitation:”
Unfortunately, there has been little progress with the proposed 2009 Bill.
The National Housing Policy 1993, (Clause 5.7.1) stated that no eviction be made without adequate rehabilitation. The Draft National Urban Sector Policy 2014 also proposed proper housing for the urban poor and against eviction without rehabilitation.
The proposals are yet to be formalized and approved by the government. Meanwhile the slum dwellers or the urban poor spend their life under bitter uncertainties and under extremely poor physical environmental conditions. Yet, these people, the lower 40 percent or at least the lowest 20 percent of urban population (in Dhaka, for example) keep the garment factories producing for export, transport workers, including rickshaw pullers, keep the city moving, construction worker build for others, small traders keep the markets active and the hundreds of thousands of domestic and other services providers keep middle class homes operational. The urban poor also add numbers to the mammoth public meetings of political parties.
Meanwhile, many among the urban poor have fared well, some indeed have done quite well. That is the virtue of urbanization. Its not all bad. Urbanization does help alleviation of poverty significantly.
