Prof. Nazrul Islam :
(From previous issue)
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.
(Concluded)
(From previous issue)
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.
(Concluded)
