THE two photographs that New Age published on May 3 and 4 lay bare a crisis where regular rainfall and unchecked waste disposal combine to paralyse city life. All this also show how drains fail and the choking of canals continues. The May 3 photograph taken at Demra shows stagnant, polluted water collecting along a road after rain, suggesting a drainage system that has failed to flush out the collected rainwater, turning a public space into a potential health hazard. The May 4 photograph taken at Keraniganj shows heaps of garbage, largely polythene waste, piled beneath a bridge on Shubadhya Canal, choking the flow of a dying tributary of the River Buriganga. Experts repeatedly point to the narrowing and obstruction of canals through indiscriminate dumping and encroachment as a central driver of seasonal water stagnation, especially in low-lying areas under the jurisdiction of Dhaka’s south city authorities. Such stagnation not only disrupts mobility but also accelerates public health risks, especially the spread of vector-borne diseases such as dengue during and after the monsoon. The photographs reflect a city where water has lost its natural channels of movement.
What the photographs point to is a deep structural failure in how Dhaka’s urban water system is governed and maintained. The recurring inundation of roads in areas such as Demra and the steady choking of canals in Keraniganj suggest a system where drains, canals and waste management no longer function as a connected network. Over time, the canals that once acted as natural discharge routes into the Buriganga basin have been progressively narrowed, fragmented or rendered inactive through encroachment and continuous dumping of solid waste, particularly polythene. The drainage within residential and commercial zones has also expanded without proportional investment in outflow capacity or routine maintenance. Responsibility is dispersed across multiple institutions — city authorities, water and sanitation authorities and environmental regulators; yet, no mechanism ensures coordinated oversight of the full water flow cycle from local drains to canal systems. This institutional fragmentation allows maintenance to remain reactive, limited to clearance after visible flooding rather than sustained prevention. Meanwhile, urban waste generation continues to rise, with disposal systems failing to intercept it before it enters open drains and canals. The result is a cycle where intervention exists in fragments, but system-wide functionality steadily erodes, which makes each rainfall an exposure of accumulated administrative and infrastructural neglect rather than an isolated climatic event.
What is required is sustained protection of drain and canal networks with strict enforcement against dumping, regular de-silting and coordinated waste management across agencies. Without treating the network as continuous urban infrastructure rather than emergency sites, each rainfall will keep exposing the same avoidable paralysis, deepening health risks and environmental decline.
