It is an all-round betrayal. In the cities of the developed nations suburbia has come to mean clean air, cosy and generous housing, a quiet ambience. And security. Around Dhaka only slums are rising. No roads and sewers, no open space, and strewn all over is mean dingy housing. Whatever the situation in the inner-city area, the fringes are fast turning into stinking cesspools devoid of culture and civilisation and even the rudiments of what sustained the life that is now gone out — inter-person decency. Why had it to be so? Dhaka has been betrayed, the nation has been betrayed.

Can-a town grow on air? Or for that matter, on greed and foolishness or total disregard for the neighbour? Or in the absence of townplanning? The government has of course a townplarining wing but these fringes skirting Dhaka are no bene-ticiaries to the existence of that. It is RAJUK that vets all building plans from these areas. And the approval is not difficult to procure, what with some extra money or as a matter of course. The question is how does RAJUK approve any building in the fringes in the absence of any total planning of the whole area? This is wrong and must stop forthwith.

The problem goes deep and back to the metropolitan Dhaka Development Plan, said to have been completed in 1996 and yet 26 of its segments but two still waiting for the DAP or Detailed Area Planning. Completion of the DAP for the whole DMDP area may take another ten to twelve years. So what would the owners of property on the fringes do? How is RAJUK to approve a building without an area plan? Most of their approved buildings run the risk of being built on projected roads and parks and schools and markets. The entire eastern swath, from Tongi Bridge to Demra is being allowed to degenerate with unplanned structures in the most anarchic fashion.

Saddest is the tale of the Keranigani Thana. Just across the Buriganga, it was a virtual virgin country with a terrine cultural past. With imagination and vision, this vast low-lying area between the Buriganga and the Dhaleswari could literally be turned into a Venice. Thanks to successive governments and RAJUK in its many versions and all the abortive master plans there an inferno keeps on shaping.

If there is a government there, it must wake up to what is happening to the capital city and its future.