“The organised encroachment of the powerful”—Everyday practices of public space and water supply in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper investigates everyday struggles in claiming access to public space and water supply in a low-income settlement of Dhaka, Bangladesh. It looks at the rationality, processes and outcomes of informal negotiations. The empirical findings confirm the contested nature of access to public space and water supply and demonstrate how negotiations in an unbalanced power structure guarantee privileged access for a few local political leaders based on social and political relationships. This is at the cost of the exclusion of the majority. Such an “organised encroachment of the powerful” can be understood as an addition to Bayat's notion of a counter politics, the “quiet encroachment of the ordinary.” This paper advocates the need for complete understanding of context-specific power structures as this may help to reduce the threat of theoretical overgeneralisation and promote a more inclusive and just approach to urban planning.

Keywords:

• Appropriation
• governance
• power
• public space
• water
• urban informality

Acknowledgements

This paper originated from the research project “The Struggle for Urban Livelihoods and the Quest for a Functional City” conducted at the School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). We would like to thank our local research partner, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), our field assistants for their cooperation and support of our work, and the four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and constructive critique which enabled us to further improve this paper.

Notes

1. At the time of field investigations Dhaka City Corporation still existed; on 29 November 2011 it was split into Dhaka North Corporation and Dhaka South Corporation.

2. In Dhaka, the thana refers to the area of jurisdiction of a police station. It normally comprises several wards and is also a level of organisation of the political parties.

3. Public space is here understood as all space that is outdoors and outside of private housing compounds. This physical delineation, including streets, footpaths, vacant plots and squares, needs to be operationalised by reference to ownership and access. Public space can be in the ownership of the state or private individuals—as long as the space is accessible to a wider public it remains a “public space” regardless of ownership. Access arrangements to this generally public space are then subject to negotiations, as for example discussed in this paper.

4. At the beginning of this research until December 2008 Bangladesh was governed by a military-backed caretaker government, after the elections in January 2007 had been boycotted by the Awami League (AL) due to suspicion of fraud by the then-ruling Bangladesh National Party. After almost two years of caretaker government, general elections took place in December 2008. Since January 2009, the country has again been ruled by an elected government consisting of an AL-led twelve-party alliance.

5. In the area studied, 50 vendors supply water to about 7,700 households and to businesses needing water (e.g. restaurants, vegetable shops). About 85% of total households have direct water connections to their room clusters, while the households living in the rest of the room clusters collect drinking water from nearby water reservoirs and vending locations. Several of these vending points offer regular bathing facilities. The size of the water business varies, with the largest vendor supplying almost 700 households and the smallest one only seven households. More than half of the room clusters have boreholes in their courtyards that during the rainy season additionally supply water for non-drinking purposes at no cost to the residing households. Boreholes are, however, only usable in the rainy season. Despite many toilets emptying out into the lake, many households living very close to the lake use its water for cleaning utensils and washing clothes.

6. The price differences can be explained by variations in the amount of water transported through different water connections to room clusters. A five-minute daily water supply amounts to between 57 and 136 litres and is shared by four to seven individuals. Per capita daily water consumption in this bosti is therefore only between 8 litres and 44 litres, which is further reduced by regular disruptions in supply on three to six days a month. The average per capita water consumption in non-bosti settlements where DWASA provides a direct supply is about 115 litres a day (Asian Development Bank, 2004, p. 3). The above figures of daily supply sum up to a variation in monthly supplies of 1,700 to 4,100 litres for a price of 90 to 130 Taka. Accordingly, the unit price of water in the room clusters of this bosti is about four to thirteen times higher than what the DWASA charges for a regular supply to non-bosti inhabitants. Water prices at vending locations also vary depending on availability of supply and season. A vessel of water (about 20 litres) and a bath (using about 30 to 40 litres of water) at the vending point cost between one and five Taka.

7. During the field investigation period (January 2008 to October 2010), 100 Taka (BDT) was equal to between US$1.40 and US$1.44.