What took the city dwellers by surprise was neither the volume nor the intensity of that rain, it was normal as usual, just 102 mm in this rainy season, but the impact which was almost apocalyptic. The city's overburdened transport network always takes the first hit, but this time the heart of the capital city, including the vast area from Mirpur to Sangsad Bhaban Avenue to Rampura to Sayedabad on one side, and from Farm gate to Kawran Bazar to Gulitstan to Hatkhola to Motijheel, stopped beating. Power grids collapsed at places, as usual, and commercial networks came to a standstill. The low-lying areas of the city like Basabo, Kamalapur, Shantinagar went under waist deep water, and even areas like Kakrail and Segun Bagicha went under knee-deep water.

The incessant downpour till 11 p.m. disrupted the commuter services and rickshaw movement, and hundreds of people were stranded at bus stands. With the collapse of the city's main transport network, most people out on the roads after the day's work were left with no choice but to wade their own way back home. The result was pandemonium on the streets with even the main roads, including the road dividers inundated, and traffic movement coming to a grinding halt.

The rainfall was not the highest ever recorded in either the country's, or even Dhaka's, history. The fact is : Dhaka, one of the most ill-planned cities in the world, has seen a consistent rise in terms of population over the last two decades. But, shockingly, the infrastructural requirements needed to cope with this soaring population have been ignored.

Hamstrung by medieval infrastructure, despite millions of taka being spent in different projects, the city unfolds a dismal picture in respect of water supply, sanitation facilities and drainage system. The sewage system covers only 60 percent of the city's population. About 50 percent of the urban waste is allowed to decompose and putrefy on the roadside. Quite a substantial portion of it goes into the open drains, choking them permanently and creating slush and stink all around. The result is: after even a mild shower, water cannot flow through the drains and inundates the road and the little open spaces left after the helter-skelter construction of apartment blocks in every visible open space in the city.

Horrifyingly, land and building mafias have made illegal encroachments and built apartment complexes in such low lying areas like Ashulia, Badda, Basundhara Kamalapur, Basabo and Mirpur, without leaving any arrangement for the outflow of either rainwater or waste water in normal situations. It is this part, and the central places like Dhanmondi, Gulistan and Shahbag where rampant development has been taking place in recent years, that was paralysed.

The fact is that the accumulated water had no outlet, in spite of several rivers like the Buriganga, Shitalakhya, Balu and Turag surrounding Dhaka. Experts say that it is the concretisation of Dhaka city that is responsible for the crisis, not the rainfall. And, to that extent, Rajuk's culpability for the crisis is total.

Perhaps the best proof of this is the land developed by filling marshy land for housing complexes in Ashulia, Tongi, Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Badda, Basabo, Basundhara and DND embankment area. All these complexes were built on marshes that surround the mouth of the Buriganga river. In the early 1990s, or even later, when Rajuk gave the nod to the land grabbers for filling up these low-lying areas, environmentalists had warned the government of a possible backlash. Because of the commercial promise they held, many such projects required no environmental clearance and, at the same time, the MoEF played second fiddle in exercising its authority. The ministry did not exert its authority to stop this foul game of filling the wetlands, and the city dwellers now have to bear the brunt of the past follies and mistakes of an uncaring government.

The choking of the rivers, of old canals like Begunbari khal, Baunia khal, and of Gulshan-Baridhara lake, Uttara lake and Hatirjheel lake, is considered one of the major reasons for the water-logging. For safety reasons, if nothing else, the banks of the rivers should have been kept clear, but they were taken up first on the pretext of providing vital services like establishing hats, bazaars and roads for the people, and also for mass oriented schemes like slum development and settlement. So builders took over the area, along with portions of the river. The first building or structure came on the riverbed itself, thereby restricting its flow and obstructing discharge of rainwater into the river.

Structures developed on the banks of the rivers Buriganga and Shitalakhya are good examples of uncontrolled development. And now these areas are concrete jungles. Every single inch of encroachment is responsible for the present crisis. Moreover, there had been cloudbursts in the past, but Dhakaites had never faced a situation like this. Years of bad development has been exposed by even such moderate rain The writing has been on the wall for a long time. So, whether it was 102 mm rain or less than that is not the issue. It has nothing to do with the quantity of water. It has everything to do with the faulty planning of the city.

Now the question is: why did this happen? Every city has its share of dissipation space -- wetlands, wastelands, mangroves, and even salt-pan lands if the city is adjacent to the sea. In other cases, wetlands and wastelands act like sponges and take the pressure out in such abnormal situations. Shockingly, watershed sand wetlands surrounding the city have given way to building complexes. It is happening all over the city, from the midlands to areas bordering the rivers and lakes.

In a sense, Dhaka is being strangulated. Whenever any agency gets clearance for any infrastructure project, it uses that project to create more land so that this extra land could be allotted to builders, and more money can be made. It is a carefully planned strategy. It is a transition from wetland to wasteland, and then to wealth land.

Let us now look at the land aspect. Initially, this newly created land from the wetland was kept as no-development zone, but in the past five years or so it has been opened for development and even urbanisation. This means concretization of these lands. And if you concretize land, then the soil is unable to soak in water. This is a double loss, because the underground aquifers are also not re-generated.

There must be an urban-land policy that provides social justice and treats land as a resource to be used for the benefit of the citizens. Not only that, there should also be a framework of urban institutions which answers the current and emerging requirements of a growing metro like Dhaka city, as well as a cadre of urban administrators who have the training and motivation to meet the challenges. Most importantly, there should be a human settlement technology which helps in the growth of harmonious communities, and a pattern for tapping financial resources and distributing them for balanced development. Unquestionably true, cities are the spiritual workshop of the nation. They are manifestations not only of physical architecture but also of the architecture of the mind. We can't let the rot persist.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.