The emergence of this organisation was announced to Dhanmondites by the Ward Commissioner for Ward 49. In a letter dated 27 April 1999, he solemnly announced that the Dhanmondi Shamaj Kalyan Parishad had been bestowed the stamp-of-approval by the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC).

So they went ahead. We didn't have the social orientation to question how and why this sudden arrangement had been decided upon. After all, things like that are par for the course, to use a term from golf. That's how Road 2, Road 27, Mirpur Road and Sat Masjid Road suddenly morphed from being "residential" roads to "commercial" roads. With all the corruption and mayhem in the air, not to mention the absence of even an iota of concession on the part of our revered authorities to the notion that residents of Dhanmondi were in fact members of a tax-paying citizenry, and they had the right to be consulted, we merely hiccupped but did not protest.

Our experience is that the Mayor is way too busy with more important things than the issues that concern us, such as:

1. The typical apartment pays Taka 6,000 a year to the DCC. The DCC's tax base has exploded exponentially as the number of units on a single plot in Dhanmondi paying city taxes has multiplied from 1 to 20 or even 28. Consider, for example, the difference between what DCC used to receive when a single family owned the plot on Road 6, which would have been around Taka 6,000 per year, and the Taka 1,68,000 the corporation now raises from the same plot, where there are now 28 tax-paying units. Enough to make some of our VIP prisoners feel that they have somehow missed the boat.

2. Moreover, the DCC now has a second source to swell its coffers. It has taken to leasing out our playgrounds and open spaces to industrial fairs, boat clubs, tough sporting clubs in which young children have no role, restaurants, and endless streams of vendors. All this in total disregard of the crowding, noise and litter caused or what people who live in Dhanmondi think about the arrangement.

3. "Kor di, pai ki?" has been one of the long-standing slogans of the Dhanmondi Poribesh Unnayon Jote. What we would like to know is what exactly does the DCC do with all this money it extracts from Dhanmondi? As far as we can see, it certainly is not for any effort to clean or maintain facilities in our area. Our open spaces are filthy, the areas around dust-bins even filthier; our drains are clogged; our electricity supply entirely hit-or-miss; our water supply uneven; our roads pitted with pot-holes that regularly cause twisted ankles and broken legs etc.

All these calls for a raising of the ante from "What exactly does the DCC do with all our tax money" to: What's the DCC for? Does Dhaka city really need the DCC at all?

Since the Mayor is too busy to answer the question, we helplessly ask your readers to come forward with an answer or two.