Japanese therapy and British diplomatic savvy

Last week, a group of Japanese university students swept clean some busy dirt-filled street corners around Farmgate. They demonstrated a rare humility, dignity of labour and empathy for Dhaka dwellers' urban plight. It was a humbling, endearing and eye-opening experience for onlookers.

Michael Thomsett, a British-born American author, once said: "The trouble with true humility is that you can't talk about it". The Japanese students are not talking about their humility but we are. 

Please note that the Japanese do-gooders represent Tokyo, which is as populous as Dhaka but ranks as one of the toppers among the most livable cities in the world. So they have been eloquent ambassadors of cleanliness, needing no hymn of praise but of course a thousand followers to translate their symbolic act into feverish dynamism of our own. 

Let's cite one extraordinary example of Japanese government's tangible support towards waste management in Dhaka. It gave city corporation 100 pink coloured dumpers mounted on trucks that crane out garbage and squeezes the water and sewage to place the treated stuff for onward disposal. This happens to be the only device connecting us to any semblance of scientific garbage management befitting 21st century. In other areas, it is an echo from antiquity, as it were! 

Jawad Mubashawir, founder of the project named Clean Up Dhaka, aims with the foreign students to foster critical mass of public awareness and community cooperation for waste management and cleanliness of the city. More foreign students are expected to visit Dhaka as part of the initiative that has just kicked in. That there is local brain behind the project means there is an ownership. 

You can't outsource cleanliness; it has to be internally ensured and provided in a bottom-up process beginning with personal and family hygiene through community cooperation to state management via the city corporations. 

Perhaps we were waiting for a therapeutic application on the adrenaline glands for the city mayors to exert themselves to the formidable two-fold task: Scientific waste management and disposal topped by a radical improvement in the dire sanitary condition of the city. It is a shame that in both areas we languish in a primitive state. It is no less shameful that we do not see any human chain formed to lead the way for public resistance against living with garbage.

Dhaka city produces 5,000 tonnes of solid waste per day. Of this, two-thirds are euphemistically said to be collected and disposed of! As much as one-third is left to poisonously intrude into the environment directly. There are two dump yards -- Matuail and Amin Bazar -- located widely apart. And between them all you see are big open bins occupying the narrow width of the roads belching toxicity.

Mayor Annisul Haq wishes to set up 50 transfer zones between the two major dump yards, sounding a bit ambitious there given the pervading reluctance of citizens to part with any land for the collection depots. But that is just part of the problem; the major menace lies in the open air landfills (dumping grounds) spewing out noxious pollutants into the air and onto the ground. 

A big collateral issue stems from a complete absence of any government or corporation efforts to recycle the wastes from the dump yards. Where recycling is a big business, it is left to rag pickers who make a livelihood out of the garbage on the sides. If large scale scientific recycling were undertaken it could employ thousands of youngsters with export potential thrown in, apart from producing biogas like China.

Two other sources of dangerous living are rooted in liquid industrial effluents and clinical wastes from hospitals. We never even have attempted to scientifically treat, decontaminate and dispose them of to keep the environment safe for healthy living.

These real concerns should occupy the attention of our leaders. For, we don't want Dhaka to echo John Gunther's description of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, "looking as if it has been dragged piecemeal from an aeroplane carrying rubbish."

Nor would we savour American architect and realtor Lloyd Wright's strange solution to a troubled city: "The only way to improve Pittsburgh would be to abandon it." 

Those two cities have come a long way from their bleak days. Why can't we?

On the national plane, we have had an embalming waft of sophisticated British diplomacy from UK Minister of State for International Development Desmond Swayne. The gist of what he said rang out with a great meaning for our future. He maintained that Bangladesh, having successfully met the millennium development goals (MDGs), must now strive to attain sustained development goals (SDGs) in the next decade. For this, the country needs good governance and strong civil society, the British minister added. Good governance means upholding the rule of law and according protection to civil liberties. But the emphasis on 'strong civil society' is particularly noteworthy since a hope is being apparently pinned on this as a safeguard for democracy and progressive society. 

The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.