Migrants’ tales – Mixed fortunes in the city

According to the UN, there are about 200 million people each year involved in migration. In many Asian countries, migration towards megacities or even to other countries and continents plays a major role in socio-economic development. As Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, I wondered how people with the lowest incomes who choose to migrate deal with the challenges that migrants frequently face, such as the risk of homelessness, a lack of social networks, the temporary loss of resources and incomes, and difficult travel conditions. For this reason, I decided to have a closer look at the issue by talking to people inside slums in a city close to Dhaka, called Narangayanj.

(People are committing to different kinds of work every day to earn a living)

Part I: A tale of two migrations
An elderly lady in a sari receives us in her small house. Little light enters the tiny room enclosed by brick walls and scarce furniture. She invites us with a smile on her face to take a seat on her bed, while she stays sitting on the floor. A welcoming atmosphere surrounds us and diminishes the sorrowful impression of poverty that I initially felt.The wrinkles on Monoara Begum’s face give proof of what she has been through in her life. She was married for 31 years to her husband, who later divorced her and supports her with 20 Euros a month. During Bangladesh's War of Independence in 1971, she came to the slum as a young girl to join her future husband. Like many other citizens in the slum, she has had to find many ways of earning a living. Similar to her husband, she was at first engaged in day labor, being hired every morning again for minor jobs in the area. Initially she was working in the garment industry. Being somewhat better off, she later found a job as a maid close by. Finally, together with her husband, she tried to go abroad to the Middle East to search for a better life. This is a strategy adopted by many people in Bangladesh who seek informal paths of immigration as a golden opportunity to make the transition from poverty to relative wealth. They tried to escape with the help of a travel agent to ease their path into a better life. Their ambition to leave was cut short by a deceitful agent who stole their money. Without children, Monoara says she has no more plans to look for ways to improve her life. Though she is disappointed by how many things have turned out in her life, she seems to be content with the circumstances in which she is now living. The little money that she has left to maintain her being did not detain her from offering to serve us a meal, while smiling at me throughout our conversation. Facing the living conditions of the people in the slum, they seem to renounce the further search for better conditions, but are content with the improvements they achieved by moving to this area and accept their respective fate.

Author: Carolin Braun

Beside the tracks

(At the Gandaria station.)

The railroad between Dhaka and Narayanganj is not only the link of two prospering cities, ensuring the flow of people and goods. It is also the home of thousands of families who live and work besides the tracks. Some of the settlements are very compact bamboo-tin structures; others are scattered camps where people live in improvised tents.

(Scattered tents beside the railroad in the Gandaria area.)

I jump off the train just one stop ahead from the main station in the Gandaria area, in the outskirts of Dhaka. People watch the train slowly moving off from the station heading southeast. Fully emerged, the kids gaze up at the kites as they dance up and down in the smooth breeze. Aisha and Mamuni, two kids from the neighborhood get attracted by the ‘bideshi’ who is now walking along the tracks to make pictures of their area. Two pairs of big deep brown eyes follow my move.

(Looking inside a home of four people.)

They show me the place where they live. In this tiny tent, erected on the naked ground Mamuni and Aisha are living together with their mother and father who are now at work. The heap of concrete bags and blue plastic blankets look like they were just thrown randomly on the improvised bamboo structures. But when I shake it, it appears stable enough to even survive a heavy rain fall. Although their parents can afford food they do not have the money to send their kids to school, making the children waste their time along the tracks. Around fifty households live at this place between the tracks on the one and the street on the other side. Originally, all people came from different villages in the North of the Gaibandha Disctrict. After the waters of the Brahmaputra River flushed away their lands and houses about fifteen years ago they had to move and founded a new nameless village within the city. Before the flood most of them lived from farming, now people survive on rickshaw-pulling, day laboring and begging.

(The author surrounded by locals from the area in an interview with Lalmir (on the very right).)

This is the case of Lalmir. He works as a rickshaw-puller from 2 pm to 10.30 pm, so in the morning he can relax. Lalmir’s tent is located on the last edge of the camp and only two steps away from the track. “As long as I am living here never an accident has happened. Even the kids are conscious about the threat”, he tells. “In the night we do not get bothered by any noise, because the last train comes by around 10.30pm.” When he tells about his kids and that none of the four are going to school, somebody from the crowd around us interrupts: “See. These are the dangerous people for our country, producing many kids but do not send them to school!” Besides Lalmir, the whole crowd is laughing mischievously. Eventually a small smile appears also at his face. ‘Harsh, but true’, I thought to myself. Perhaps Lalmir had the same idea.

The guy who interrupted disappears in a narrow road between the huts on the other side of the tracks. On that side the situation looks quite different. Houses are made from tin and bamboo and look much better compared to the improvised tents.

(Full of proud: Hafeza in front of her house on the opposite site of the railroad.)

In fact the families there are better off, as I learn from Hafeza and her husband Ali Hussein. By steamer, they both moved from Barisal after the big floods in 1988. “We came almost naked. We could not even save the dishes”, Hafeza moans. Alone in the urban environment they had to build up their new lives from nothing. But soon after their arrival they find a good way to make a living. When I meet the couple they are busy with drying up dark little essence sticks on the tracks. A company provides them with straw and coal and they put these two together and sell it back to the company which then adds the smelly essences that make these sticks so popular all over Asia.

(Hafeza dries up essence sticks.)

They receive ten Taka per kg, giving them enough to afford the small luxuries they enjoy in their home. With 700 Taka a month, Ali Hussein “manages” from neighboring plots, the electricity for the fan, a bulb and water. When I ask about the family Hafeza proudly responds: “We have five daughters and one son. Three daughters are already married and two are going to school.” Her son also got married recently and is working in a car workshop. When they were farmers in Barisal, Hafeza and Ali were better off, she tells, “but we are happy here. We have a business close to our house and our kids are well.”

Taking all of this into account I leave the area a bit puzzled: as I wonder where Hafeza and Ali get the power from to rebuild their lives, whilst Lalmir and his family have barely managed to improve their conditions over the last 15 years.

Earning a living in Dhaka slums

Having spent much of the last three years working in various “slums” across Dhaka, I have come to resent the use of the word “slum” – too often it has been used as a term that instantaneously strips the dignity from the millions of people who live in these areas, and who regardless of their living conditions live proud and humble lives living in circumstances in which we ourselves would never be able to survive. We can help overcome by not thinking of “slums” as an entity, but to take a deeper look at the lives, struggles and successes of their residents.

From the outside, low-income settlements look primarily like residential areas, row upon row of corrugated iron shacks squeezed tightly together on top of poorly-serviced land. It is near impossible, however, to find a low-income settlement that is entirely residential, with even the smallest of settlements having a few tea shops and grocery stalls to serve the local residents. A deeper investigation into employment among the urban poor in four low-income settlements of Dhaka, however, revealed the number and variety of businesses and enterprises through which people forge their livelihoods and struggle to improve their households. Here I take a brief look at some of the entrepreneurs and their businesses that I came across during my fieldwork.

The more expected businesses to come across in urban poor communities are the stalls and shops serving the communities with all their daily needs. The size and variety of market shops in Karail, the biggest low-income settlement in Dhaka, was surprising, however. A huge and bustling market lies at the centre of the settlement, selling not only fresh and dry foods, flours and rice, but also saris and lungis, jewellery, make-up, and even some electronics goods. Even amongst the more residential sections of the settlement, housing is interspersed with tea stalls and grocery shops and shops selling firewood, and in some busy areas this stretches to pharmacies, tailors, rickshaw garages, restaurants, and more.

(Rhuma, another of our respondents, sits in her tailor’s shop, through which she supports her family. Her husband is ill and unable to work regularly, so she is the main-income earner in her household)

The most unexpected businesses however, are not visible walking up and down the main footpaths of the settlements, and you only find them when you set foot in some of the houses off the beaten track. Walking through a gate in our first settlement we came across our first such business, greeted by the sight of a small courtyard, or uthan, taken up by three large cows calmly chewing their cud as they inspected the new visitors. We discovered dairy farmers like this in three of the settlements, who supported their households by rearing and breeding cows, and by regular sales of milk and dung, which can be used as fuel.

(Saddam Hussein (yes, really!) stands beside the cows which provide the household income. His father bought these loans with an initial NGO loan, which is now fully repaid. Now they are earning a good monthly income from these cows)

In two of the settlements, a regular sight was seeing women outside of their rooms embroidering salwar kameez, a flexible job which allows them to supplement their household income at the same time as looking after their children and household duties. It was still a surprise, however, to step into one room and to see large-scale embroidery businesses to be running in two adjacent rooms of one settlement. Stepping through the door we could not miss the large sari stretched across a large embroidery frame with around 10 or 15 children sitting around it and adorning it with sequins and other embroideries. In this settlement there were three such businesses through which households were slowly improving their household income and integrating with the outside economy where they sold their saris.

(Ibrahim (back right) displays one of his finished saris, which he sells outside the settlement to middle-income commercial areas. He has ten boys living and working with him in his house here. He has been running the business for the last year, and has improved his household in this time)

In a nearby settlement, we came across an even more unexpected sight, walking into a room in which 15 or 20 women were sitting around baskets of human hair, untangling it and sorting it into different lengths. The businessman, Mustak Ahmed, bought hair from beauty parlours across the city, sorted and cleaned it, and then sold it on to national and international buyers, for up to 10,000 taka a kilogram. Not only had he reinvested and expanded his business greatly, in the process making a healthy income for his household, he was also providing employment – and relatively good wages – for a large number of women in the community, close to their home and with relatively flexible hours.

(One of Mustak Ahmed’s cul baccha (or hair selectors), who refine and sort lengths of hair. He employs 15 women permanently, who are better for this kind of work with their small fingers)

Unfortunately these success stories do not extend to all, however. The majority of poor households cannot save the capital required to start-up and run a small business. In other cases, rising costs were destroying people’s business prospects. Walking into one room we saw an elderly man crouched over a wooden slab making tiny sandals. Abdul Rashid has made children’s sandals for the last 9 years. He used to be able to support his household through this enterprise, but now he can only manage around 1,000 taka (around $15) a month and must rely on the incomes from other household members. Recent price increases have been devastating to his business, with all of his raw materials – brightly coloured plastic, glue, cardboard and plastic piping -having more than doubled. Meanwhile, he is unable to increase the price of a finished pair of sandals as this would make them unaffordable to the income of his customers – poor urban residents whose incomes have also been squeezed by price increases in household essentials.

What lessons can we learn from both these successes and obstacles faced by businesses run by the urban poor? While I have focused here on small businesses, my wider research has also focused on two other main employment categories, namely unskilled labour and formal sector jobs. In all categories you can find households who have been able to improve their household situation through the income generated by this employment, and those who have not. It is only by trying to understand the ways in which poor urban citizens make their livings, and the barriers that they face to improving their household situation, that development interventions can start to help turn more of these livelihoods into success stories.

Author Nicola Banks

Dialectic discourse in Rally Bagan

(Mohammad Sujon and Ashan Ullah sitting in their tea shop in Rally Bagan.)

Quite by chance, at a tea stall in Rally Bagan (Narayanganj), I get involved in an interesting little argument while having a relaxed cup of tea with the two gentlemen who run the shop. It is an oppressively hot day and I ask this and that to make small talk. But the question: “How old is that slum?” suddenly provokes a vexed discussion between the two men and the people who are bunched up around me and my translator. Bengali words are flying quickly between Mohammad Sujon and his uncle Ashan Ullah. Soon, the people who are standing close by all have their own opinion to share. I do not understand anything and even my translator can hardly follow. It turns out that the term “slum” (bustee) is the bone of contention. While Mohammad considers Rally Bagan a “quarter”, Ashan insists it is a “slum” in which they are living. In fact, the British company Rally Brothers built brick-made houses to accommodate workers from their big jute mill more than one hundred years ago, and Mohammad argues that a quarter is “a place where the employees live”. Although the Rally Brothers and the major jute industry of Narayanganj are long gone, the place still looks different from the “slums”, he maintains. In contrast, Ashan insists that “slums” are “places where the poor people live, so Rally Bagan is also a bustee”. The audience accepts both arguments as true. Eventually, the discussion leads to the broad consensus that Rally Bagan is a quarter (for historical reasons) but also a slum. People are poor and crowded together, and, as with other slums, extensions made from bamboo and tin can be seen, but to view Rally Bagan only as a slum is to neglect its long and unique history.

United in Poverty

(At the entry gate of Patgodam.)

In the Patgodam poor community (Mymensingh) I get introduced to a totally different aspect of urban poverty in Bangladesh. The houses made from bricks are rotten and it appears to me that the walls could collapse at any time. The narrow roads between the houses are muddy and covered by garbage. The place is crowded. At first view it seems to be a slum like many others that I saw in Bangladesh, albeit one of the worse ones though. But that is only half the story, a fact I realize when I spot a big sign, which says: “Stranded Pakistani General Repatriation Committee”. “This is an organization of the Urdu speaking minority. We call them Biharis, but they have many names”, my translator answers my questioning look.

(One of the "main roads" of the settlement.)

I meet Mohammad Shakir Ali, a leader of the community. When he introduces himself I am rather confused. He was born in 1944 in Uttar Pradesh (India), speaks Urdu, Hindi and Bangla and seems to be a smart and educated guy. Why is he working as a night guard and lives in this miserable place? The story of him and his family is the story of three countries and a lot of tears and blood. During the unrest after the partition of India in 1947, his father and his family escaped the communal riots that threatened their lives and came to Mymensingh in then called East Pakistan. From zero they had to build up a new life in a new environment far away from their ancestral homeland. He joined the Pakistan Railway Company and so did his son Shakir Ali when he was sixteen in 1960.

(Shakir Ali, the local leader of the community in his house.)

Shakir Ali made a good living as train driver, so the Railway Company provided him with a house and a comfortable salary. But in 1971, history again turned against his family. The liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistani domination jailed him in the slum where he still lives today. In the first place, it was for his own good to stay here. Bengali “freedom fighters” branded all Biharis as enemies of newly born Bangladesh and collaborators with the Pakistani army, killed many of them in revenge of war crimes done by the Pakistanis and evicted them from their living places. The Indian army, which helped Bangladesh to get independence, “resettled” about 600 Urdu speaking families in Mymensingh who were scared and scattered all over the town. Their lives were saved but almost the whole community had lost property, jobs and standing overnight. Calm and without bitterness Shakir Ali tells me how he lost family members and friends.When the community found itself unwelcome, unsecured and reckoned as non-Bangladeshis anyways they considered themselves as “Stranded Pakistanis” hoping that Pakistan would take them to its territory, providing them safety. Indeed, after the independence of Bangladesh the government in Islamabad evacuated some 100.000 officials and loyalists to former West-Pakistan, amongst them also many Biharis. Shakir Ali also applied for departure to Pakistan in the 1970s, but that has never happened. Just one of his four brothers could manage to go. Since then the family was divided while he stayed and kept the history of the Biharis in Mymensingh. Nowadays Shakir is on the secretariat of the “Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee”, an organization that pushed for a suitable solution of the Bihari issue from the beginning. As the name implies, the main objective in the past was to “repatriate” the community into Pakistan, although most of them have never been there. Still the name is the same, but the attitude changed over three decades: “We no longer want to go back to Pakistan. All our children were born and raised here. We want to be accepted as Bangladeshi citizens”, Shakir says. He thinks that, once they are accepted as citizens they will get some kind of compensation for their lost properties. For more than 36 years the whole Urdu-speaking community had no status at all in the Bangladeshi society, were in fact literally stateless, neither Indian, nor Pakistani, nor Bangladeshi citizens. Although they got enrolled in the voter's list during the last election after a remarkable High Court decision (2007) and therefore are legally seen as part of the Bangladeshi people, the situation in different camps all over the country is hardly becoming better. The same applies for Padgodam where most of the people have Voter's Cards now but still only five places to get drinking water for more than 3,500 people living here.

(One of the few places where the community can get access to drinking water.)

Following an invitation for tea I sit together with Mohammad Hussein and his family. During the War of Liberation he was 17 years old. He spent his entire live in Patgodoums, and is currently working as night guard in a private market. Mohammad also lost everything during the bloody days of 1971 but he somehow made his peace with the past. “What can I do? There is no alternative to this place to live.” However, his children want to get out of the poor conditions. The younger generation did not witness the events that happened in 1971 and played no role in it but they have to manage the present situation.

(Mohammad Hussein's family sitting in their home. From the left: Hira, Mohammad, Liza and her mother.)

Mohammad’s daughter Liza already realized that the key to escape the slum is education. But in school the young Urdu speakers do not feel fully accepted by their classmates and teachers, the eighteen years old girl tells me. “The Bengalis are not interested in mixing up with us people. Also the teachers are treat us differently,” she says. Her cousin Hira dropped out of school because he did not feel welcome there. Nevertheless, Liza set her priorities and continues to study. She just deals with the situation by staying with her Bihari friends. Apart from going to school she never leaves the slum because especially her mother is afraid of “bad speaking” that could occur. However, to mix up with the Bengalis is not becoming easier this way. But one day she wants to leave the community to study at the Mymensingh University, following her successful brother Raju. He already managed his Engineering diploma (mechanical). But when the family shows me his CV I realize that Bangla and English, but not Urdu is mentioned there as language skill and the address at the head of the document is different from the place in Mymensingh where his family actually lives. “We have to hide our identity, if we want to mix up with the Bengali people. Otherwise they will not accept us,” the father Mohammad Hussein comments.

(From the left: Golati, her son, Bengali neighbour Halimat and her daugther.)

Although the Bihari community here is quite isolated and homogenous there are some Bengalis who are also living here. I meet Golati, who is originally from Sherpur, together with her eldest daughter Mousumi at their place. Golati came here for her love 15 years ago. Because her husband works as an assistant on a bus he is frequently going to Sherpur and met Golati’s brother who has a tea store there. The two men made friendship and Golati got introduced to her husband when he visited her family. After he asked to marry her, she agreed and moved with him to Mymensingh. For her family there was no problem with that. The first two years she felt uncomfortable because she could not speak Urdu and the living conditions were worse than what she was used to. “I feel comfortable now, because it is my husband’s house”, Golati tells, “Because we do not have a better alternative we consider this as a good place.” She thinks that the mix-up between Bengali and Bihari people today is much easier than in the past. For her livelihood that fact does not matter too much. “The relationship with the neighbors is not the problem. We have many other problems: too many kids, bad sanitation and housing conditions and insufficient water supply”, Golati tells me. It appears to me that the conditions of poverty unite people wherever they are from and whatever language they speak.

Some resources for further research in the web:

Many reports and documents on the issue (especially: related High Court decisions) on: http://www.statelesspeopleinbangladesh.net/home.php

Website about a documentary on the Bihari issue from 2007:
http://www.swapnabhumi.com/

"Imperfect World 2009", with special features about the Biharis during the last parliamentary elections:
http://shafiur.i-edit.net/?cat=34

An Oasis of Calm and Space in Dhaka's biggest slum

(Saifur, a carpenter from Korail, surrounded by kids on a bamboo platform in the Banani Lake.)

If you go from Gulshan to Banani using the newly built concrete bridge, you can see the outskirts of the Korail slum on the other side of the lake. Beyond the lakeside huts - which are erected on bamboo pillars - there are the homes of about 100.000 people. Several times I crossed the bridge and saw people putting pillars into the muddy lakebed as a “foundation” for new houses. However, when I visit Korail it turns out that the latest structure erected is not a house but an oasis of calm and space for the people of Korail.
Although there is a kind of square at the southern edge of Korail which is used for cultural programs, sports and markets, open space is very limited. The immediate impression is that a place where people could relax in calm surroundings, enjoy an open view or even undertake a romantic liaison would be hard to find in such a crowded area.

The same idea occurred to Khondaker Hasibul Kabir, a young architect lecturer from BRAC University who has been living in Korail for two years. Before he lived in an apartment but felt lonely there and incomplete without a garden to look after. However, once he moved to this area he discussed a lot of ideas together with the community and a platform made from bamboo (where I meet him) is one such idea that became reality. Local carpenters (mistri) contributed labor to the project, while Kabir sponsored it from his private pocket. One of the carpenters is Saifur who I also meet at the platform. He brought about twenty years of working experience into the project - he has never been to school but learnt by doing from the very beginning of his working life. He has been living in Korail since 1991 and is well known in the community. Usually, people call him if they want to have something built and together with the client he plans the design and the costs of the material. However, sometimes he is given full responsibility and looks after the whole construction process from start to finish.

(People from Korail cutting the first sod for the platform.)

“The most difficult thing with these kind of structures is the starting process”, Saifur explains. First they had to build a scaffold from which to put the pillars into the mud. After that the pillars were linked by cross-bars to ensure the strength of the structure and a bamboo platform was set on top of it. Finally a roof with both bamboo and plastic layers was made and a small fence put up.

(During the construction process.)

It took three months to finish the construction. Some private businessmen disturbed the process with a claim for the land where the platform was built. “When they saw that we do not want anything commercial, they never came back and we just continued our work after a while”, Kabir says.The purpose of the platform is as a playground for children and a place for people to sit, relax and enjoy the view over Gulshan Lake. At night a few people also sleep here. “Sometimes wedding couples also come here to get themselves photographed with Gulshan in the background”, Kabir tells me.

(A girl from Korail lounges on the platform, looking at Gulshan.)

I can easily lounge here for a whole Friday afternoon surrounded by kids and other people who are constantly coming and going. I almost forget that the biggest slum in Dhaka is only a stone’s throw away.

Sand Business

(View on an embankment in Mymensingh. On the left is the Kalli Bari community, on the right the Brahmaputra River.)

/

When I enter the Kalli Bari community in the Northeastern part of Mymensingh I find the roads muddy after two days of rain. Until one year ago people lived directly next to the Brahmaputra River and were threatened by floods during every rainy season. Now the settlement occupies a narrow strip located along a recently built embankment. That the river is not only a threat but also a source of income I quickly learn here. The word ‘river-bank’ makes sense in two different ways in Kalli Bari.

(A ridge of sand silt in Kalli Bari.)

A heavy yellow truck with charming paintings on all its surfaces struggles to escape the mire. Its engine revs noisily. Eventually, the truck wrests itself from the mud and departs with a load of fresh fine sand, exposing a small ridge of grey sand-silt to my view. Mixed water and sand is pumped through pipes from a boat in the river onto the top of the ridge. The sand-silt then dries as the water drains off through other pipes on the bottom of the ridge and returns to the river. What remains is fine grey river sand ready for construction purposes.

(Abdul Modtaleb (right, with the white shirt) is supervising the sand business in Kalli Bari.)

I meet Abdul Modtaleb working among others on top of the silt. He is the supervisor of the sand business at this part of the river, with experience stretching back more than 15 years. Abdul lives here with his wife, kids and parents. Because they did not have land in their home village his parents moved to Mymensingh in 1974. Before he started the sand business he was working in a saw mill factory. He makes around 500 Tk. a day now and this is enough to maintain himself and his family. “The price of the sand from here is 1.5 Tk. per cubic foot (about 28 litres), but 40 percent of the proceeds from every cubic foot sold goes to a private investor. We can keep the other 60 percent. Business is going well.” The investor holds a leasing contract with the Pourashava of Mymensingh for the rights to the extraction of sand on this particular stretch of the Brahmaputra River. At the same moment as Abdul is explaining how well his business flows, the stream of silt suddenly gets interrupted. “What is happening? Work finished today?”, I ask.“No, no this is normal. Every 20 to 30 minutes the machine gets stuck”, he replies.

(On the boat. The filter in the middle of the pipe gets stuck every 20 to 30 minutes because of garbage which is also extracted from the riverbank.)

To discover the reason why the silt flow stopped I ask him to show me the heart of his business. We cross the embankment, following the pipes down to the river. A small raft brings us to two boats which are tied together forming a catamaran. When we step on the boat we meet Kanchan, the machine operator. He is busy unhooking wet garbage from a small metal container incorporated within an arrangement of two engines, rods, pipes and arbors. A smell of diesel is in the air although the engine is not running. Everything looks quite improvised. Before the silt is pumped through the pipe to the ridge at the riverbank, it passes a filter. “The problem is that there is garbage all over the riverbed, so that the machine has to be stopped to free the filter from the garbage. We have to stop it every half an hour.”, Kanchan says. He is about twenty years old and has been working with machines since he was twelve. He has never been to college but he understands the kinks of this Chinese engine. He has learnt by doing. At the beginning of his working life, Kanchan learnt about electric wiring and air conditioning before five years ago he secured a job the assistant technician, later getting promoted to his current position. Together with his parents, Kanchan also lives in Kalli Bari. Because Kanchan is still unmarried he can live on the 280 Tk. he gets every day from the consortium.

(Kanchan fixes a problem with the engine.)

Only two weeks back, a consortium of ten people from Mymensingh used their private savings to purchase the boat with its equipment from the same private investor who holds the leasing contract. Abdul Modtaleb is part of this consortium, each of whom owns an equal share of ten percent of the business.

(Kanchan's "invention".)

To compensate for the current of and the waves on the river, Kanchan invented a flexible piece of pipe so that the main pipe can not break. It also looks very improvised but seems to work. However, with the upcoming rainy season the river will have more water and the current will be too strong to operate the suction machine for about two months. Even the invention made by Kanchan will not help then and during that time the equipment will be stored at the riverbank . Abdul will be able to earn during that period by selling a stock of sand they have already accumulated, but for Kanchan it will mean unemployment. Maybe he can use the time to find a wife and get married. “I would like to, but my parents are going to decide this issue” he comments.

(Eventually they engine runs again and Abdul and Kanchan are back in business.)

Background: Poverty Brief Mymensingh

Mymensingh, located beside the Brahmaputra River in the north of Bangladesh, is one of the biggest and oldest Pourashavas (municipalities) in Bangladesh, covering around 22 square kilometers. According to the Census of 2001 the total population of the Mymensingh Pourashava was 227,047. Due to migration from the villages and rapid natural population growth within the city the number of inhabitants is much higher today. The Pourashava assumed 2005 about 375,000 inhabitants. Almost half of the population (45%) is considered as "poor", many of them living in slums under bad conditions. Allo ver the city, the municipality counts 94 slum areas with altogether more than 140,000 inhabitants.
The slum dwellers (usually) are working as day labourer, rickshaw puller and Hawkers or running small businesses. The average income in the slums of Mymensingh is estimated as 3000 Taka a month.


References:

Socio-Economic Household Survey of Mymensingh 2004 conducted by Bangladesh Unnayan
Parishad for ADB.

Poverty Impact Assessment in Mymensingh by GTZ in November 2008.

Ahsan, Shaikh Muhammad Mehedi (2009), Participation of Urban Poor in Municipal Governance in Bangladesh. A Case Study of Mymensingh Pourashava, Dissertationa at Civil Service College, Dhaka.


However, the individuals who are hidden in the statistics, their daily live, dreams and ideas can not be expressed in numbers. None of them are average. Poverty has always a face, a name and a story...

Glimpses

Together with international students (Urban Planning) from Berlin I am under way in Mymensingh and Narayanganj poor communities. The result is a short moody video which shows you the atmosphere of different slum areas which I hope you enjoy watching.

Very special thanks goes to Aedy Ramli for his efforts.

"Three Hundred Taka!"

Showing me their adorable smiles and small hands, three "tokai" boys (street waste-collectors), probably between the ages of six and eight, shouted at me in English. Being in Dhaka, as a foreigner, this is not an unusual incident. Wherever and whenever you go (even at midnight!), beggars will ask you to give them some Taka (money/petty cash). Even when you are in a car, they constantly bang on the windows of your car, gesturing to show how hungry they are, how small and sick their babies are, and what disabilities they have. (Some even produce a bill for medical treatment signed by a doctor.) I would never be able to get used to these daily scenes in Dhaka.

(Photo Right: Saiful (age 10). Helping at a recycling shop.)

However, when I met those three boys, I was amused at how well they read the situation between them and me. Firstly, they shouted at me in English, knowing or guessing that I (a foreigner) did not understand Bangla but English. Secondly, they chose "three hundred" instead of thirty or three thousand, understanding that a foreigner like me would probably have that amount of taka in her pocket, and could afford to give it to them. Thirdly, although I do not know whether or not they were aware of this, they picked up a number that could be divided by three. It was apparent that they were not begging from me, but playing with me. They did not slow down their pace to make the gestures, but just shouted loudly a few more times with their friendly smiles and carried on along their way.

On another day, my colleagues and I visited a learning centre where a local NGO provides non-formal education opportunities to so-called “working children,” and I asked the children if I could take a picture of them. One girl then said, “Do you want a picture of us studying (gesturing writing something on her notebook with her pencil), or with our face up smiling?”

(Photo Left: Baby (age 11). Breaking bricks. Since Bangladesh is located in the world's largest delta, there are not enough sufficient materials to produce concrete for building constructions. Thus, there is such an occupation as "brick-breaking," which is categorized as a hazardous child work by the ILO and UNICEF. The brick breakers work outside, under the sun, in the heat, and smash bricks into pieces that will be used as concrete producing materials.)

Then, when we left the centre, after asking if we would visit them again, some children said, “Yes, you-kind-of-people always say you will come back and visit us again, but you never do.” I was again amused by how much they know about us—the outsiders, often foreigners.

Moreover, I felt as if they were challenging “our-kind-of-people’s usual” notion of so-called “child laborers” and “working children,” the notion that we, outsiders, foreigners, often carry and have toward children in urban cities in a country such as Bangladesh.

An estimated 1 to 1.5 million of those children “who do not go to school but work” reside in Dhaka. Many boys work at a shop (car/rickshaw garage, market, tailor, tea stall, etc.) from early as 7 or 8am in the morning to as late as 12am at night. They take orders from customers, bring a glass of water to adult workers, and do whatever they are told to do. Most of the girls, on the other hand, work as domestic workers/servants, and do cleaning, washing, and/or taking care of small children in a house. Some children say that they like working, and are willing to work, while some say they do not like their job and want to quit.

(Photo Above: Sohel (age 10). Taking care of a vegetable shop in a market. The salary is approximately Tk. 300 (US$ 4.25) per month.)

Despite the diversity of children’s work in Dhaka, outsiders sometimes quickly judge and define their work as so-called “child labor,” usually with the negative implications. Much literature, for example, writes about so-called “child laborers” and “working children” in Dhaka to suggest that: they are disadvantaged, vulnerable, and subject to economic exploitation; their work is unsafe, unhealthy, dangerous, and poisonous; and, they are trapped in low skilled and low return work that pushes them further into the vicious cycle of “poverty.”

Nevertheless, in Dhaka, the “work” the children willingly or unwillingly do is part of their everyday life (especially when there is no school to attend). They spend their days being around, talking and chatting with, and/or helping their father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and neighbors, as if this is how “childhoods” are in Dhaka today.

Then, through irregular visits of foreigners, especially of development aid workers (in the name of “assessment” and/or “evaluation studies”), the children learn to internalize our notion of “child labor” and “working children,” and act out the ideal type of “working children”—how we think their lives are—to the visitors. Although they have probably never read or heard what kinds of attitudes we—the outsiders—often have toward children like them, they understand (or act as if they understand) how the idea of “child labor” and “working children” has been constructed, idealized, and used in the international development aid context.

Today in Dhaka there are many development aid programmes/projects for those so-called “child laborers” and “working children;” however, their lives have not still been celebrated enough, because many of us know very little about them. They may know us—how we think their lives are—much better than we think we know who they are.

(Photo Above: A learning centre for "urban working children" operated by the Bureau of Non-formal Education, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education of the Government of Bangladesh, UNICEF, and 20 entrusted local NGOs. There are total 8,000 centres for 200,000 children.)

References:

Arat, Zehra F. (2002) Analyzing Child Labor as A Human Rights Issue: Its Cases, Aggravating Policies, and Alternative Proposals. Human Rights Quarterly 24: 177-204.

ILO Dhaka (2006) Baseline Survey on Child Domestic Labour (CDL) in Bangladesh. Dhaka: ILO.

SIDA (2008) 2008 What Does SIDA Do in Bangladesh? Bangladesh SIDA. Electronic document, http://www.sida.se/sida/jsp/sida.jsp?d=269&a=895&language=en_US, accessed February 2008.

UNICEF Bangladesh (2004) Project Proposal: Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban Working Children (BEHTRUWC) Project Second Phase, 2004-2009. Dhaka: UNICEF Bangladesh.

UNICEF Bangladesh (2008) Bangladesh. Electronic document, http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/index.html, accessed February 2008.