Dr. Md. Mizanur Rahman

Bangladesh and India two neighboring countries were once concerned as the same nation along with the Pakistan. The Zamindars ruled at different parts of these countries. The Muslim Zamindars were predominantly in the parts of present Pakistan and Bangladesh; while most of the Hindu Zamindars ruled at the part of present day India. The Hindu Zamindars of Cooch Bihar and Jalpaiguri had few Zamindaries in the northern part of Bangladesh; consequently the Muslim Zamindars of Bengal had few Zamindaries at Cooch Bihar. When these two countries separated the Zamindaris converted as en(x)claves creating most humiliating condition in the world. This paper is concerned with these en(x)claves. The study revels that a maximum of 47 Bangladeshi exclaves are located in the Indian territory, while a maximum of 109 Indian enclaves are located in the Bangladeshi territory. This study deals with the socio-economic status and the status of development of the peoples living in the largest Bangladeshi exclave Dahagram – Angarpota. It is to be noted that the enclaves of Indo-Bangladesh have same kind of socioeconomic pattern and human development status.

This study investigates NGO managed rural sanitation programme through village level democratic organization “Gram Unnayan Parishad (GUP)”. The main objective of this study is to find out the role of GUP (also known as people’s organization) in scaling up the sanitation coverage in the study area. Both of the field level primary data and official documents were analyzed to carry out this project. Informal interviews from different stakeholder groups and observation method were applied for data collection purpose. Also, GUP’s different field level activities, their programmes and initiatives are presented here. Moreover, different project implementation steps and their working strategies are discussed here. The outcome of this research focuses on UST intervened GUP model and concludes with their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, which can be helpful for designing more appropriate project strategies. Apart from some setbacks, this sanitation project already proved its effectiveness on scaling up the sanitation coverage among the poor disadvantaged peoples in rural Bangladesh, which can be a role model for the rest of the country.

Dhaka, is the capital of Bangladesh world’s fastest growing primate city, having more than 12 million people. About four million people lived in slum areas of Dhaka City. Their high population density and growth rates, coupled with inadequate and inappropriate water and sanitation (WatSan) facilities, are creating social, economic and environmental effects. Until recently, several attempts have been made to provide infrastructure services to those slums. But the extent of the services is unsatisfactory due to resource constraints and a burdensome concentration of slums that contaminates the city ecology on a broad-spectrum. In consequence, the trend of development ventures through benefactors (i.e. government and non-government organizations) is not only disappointing but questionable due to disastrous project histories. The complex social dynamics of those slums, together with inappropriate or inadequate facilities, and an incompetent governance system, obstruct the pace of WatSan interventions. The vibrant dynamics of social-technological-governance (STG) systems and the role of different benefactor organizations and beneficiaries in the selected slums have been analysed through qualitative methodology. Here, an attempt has been made to identify the factors that facilitates or hinders WatSan interventions and accordingly offer possible guidelines regarding the role of different involved parties to revolutionize this sector.

This research presents a systemic evaluation tool for the assessment of system performance of different sanitation systems that are widely used in urban and rural areas. This tool provides a framework to evaluate sanitation performance in a systematic way. Almost all the relevant sanitation parameters are included in the tool. Common evaluation scales for each parameter are designed so that it can be used in all types of available sanitation systems. Besides, scientific literatures are largely silent on the issue of the operational performance of urban sanitation systems and there is no systematic tool for determining the feasible options. However, This tool includes six dimensions, associated parameters, and a scoring system for assessing the performance of sanitation systems. These six dimensions consist of cost, invisibility, system robustness, environment, public health and external sensitivity. After the scoring calculation from these six dimensions, the performances of different sanitation systems are shown in a radar chart. It’s easy to compare performance of different systems by using this tool and the comparison results are obvious and easy to understand.

Safe water supply and proper sanitation are the two basic needs to primary health care and social development. The low sanitation coverage in Bangladesh especially in the slum areas of Dhaka City poses a serious threat to environment and public health. In this research, users satisfaction levels from two types of community sanitation systems have been initially analyzed and presented by using simple statistical techniques. It was found that, the users of septic tank sanitation systems are more satisfied than those of the twin pit sanitation systems. The causes of their satisfaction are not related to the sanitation technology but it is much related on the existing facilities of the systems. However, a number of positive and negative attitudes on their sanitation systems have been raised from the respondents’ side. Apart from the user’s satisfaction both of the community sanitation system has an immense contribution in scaling up the sanitation coverage in the study area.

Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh and one of the largest megacities of the world. With a huge water and sanitation (WatSan) crisis, this city is now experiencing large-scale pollution due to lack of resources, inappropriate infrastructure, an unsuitable management system, and illegal occupancy of government and privately-owned land and water bodies by poor migrants. Especially, slum occupants face a woefully inadequate sanitation provision across Dhaka. In a city increasingly populated by high-end skyscrapers, there is little evidence of trustworthy, logical or evidence-based development solution by the government (GO), non-government organizations (NGOs) and other relevant actors to address the WatSan situation in slum areas. The issue of land tenure is not only hindering sanitation projects but is also responsible for fragmenting project-related activities and obstructing development pathways. In other words, land tenure issue seems like an influential obstruction in the WatSan sector and a breeding ground of problems. Through the assessment of first hand qualitative information, this paper emphasizes a summary of related literatures and identifies how interventions as well as impacting factors have evolved and been sustained through issues around land tenure. Possible solutions are offered to overcome the land tenure issue in the WatSan projects in urban Bangladesh.

Keywords: Land Tenure, Water and Sanitation, Government and NGO.