Save Buriganga, save Dhaka

But, unfortunately, our experience is that motivation seldom works. We are more habituated to act under compulsion. So, to save and restore the Buriganga to its original bliss, there would be required a master plan of actions. The actions against the accumulated odds may have to be rude, but then that would be for the sake of the liveability of the city, for its 15 million citizens.

There might have been small encroachments on the river also earlier than 1972 before Dhaka assumed its present status of capital of sovereign Bangladesh. But that is just not noticeable in the glare of the scale the practice has assumed after 1972. Nowhere in the world perhaps people have been so indifferent to their past and so oblivious of their future in pursuit of their present. What a "present" -- devoid of the past glory and future sustainability! So what, has been our attitude.