The informal practice of appropriation and social control – experience from a bosti in Dhaka

Abstract

 This paper presents the local practices of land allocation and water supply in a bosti (informal settlement) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It explains the contestation and negotiation in the process of regulation that defines inhabitants’ access to urban provision in bosti settlements. A critical analysis of the local practices reveals an informal sphere of regulations that considers a careful calculation of inhabitants’ individual locations in the prevailing power relations matrix and thus continuously (re)defines their differential access to urban utilities. This paper identifies the informal regulatory sphere as a “closed system” due to the fact that the powerful and relatively well-off dominate in the contestation and negotiation process, thus actively benefiting from it, and there is little scope for others to enter into the process. The very dependency of the inhabitants on these powerful and well-connected inhabitants also limits any possibility of countering this closed regulatory system.

I. Introduction

More than one-third of the total population of Dhaka live in bosti.⁽¹⁾ The inhabitants of these settlements cannot comply with statutory institutional obligations to access municipal services and are thus excluded from state public provision. This results in the involvement of non-statutory actors such as local associations and non-government organizations (NGOs) in the supply and regulation of urban utilities in the bosti of Dhaka. Referring to an empirical study of an inner-city bosti in Dhaka, this paper presents the relationships that these local service providers mobilize in order to make public services available in these unrecognized settlements. It describes the process of contestation and negotiation of interests in the informal regulation of land and water supply and then maps these on a broader power structure to explain how inhabitants’ access to informally regulated utilities is conditioned by their different capacities to mobilize relationships and thus exert influence within the existing power relations matrix. This paper thus provides a narrative on the connection between power relations and access to public utilities.

II. Urban Provision for bosti Inhabitants in Dhaka

It was economic growth interests that rationalized the decision of the government of Bangladesh to tolerate the encroachment of public land for bosti development in Dhaka after independence.⁽²⁾ Only a few decades later, the government changed its position, resulting in a continuous series of eviction programmes in the bosti, a practice that continues to date. The present rationale for the evictions is linked to the “illegality” of bosti and the fact that the land is needed for such “public interests” as the implementation of various large-scale infrastructure development programmes. A recent example is the eviction of two bosti in May 2011 and the removal of households from five square kilometres of land,⁽³⁾ which was necessary to implement a project by the Water Development Board of Bangladesh. In February and April 2012, there were two separate government-initiated demolitions in part of the largest inner-city bosti of Dhaka in order to implement a walkway project surrounding a neighbouring lake and several other proposed government projects on the land.⁽⁴⁾ The eviction programme was, however, temporarily halted due to the intervention of the local ruling political party leaders, who feared losing the local government election scheduled in May 2012 should the bosti be evicted before the election date.⁽⁵⁾ The brutality attached to the evictions and the consequences for the urban poor of Dhaka are well documented,⁽⁶⁾ and inhabitants are forcefully displaced with no rehabilitation or resettlement options being offered. The public interest attached to the implementation of such infrastructure projects therefore comes only at the cost of the victimization of the bosti inhabitants. In the period between 1982 and 2005, the proportional share of bosti located on public land in the city decreased from 29.4 per cent to 9 per cent, while the number of bosti inhabitants rose from 730,000 to about 3.42 million.⁽⁷⁾ The bosti inhabitants make up more than one-third of the total urban population of Dhaka and are now living in about 5,000 bosti that are located primarily on private land. These bosti and the continued unplanned extension of Dhaka accommodate about 300,000 to 400,000 new migrants each year to this city of about 14 million.⁽⁸⁾

A large and growing number of urban inhabitants in Dhaka live in extreme poverty due to the absence of an institutional framework that could guarantee them access to urban opportunities. This absence results from the neglect of urban poverty in research, policy and action.⁽⁹⁾ Research in Bangladesh has a predominantly rural focus, and the very few research institutes that have recently become involved in urban research neglect analysis of sociopolitical and cultural factors that could explain the vulnerability of the urban poor in terms of their limitations in influencing the institution-building process. The absence of research-based knowledge on urban issues shapes policy makers’ understanding of urban poverty and its relationship with criminality and illegality. The consequence is a continuing rural bias in policy considerations and the removal of the urban poor rather than assistance for urban poverty reduction. These actions are supported by the policy makers’, government officials’ and urban non-poor inhabitants’ belief that state assistance for the urban poor will promote rural–urban migration, resulting in further deterioration of the urban environment.

The urban poor have no means of influencing the institution-building process that constantly discriminates against them. While they gained voting rights in 1994, there has been little progress in translating these rights into political participation and there is little scope for their participation in municipal governance. Political leaders and elected municipal officials have little incentive to be accountable to the urban poor for a number of reasons. Local government elections are dominated by the power, wealth and influence of candidates. On average, up to 100,000 voters make up a ward in Dhaka, and these large electorates are anonymous in character.⁽¹⁰⁾ For this reason, an informal mechanism has been developed in which the electorates, especially the majority living in bosti, are controlled by mastaan.⁽¹¹⁾ Finally, the limited budgetary allocation to wards and the undefined job responsibilities of ward commissioners allow them to function selectively, considering their own electoral benefits.⁽¹²⁾

The lack of recognition of urban poverty in the national policy and programmes of the government of Bangladesh not only restricts state welfare provision for the urban poor but also creates little incentive for non-government organizations (NGOs) to operate in urban areas. NGOs involved in urban issues are few in number and limited in performance in comparison to their rural counterparts. Insecurity of land tenure (e.g. the threat of eviction) and the domination of mastaan in the bosti settlements are two additional obstacles to NGO operations in urban areas of Bangladesh.⁽¹³⁾

NGO involvement in Bangladesh is also exclusively in non-political areas such as the credit-based economic improvement of the poor and the delivery of services. They have little involvement in the political empowerment of the poor and in ensuring poor people’s participation in urban governance.⁽¹⁴⁾ The state of Bangladesh considers that the empowerment of the poor would help them to “…articulate their demands, fight for their rights and struggle to change the structural bias of their subordination”,⁽¹⁵⁾ thus threatening the status quo. NGO involvement in this area is therefore highly restricted by the surveillance of the NGO Affairs Bureau – the institutionalized mechanism by which the government of Bangladesh controls NGO operations and activities. This situation discourages NGOs from forming relationships with local supporters and leaders of different political parties and limits their activities within the government-demarcated political boundary. Instead, they focus on the formation of a non-political support system and community representation in their activities through, for example, community-based organizations (CBOs) and women’s groups. It is, however, not the urban poor, but rather the relatively well-off inhabitants who participate in these NGO-facilitated community groups and benefit from them.⁽¹⁶⁾ The priority of livelihood activities and the local dependency structures in poor communities are two important factors that demotivate the poor from participating in NGO activities. In an edited volume, Participation: The New Tyranny,⁽¹⁷⁾ several authors argue that the specific form of community participation in NGO activities is closely related to NGO dependency on external institutions. According to these authors, community participation that is limited to a few NGO-connected local people makes it possible to manipulate local needs so that a development agenda along the lines of donors’ priorities can be developed.⁽¹⁸⁾ It thus contributes to NGOs’ upward accountability to donors and guarantees external support for project activities. Understanding this institutional setting and the contestation of relationships between actors makes it possible to learn how the inhabitants of bosti access urban land and utilities in Dhaka – and at what cost. This is the focus of this paper.

With reference to evidence from a study carried out between 2008 and 2011, this paper discusses the land distribution and water supply situation in Boshoti, an inner-city bosti of Dhaka.⁽¹⁹⁾ It first presents the dominating actors and local institutions in Boshoti and discusses how the contestation and negotiation of their relationships shaped an informal regulatory sphere in this settlement. The contestation and negotiation in the power relations will then be applied to an understanding of the informal regulation of land and water supply in the bosti and will show how inhabitants’ capacity to activate a support system conditions their access to these urban utilities.

Grounded theory provides an empirical framework for this study⁽²⁰⁾ and qualitative research methods were used. The investigators lived in a rented room in Boshoti for the empirical study period, enjoying regular adda (informal and casual talks) and observing local conflicts and salish (community level conflict mitigation). Discussions were in the form of unstructured interviews that allowed the respondents to talk at length, encouraging more detail and thus helping to avoid distorted accounts of the reality. The respondents were selected based on theoretical sampling,⁽²¹⁾ which acknowledges diverse categories and opens up options to include atypical or extreme cases,⁽²²⁾ thus providing a deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of a problem. The respondents were the local inhabitants, local water vendors, members of local CBOs, influential leaders of local associations and local political party offices, local government representatives of the area, field level NGO staff and officials from the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewage Authority (DWASA). The empirical investigation was carried out for a total of about nine months over a period of four years.

III. Actors and Local Institutions in Boshoti

Boshoti is a bosti settlement developed on government land and is therefore illegal and unrecognized by the state authorities. It has a population of about 100,000 who earn their living as housemaids, security guards and rickshaw pullers in the neighbouring high-income settlements and as workers in the nearby garment factories. Small commercial activities such as grocery shops, tea stalls, tailors, vegetable shops and restaurants offer income opportunities for other inhabitants in the settlement. Households of up to seven members live in a “room”⁽²³⁾ (and only in a few cases in two rooms) measuring about six hands by five hands (this is a local measurement, equal to about seven square metres). The rooms are made of tin sheets, bamboo and wood, and usually up to 12 of them, with communal facilities such as a toilet, a bathing place and a courtyard, form a “room cluster”. Many such rooms face onto narrow passageways and provide sleeping space at night and a place for small businesses such as grocery shops, firewood trade, tea stalls and carpentry during the day. In room clusters where there is no communal courtyard, space for cooking has also got to be found in these rooms.

Boshoti is located in one of the 90 wards of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). Two elected commissioners represent the ward and share responsibilities, one of whom is a woman elected under the provision for female representation in the local government system. The ward commissioners are not directly involved in local development, since state institution welfare provision to unrecognized bosti settlements is restricted.⁽²⁴⁾ However, there is a mutual support system that serves bosti inhabitants indirectly. Political leaders (both ward commissioners and Members of Parliament) are dependent on their relationships with local leaders to mobilize votes. In return, they give these local leaders control over the distribution of such government relief programmes as food rations and blankets in crisis situations. The relationships are negotiable, dynamic and contested. In this particular case, the ward commissioners and the Member of Parliament are affiliated to different political parties, therefore they mobilize their relationships with the local leaders separately. The relationships thus become further contested.

The identity of these local leaders has changed over the last decade, since the domination of the traditional mastaan was challenged in 2003 around control of the local bazaar area, which provides important livelihood opportunities for general inhabitants. Business could only be conducted in the market and the surrounding streets after payment of a daily fee to the mastaan, who decided who was allowed to operate a business and under what conditions and who also controlled access to utilities. In 2003, the shop owners in the bazaar area organized and challenged this domination. They were backed up by some members of the local police administration and some political leaders, including ward commissioners. What followed next was the formation of a bazaar committee for the management of the bazaar area and the active involvement of many shop owners in local politics. Boshoti is now regulated by two distinct groups of local leaders, with two systems of power relations and support in place – one based on political connections and the other on NGO involvement.

Political connections. A large number of local associations and local offices of different political parties (and their wings) have grown up over time in Boshoti. Relatively well-off inhabitants who have a permanent source of income (e.g. shop owners and room owners), and thereby enough time for political involvement, can be members of these local associations and political party offices. This is, however, insufficient to exert power and influence in the bosti. Supporters of the ruling political party always dominate every community and associational affair, including utility businesses, unofficial land sub-division and allocation, night guard services and dispute resolution in salish (i.e. community level meetings for conflict mitigation). Since 2003, the possibility to appropriate community resources and do business has been opened up to a relatively larger number of ruling political party supporters, but their activities are not that different to those of the previous mastaan group. Their involvement in local regulation is guided by personal benefit, which trumps all other interests.

Given the illegality of their occupancy, the inhabitants of bosti developed on public land cannot claim access to the state-provided legal system. Conflicts between inhabitants are therefore settled locally in salish, an informal mechanism for local level conflict resolution involving local leaders and influential inhabitants. In Boshoti, active members of local associations and the ruling political party local supporters dominate in salish decisions. Because tenants and poor inhabitants do not participate in associational activities, relationships with the local leaders and political party supporters are valuable when conflicts need to be resolved. A common practice is to involve as many influential inhabitants (associational members and ruling political party supporters) as possible on their behalf and to refer to the aspects of identity they have in common (e.g. same rural origin and same political affiliation) when asking for support. The relationship of these few influential local inhabitants with political leaders and the police administration legitimizes their actions and forces conflicting parties to accept the salish decision.

All the local associations are political in nature and well connected to the ruling political party and its leaders. Relations with political leaders and members of government staff not only protect the power of association members but also prevent others from entering the businesses they are involved in. It is difficult for members of a political party that is not currently in power to mobilize an active political support system and relationship with the government administration. This forces supporters of the political opposition to accept the domination of the ruling political party leaders, and their silence is also necessary if they are to continue with their businesses in the settlement without harassment. The domination of these ruling political party supporters continues until a new political party comes into power at the government level and its supporters appropriate the local level domination of their counterpart.⁽²⁵⁾

NGO connections. There are more than 20 non-government organizations active in Boshoti. Their major activities include microcredit, healthcare and basic educational services. Microcredit facilities are run through the formation of women’s groups, which collect weekly savings and manage credit transactions. Five healthcare centres offer birth assistance and primary healthcare to credit group female members and their families. Twenty to 30 children aged between four and eight attend each of the 14 early childhood education centres and learn numbers and the alphabet. In addition, there are two large NGO-run schools for the primary and secondary education of about 300 children. Children backed by the supporters of the ruling political party and local committee members get priority admission to these schools and centres. With financial support from WaterAid Bangladesh, Dushtha Shasthya Kendra (DSK), a local NGO, has been running an environmental sanitation and hygiene education programme since 2004. It provides credit to room owners for the installation of sanitary latrines and the construction of improved walkways in the settlement.⁽²⁶⁾ Management committees, usually formed by women, centre on a supported facility (such as a toilet), and their activities are monitored by community-based organizations (CBOs) formed by active management committee members. For the first five years of its operation, DSK’s activities were limited to only one of the two units of Boshoti; this unit was represented by five separate CBOs. In 2009, DSK’s involvement in a DWASA water supply network extension project in Boshoti necessitated the expansion of its project activities to the whole settlement. Now, four CBOs under a central committee represent the community in the implementation of DSK activities in this settlement. Most of the NGOs in the bosti are involved only in service provision, but DSK also supports CBOs to mobilize the community and ensure participation of the urban poor.

In addition to this NGO activity, Boshoti is also involved in the Basti Basheer Odhikar Surakha Committee (BOSC) of the Coalition for the Urban Poor (CUP). BOSC provides a broad common platform for the political participation of the urban poor through their collective mobilization. With a central committee at the top, more than 400 primary committees, 90 ward committees and 29 thana (sub-district) committees represent the BOSC network at the municipal level.⁽²⁷⁾ The primary committees mobilize the community at the local level, while the ward committees and thana committees liaise with ward and thana level government officials respectively. The central committee represents the urban poor in urban governance at the national level. As part of this network, Boshoti has more than 30 primary committees and a ward committee.

In the case of both BOSC committees and DSK’s CBOs, continuous contestation and negotiation of interests shapes the activities of committee members and their relationships with the community and the NGOs. While the CBOs and BOSC committees were formed to ensure the participation of the urban poor, the complexity of everyday life, financial crises and day-long involvement in economic activities allow the general inhabitants of Boshoti, as noted, little time for community activities. Instead, only a few relatively well-off homeowners dominate activities and thus represent the bosti to the implementing NGOs, government departments and donor organizations. Their domination allows them to shape the local definition of needs in line with their own interests and thus to benefit from the NGO initiatives.⁽²⁸⁾ The CBOs are therefore not representative of the community, but rather of the few homeowners who have the capacity to influence CBO decisions in favour of their own interests.⁽²⁹⁾

This works well for the NGOs as well. The participation of these few NGO-connected local inhabitants and their manipulation of the local realities helps impose a limit on opinions and local opposition that may hamper smooth and timely implementation of NGO project activities in the community.⁽³⁰⁾ The NGO-connected inhabitants also understand and accept the boundaries of their involvement and do not question the performance and accountability of the NGOs. This minimizes conflict between the community and the NGOs and supports the easy implementation of NGO projects. In Boshoti, the participation of CBO and BOSC members is limited primarily to the organization of local meetings, the coordination of local activities and the representation of the community to government departments and donors. They do not have any direct involvement in such activities as project design, budgeting, monitoring or evaluation of project activities. The institutionalized control mechanism of the government of Bangladesh, administered through the NGO Affairs Bureau, allows NGO activities only within a prescribed political boundary that does not challenge the prevailing power system.⁽³¹⁾ This implementation of development activities within such a state-regulated system demands the exclusion of politically connected inhabitants and political leaders from NGO activities, as is the case in Boshoti. At the same time, the development of a non-political support system and non-political local development agenda are realized through the involvement of only the few well-off inhabitants.

The importance of the NGO-connected inhabitants allows the commodification of their involvement in development activities. With the increasing requirement for community participation in NGO activities, they are now able to offer their participation to the NGOs in exchange for better deals. Conflict between some NGOs in Boshoti is a by-product of this contestation. Most NGO-connected inhabitants of the bosti have a long history of cooperation with Proshika, a local NGO. The BOSC committee members withdrew their cooperation from CUP in 2006 and started cooperating with another NGO initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Very recently, the same BOSC members became involved in a local government, rural development and cooperation-implemented project, the Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction (UPPR), renaming their previous committee (BOSC) as NDBUS (Nagar Daridra Bostibashir Unnayan Sangstha).⁽³²⁾

These two relational networks – based on political connections and NGO involvement – thus inform the process of negotiation of the local leaders with external actors and offer scope for advantageous relationship building. However, these opportunities are limited to only a few of the settlement’s inhabitants, whose interests are very different from those of most community members and are always guided by personal benefit.⁽³³⁾ No doubt, these relationships provide the bosti residents with some benefits, but only at a financial and social cost. The following sections of this paper describe how these relationships play out in the context of the regulation of water supply and land distribution in Boshoti, and the repercussions of these arrangements for the general inhabitants.

IV. Contestation and Negotiation in Land Distribution

Boshoti is developed on public land and is therefore considered “illegal” by the state authorities. This illegality shapes the relationships between different actors who are involved in the informal regulation of land and utility supplies in the bosti. Initially, the mastaan of the surrounding settlements sub-divided the land and sold it unofficially to new migrants. A few early settlers who maintained good relationships with the mastaan and the ruling political party of that time increased their number of rooms, building on the low elevated land surrounding their individual room clusters. The room owners rented out additional rooms to new migrants and later settlers. At present, the local supporters who are attached to local associations and the unit offices of the ruling political party make every decision regarding land development and distribution. They are the few inhabitants who can construct rooms on the lakeside locations for rental income or who allow others to do so in return for money. They also control public spaces, such as the bazaar area and an open field, for personal income through renting out user rights to local inhabitants and businesses. This local regulation of public space improves its spatial condition and thus increases its usable value, but is carried out following the forceful eviction of the local vendors who have been trading there for a very long time. These newly developed spaces are allocated to inhabitants who can afford more rent or who have strong political connections.⁽³⁴⁾ Other than an increase in personal income for the ruling political party supporters, what guides this practice is the need for a continuously negotiated system that helps maintain the power status quo and domination over the inhabitants. This domination by ruling political party supporters remains in place until a new political party comes into power, thus insecurity and business uncertainty are constant for most inhabitants.

There is a local system of property (e.g. land, rooms, businesses) transaction and recording in Boshoti that developed in response to the illegal land-holding status that prevents inhabitants from accessing the state system of property transaction and registration. In the early stages of settlement development, property transactions were carried out in the presence of trusted persons from both sides and without any documentation, and early settlers from the same district of origin were the main mediators for negotiations between transacting partners. The local property transaction system has now been standardized, and transactions are registered on official government registration documents that can be purchased from government-enlisted stamp vendors. The agreements are handwritten and contain wording and text arrangements similar to the official ones. The signatures of the local influential inhabitants and leaders of local associations are witness to the agreement and replace official registration at the government registry office. Although there is no legal protection attached to the use of state registration stamps, it is more acceptable in salish and is therefore of value to the buyers. In his study of informal land transactions in Jordan, Razzaz detailed a similar relationship between this “officialdom” in informal property transactions and people’s respect for the contract deeds.⁽³⁵⁾

This informal local regulation of land distribution excludes the majority of inhabitants from access to land in the bosti. Land prices vary depending on location, proximity to the bazaar area, any conflict attached to the land in question and – importantly – buyers’ relationships with the ruling political party offices and their members. It is exclusively ruling political party supporters who build rooms on the lakeside area or on public space and thus access land free of cost. As such, land appropriation may generate conflict with others and the appropriating leaders must have the capacity to defeat these challenges using their power and political networks. Only those inhabitants with good relationships with local political leaders can access these lands, and at a relatively cheaper price. Land purchased/controlled in this way must be developed immediately and then used (or rented out) before any change in the bosti power structure takes place. This also requires a non-conflicting relationship with both ruling and opposition party supporters. Otherwise, when a new party comes into power, there is a chance that the land will be re-appropriated. These complexities and uncertainties demotivate most inhabitants from accessing cheaper land by mobilizing any local political support system they may have.

The regular purchase price of a room (on land measuring six hands by five hands – about seven square metres) in Boshoti is now between BDT 10,000 and BDT 20,000 (about Euro 100–200). This rises to between BDT 40,000 and BDT 60,000 per room in the bazaar area. For the majority of households, whose monthly income varies between BDT 3,000 and BDT 5,000, the purchase of a room can only be realized with long-term savings or credit from relatives and friends. At the same time, the investment requires the courage to accept the potential loss of their only property should the bosti be evicted. This situation causes most inhabitants to rent rooms and invest their savings in a safe, rural location. Property transactions in the settlement are therefore primarily between relatively well-off inhabitants who already have some investments (e.g. rooms, shops, utility businesses) and who perceive their investment differently. Regular earnings from room rents and utility businesses has enabled them to buy land in the neighbouring areas of Dhaka (e.g. the Gazipur district), and ownership of this outside property allows them to take risks, as resettlement in case of eviction of the bosti is easier. Their political connections and NGO relationships also put them in a better position than the general inhabitants to access benefits from government-implemented rehabilitation programmes, if these exist. Those local leaders who depend on political connections rather than relationships with NGOs are limited in their involvement in social movements against eviction. For instance, when an eviction programme was carried out in 2010 in a neighbouring bosti, there was no protest on the part of the local leaders. The distribution of money through the ward office of the ruling political party and an order from the ward office leaders were enough to silence the voice of these local political supporters.

Although the threat of eviction has a direct impact on the performance of NGO activities in the bosti, to date neither NGOs nor civil society have taken up a strong position with regard to security of tenure for the urban poor in Bangladesh. This results from the NGO Affairs Bureau’s refusal to allow NGOs to intervene in this highly political matter. So far, the CUP/BOSC network is the only NGO initiative that has the issue of urban poor tenure security as its focus. The network’s successes are, however, very limited due to its low coverage and a lack of national commitment,⁽³⁶⁾ and arguably because of the few local inhabitants who represent the community. As a network of NGOs, CUP’s activities are limited primarily to advocacy and support for network building. Limited financial transactions in its activities demotivate the community/CBO representatives from continuing their involvement with CUP. This is one of the main reasons for BOSC members’ withdrawal from CUP and their subsequent involvement in other project activities in Boshoti. Regarding the involvement of BOSC members in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project, CUP has recently come into (unexpressed) conflict with another influential local NGO that implemented the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-supported project and thus cooperation between these two organizations has been weakened. The recent involvement of BOSC members in the government-implemented UPPR project further replaces the bottom-up local movement for land tenure with a more top-down driven development initiative. This top-down government-initiated programme has little potential to change the power status quo, which is at the core of the urban poverty problem in Bangladesh.

There are also various plans for this government land of Boshoti, which different government departments are trying to get approved simultaneously. The Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology wants to construct a technology village on the land, and there have also been several attempts in the last few years to evict the whole settlement for the implementation of other government-proposed projects. The Centre for Urban Studies has submitted a low-cost housing proposal⁽³⁷⁾ to the Ministry of Housing and Public Works, recommending low-income housing on bosti settlements, including Boshoti; private sector participation in the proposed housing projects has also been recommended; and CUP/NDBUS members have been trying to negotiate with government authorities for 10 per cent of the land for a low-cost housing project in the bosti. Given the NGOs’ dependency on a few local inhabitants, the practice of political intervention and the fact that there is no history of successful resettlement projects in Dhaka, it is difficult to say at this moment whether the proposed low-cost housing project, if implemented, will change the lives of the urban poor in Dhaka.

V. Contestation and Negotiation in Water Supply

Due to the fact that Boshoti is developed on public land and is therefore “illegal” in the eyes of the state, the rooms built on the land are not given any land-holding numbers by the government authorities. This prevents the inhabitants of the bosti from accessing utilities and other municipal services from the state service providers, including the water supply authority (DWASA). Boreholes, a surrounding lake and a few hand-operated tube wells were the only source of water in the settlement until the mastaan from neighbouring settlements started water vending, paying regular bribes to some DWASA administrative officials who allowed them to sell water unofficially. Domination of the water supply (and other utilities) by this mastaan group continued until 2003, when shop owners in the bazaar area successfully challenged them.

A total of about 50 inhabitants are now involved in the water business in Boshoti. These water vendors are exclusively the well-connected homeowners who are also members of local associations and local offices of different political parties. Many of these water vendors were active in the conflict with the mastaan from the neighbouring settlements, thus challenging their domination in Boshoti; there is no involvement by tenants and general inhabitants in the water business. The 2007 DWASA institutional amendment allows water to be supplied to community groups in the bosti irrespective of their land ownership status, and the bazaar committee got DWASA approval for a water connection under this new institutional provision. Other than this committee-owned approved connection, which operates only a few days a month, all other water connections now in operation in Boshoti are illegal and remain under the control of those who operated the water supply business prior to DWASA’s amendment, with the connivance of DWASA officials. This approved water line, however, helps protect the water connections of other water vendors who operate their water businesses under the auspices of the bazaar committee. The modified institutional provision that offers a legal means of accessing DWASA water thus fails to influence the local level informal arrangement for water supply or provide improved access for the inhabitants. For them, water-related expenditure has not been reduced nor has the amount of daily water available to a household been increased, even after the DWASA institutional amendment.

Now, about 85 per cent of the room clusters (each inhabited by several households) in Boshoti have an in-house water supply. On average, about 60 minutes daily supply is shared by eight to 10 families and is used primarily for drinking and bathing. Boreholes and the surrounding lake supply water for non-drinking domestic uses. Families who spend much of the day outside the bosti do not have monthly agreements for water supply but collect drinking water from vending locations. Six of the 15 vending locations along access roads also offer bathing facilities for males. The price of water supplied through the room cluster connections is 10 to 15 times higher than the DWASA piped water price (about 6 BDT, or about 6 Euro cents, per 1,000 litres). The price rises to 28 times the official rate during water crisis situations and for other uses such as bathing at water vending locations.

Communication and relationships between actors have gradually taken on a regularized form, so that a highly formalized informal system has emerged in water supply in Boshoti. The relationship between water vendors and DWASA officials has become relatively stable and regularized. In return for three to four times (in some cases even more) the regular official fee for connection approval, some DWASA field level (zone office) staff started issuing connection approval certificates. Individual water vendors were asked to submit the necessary documents required for an official application for a water connection, which they did by submitting “residency certificates” produced at typing shops, or in a few cases issued by the ward commissioner, and other false papers and information. The DWASA officials involved entered into negotiations with their inspector colleagues, resulting in the acceptance of the “unofficial” certificates at inspection visits. The visiting schedules of inspectors with whom the certificate-issuing DWASA officials failed to successfully negotiate are always communicated to the vendors, with a request that they temporarily disconnect their lines. The increase in the number of water vendors allowed them to transform individual initiatives into a collective measure. Several water vendors now jointly employ one person to collect bribe money, communicate with DWASA officials and disseminate information such as the visiting schedule of inspectors. This informal negotiation and arrangements thus helped undermine DWASA’s enforcement mechanism and state institutional restrictions and so supported a continued informal water market in the bosti.

At the settlement level, water (and other utility) vendors with the same political affiliation are organized into mutually supporting groups, and members cooperate with each other to solve business-related problems (such as financial crises, water crises) in local level conflict mitigation and in communication with external actors such as political leaders and government officials. Irrespective of their political affiliation, there is a mutual understanding between utility vendors that a room cluster can be supplied by a different vendor only after the agreement/approval of the existing vendor. This reduces conflict between vendors but diminishes competition between existing vendors and contests the involvement of new inhabitants in the utility business – both of which could contribute to improving inhabitants’ access to utilities. All the existing utility vendors in the bosti are local supporters of different political parties who started their businesses when their political party was in power and they were thus in a position to exercise their influence in the association and in community affairs.

Communication between water users and vendors is primarily via room owners. In return for a free water supply to their own households, room owners support the water business by offering to help, by collecting water fees from their tenants and reporting damage to water lines. This relationship between the room owners and the water vendors also prevents tenants from involving another vendor in supplying water to the same room cluster. Water users’ objections regarding irregularity or disturbance to the existing supply are rarely considered in the local salish system because of the domination of the utility vendors in the system. Due to the influential position of the utility vendors in the bosti, water users accept the irregularity and high prices of the supply and thus avoid any conflict. Instead, they try to maintain a good relationship with those people distributing water in order to try and gain extra minutes of water supply and thus maximize their available daily water.

BOSC/CUP and DSK are the only NGOs that have so far become involved in water supply in Boshoti. With the financial support of UNICEF, BOSC/CUP installed three deep water tube wells in the bosti in 2006. Shortly after the project started, BOSC members withdrew their involvement, realizing that there was little individual benefit accruing from the project because separate committees had been set up for the operation of the tube wells. These operation committees were all local political supporters and homeowners, thus no tenants or other inhabitants were involved in any of the project activities. Only one month after their installation, the tube wells became defective and came under the control of the political supporters – the more influential members of the operation committees. A small amount of investment was necessary by an influential local political leader to bring the defective pumps back into operation. The political leader recouped his invested money by selling water or shares in the pumps to room owners. Tenants now access water from the three water pumps but under the same conditions as for the water from other water vendors. Those who have benefited from the NGO investment are therefore the infrastructure-appropriating political supporters and the lease-holding room owners.

The involvement of DSK and its CBO members in the water supply project in Boshoti was through a DWASA-implemented water network extension project in the settlement.⁽³⁸⁾ The project was a result of DSK’s long-term advocacy at DWASA and its demonstration of the success of water supply-related pilot projects in other bosti of Dhaka. DSK offered community mobilization support for this water supply project, which was implemented by DWASA and financed by the Asian Development Bank. In the initial stages of the project, DSK and its CBO members came into conflict with existing water vendors. The dispute was later settled when DWASA gave their assurance that the existing water lines would be legalized and existing vendors allowed to continue their water business. The water network was completed in 2010 but to date it has not been possible to connect it to the DWASA water supply. By using their power and connections to upper level government officials and political leaders, the high-income residents of a neighbouring settlement were able to obstruct DWASA’s attempts to improve service delivery to Boshoti. Considering the objections of the neighbouring settlement’s housing society, DWASA decided to install a deep water tube well in the bosti as a local water source. The Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives owns the piece of land chosen for the deep tube well installation and this necessitated an application by the CBO/DWASA for approval by the concerned minister. Simultaneously, the existing water vendors started mobilizing their political connections so that the application would be rejected. The application process was thus blocked within the ministry and this still remains the case. This resistance by the water vendors is indicative of the level of return they gain from operating their businesses. Furthermore, there is no further initiative on the part of DWASA due to the lack of interest on the part of its officials, who are benefiting financially from the ongoing informal process of water business in the bosti and therefore resist any change. The public investment by DWASA, using the credit from the Asian Development Bank, thus remains unused and has failed to bring about any change in the water supply situation in the settlement. The inhabitants of Boshoti continue to pay the same high water prices and are fighting to cope with the small amount of water available every day.

VI. Conclusions

Contestation and negotiation in the regulation of land and water supply is a routine part of life in an inner-city bosti of Dhaka. The inhabitants’ illegal occupancy of Boshoti prevents them from accessing urban provision directly from the state authorities, and this absence of statutory institutional provision has created opportunities for informal land and utility supply in the settlement. The management and regulation of these informal land and water supply businesses have taken on a regularized form, and local support systems have been developed for the management and regulation of utilities and other community needs. External support became available through the connections of local associations, political party offices and non-government organizations.

The individuals and institutions most closely involved and who benefit from the process of informal regulation are those few inhabitants of the settlement who are relatively well-off, politically well-connected or able to connect themselves to NGO activities. The politically connected inhabitants, who are also members of local associations, not only appropriate land and utility businesses in the bosti but also dominate in all community affairs, including local level conflict resolution. Their interests are quite different from those of the community, and they work within a closed system that suits their mutual needs and promotes their financial benefits to the detriment of the general inhabitants.

Local associations and political party offices support communication between these few inhabitants and political leaders and government officials. Their relationship with these people legitimizes their informal regulation and the exercise of power within the community. For political leaders it is necessary for electoral mobilization in the bosti, where they do not have direct communication with the inhabitants. The involvement of government staff in this informal regulation is, however, for personal financial benefit. While the negotiation of relationships between these actors has made urban public services available to the inhabitants, it does so only at a very high financial and social cost. The existing arrangement of actors and the contestation of their interests, for example, not only limits political participation of the inhabitants in local associations, CBOs and municipal government but also restricts their legal access to water, despite the 2007 DWASA institutional amendment. Costs related to water supply remain unchanged for tenants and other inhabitants of the bosti.⁽³⁹⁾

The NGOs that are involved in water supply projects in Boshoti have failed to create benefits for the general inhabitants for a number of reasons. Most inhabitants do not participate in NGO activities. Only a few relatively well-off inhabitants, who have the time and very different interests from those of the general inhabitants, repeatedly represent the community to different government and non-government organizations. NGO dependency on these few inhabitants is a response to their urgent need to implement development projects in line with such external institutional obligations as donors’ priorities and state regulatory mechanisms. Despite their relationship with NGOs and donor organizations, the inhabitants with NGO connections have little influence on local level regulations compared to their politically connected counterparts. Resistance to supplying water through the DWASA–DSK-completed water network in Boshoti and the continuing existence of informal practices indicate the strength of the relationship of the local supporters (who are also utility vendors) with political leaders and government officials.

The informal and local level regulation of municipal services benefits only a few inhabitants who have an active support network and close linkages with people in power, which allows them access to these commodities in a semi-formal way. The power relations structures in the bosti are relatively well “formalized”, despite their designation as informal. There is little scope for most inhabitants to enter into the contestation and negotiation of their interests within this system – it is a closed system, coercive and discriminatory, and will continue as long as the bosti settlement remains “illegal” and the perception of state authorities regarding bosti inhabitants remains unchanged.