Study of relocation process and its socio economic impacts on local people due to private housing projects in eastern fringe of Dhaka

Abstract

Like other developing countries, urbanization in Bangladesh is a growing phenomenon, which is steady in nature but fretfully affects urban sustainability in the wake of lacking in good governance. In comparison to many developing countries urbanization rate is very high in the Dhaka city. As a consequence, land market is controlled by influential groups for high return of profit. A number of land developers have continued their activities legally or often illegally in the fringe areas of Dhaka city. Because of high land price in recent years, most of the land developers forced the local people to sell their land by different ways. Though this issue was addressed in different media for proper attention, but still now this issue ignored by the regulatory authority and the researchers. For that reason, the objective of this study is to find out the ways by which it would be realized how local people were relocated by developers and try to understand the present status of local people by comparing their socio economic condition in present and previous location. According to the size of land projects from the year 2000 to 2010 in Dhaka City, top four land developer companies have been selected namely Green Model Town of Amin Mohammad Foundation Ltd, United City of Neptune Development & Holding Ltd, Pink City of Xenovally & Ashiyan City of Ashiyan land development Ltd. Most of the original local residents sold their land and moved to different places. But some of the local people still lives around the project areas and provided the preliminary information about relocated families. According to the information collected from different sources approximately 3,920 families are considered as relocated families. Considering 95% confidence level and confidence interval of 5 this research conducted questionnaire survey on 350 relocated households. As original local residents sold their land and moved to different places, this research used snowball sampling for questionnaire survey. Data was collected using several data collection methods, namely household questionnaire survey, in-depth interview of local residents, expert interviews and observations. This study discovered different aspects by which it was clarified how land developers exploited the local people. Here one interesting matter was disclosed that the process of relocation varied from project to project. So it was difficult to summarize specific procedure for relocation by land developers. Four actors namely land developers, local muscleman, local officials and local people were identified who actively played various roles in this relocation procedure. Maximum local people were displaced from their original location through involuntary procedure. Those local people who were not interested to sell their land used many strategies to save their land from developers. When people search new place for living, job opportunity (33.1%) was their prime consideration. Similarly local people tried to live within short distance from their original location which ultimately shows their strong belongings with the existing localities. At present, the overall socio economic condition of the relocated people are found inferior compare to their previous locations. Which ultimately supported social researcher’s opinion about negative effect of relocation. At present most (67.7%) of the local people don’t own any lands but this was reverse in previous locations. Similarly, Local people occupation structure was totally changed in present location comparing with previous locations. At present locations most of the cases income levels, housing condition and utility facilities were poorer situation from previous locations. Dhaka has no option to exclude private developer activities in housing sector where government initiative is very limited. But alarming situation is that urban fringe is predominantly used for capital and asset accumulation of powerful actors and relocating local people from their original location. So this issue need to be properly mentioned and revised in existing Rules and Regulation for protecting local people’s right. For proper development, land readjustment scheme can be used where both parties (local people and land developers) have a chance to gain benefit from housing development. This research would awake the policy makers to figure out the issues in Rules and Regulation.