Big land grabbers are govt party followers but rivers must be kept navigable

BANGLADESH Inland Water Authority on Wednesday demarcated five acres of land of the Buriganga river by digging a narrow trench along the ruling party lawmaker Md Aslamul Haque’s three power plants compound in Basila ignoring his protest. The executive magistrate said that they created an 800 feet long trench inside Aslamul’s power plant compound on the western side of the river and demolished 15 illegal structures to clear the land. Awami League MP for Dhaka 14 constituency continued to threaten the eviction team the whole day to save the illegally grabbed land of the river located near the confluence of the Buriganga and the Turag at Washpur in Basila, Despite the High Court Division of the Supreme Court order to the government to amend the National River Conservation Commission (NRCC) law and incorporate stringent provisions for imprisonment and hefty fines for the offences and to effectively empower the NRCC river grabbing continues unabated in Bangladesh.
 All that matters is that you are politically connected — preferably with the ruling party. You can, at your will, make, constrict, construct, and willfully obstruct any and all river channels to create basically anything you desire — power stations, luxury retreats, shopping malls, — the list is endless. Of course no one gives two pence worth of thought as to what would happen if the inter navigability of our rivers goes away. The riverine system exists as a system of communication as well as a pathway to clean out floodwaters. We tamper with nature as if we are gods. Only of course we aren’t — we are human and tampering with them will bring about a vast imbalance in our ecosystem–an imbalance which will haunt our future generations.
The solution is simple — catch and punish the grabbers by destroying any and all illegal structures which don’t conform to the Cadastral Survey. This is easy if the government doesn’t give any thought about those who have political clout. Why should the many pay for the sins of the few — especially if those sins will make Dhaka city unlivable?