Dhaka’s waterlogging is a governance failure, not a natural disaster

A few hours of monsoon rain can bring Dhaka to a standstill. Commuters abandon vehicles, schoolchildren struggle to return home, ambulances crawl along submerged roads, and markets close as water enters business premises.

From Mirpur and Mohammadpur to Dhanmondi, Gulshan, Bashundhara and parts of Old Dhaka, streets become waterways.

For millions of residents, this is no longer an exceptional event. It is a predictable feature of the monsoon.

Rain does not create governance failures; it exposes them. Every monsoon tests the state's capacity to protect people, preserve ecological systems and uphold the public interest. Dhaka has been receiving – and ignoring – the same warning for years.

Climate change is making rainfall more intense and less predictable. Yet rain alone does not paralyse a city. It becomes disastrous when public institutions fail to anticipate risks, protect ecosystems and regulate urban growth responsibly.

Dhaka's recurring waterlogging therefore reveals one of the defining challenges of climate change: the need not only to adapt infrastructure, but also to transform institutions so they can anticipate risks, preserve ecological systems and serve people more equitably. Each monsoon exposes the widening gap between what institutions know, what science has long established and what governments repeatedly fail to act upon.

The crisis, however, cannot be presented solely as a failure of government. It is also the consequence of an urban development model in which successive governments, developers, investors and sections of society have treated the disappearance of wetlands and canals as an inevitable price of growth.

New housing schemes, roads and commercial developments are celebrated without asking where the displaced water will go or who will ultimately bear the cost. Development has been measured by the skyline it created rather than by the ecological systems it destroyed. Dhaka has normalised a model that mortgages its future for short-term gain while transferring the highest costs to its poorest residents.

Responsibility for drainage, canal restoration, waste management, roads and land-use planning remains divided among institutions with overlapping mandates and weak coordination. Residents, however, judge the government by whether they can travel safely to work, school, healthcare facilities and home. Outcomes, not mandates, must judge governance.

Those outcomes are deeply unequal. For affluent neighbourhoods, waterlogging may be an inconvenience. For low-income communities, it threatens livelihoods, health and dignity. Grocery shop owners lose stock, vegetable vendors watch their produce rot and day labourers forfeit wages they cannot afford to lose. Children miss school, while contaminated water exposes families to disease.

A feminist perspective also reveals what conventional assessments frequently overlook. Flooding increases the burden of unpaid care work, which falls disproportionately on women. They are expected to care for sick relatives, secure food and safe water, protect children and keep households functioning despite disrupted services, often while continuing paid work.

Flooded streets also increase the risks of harassment and violence and make access to sanitation and menstrual hygiene more difficult. Pregnant women, older women and women with disabilities face even greater barriers. These are not private hardships; they are failures of public policy.

Waterlogging undermines the rights to health, education, work, mobility, safety and dignity. When children cannot reach school, patients cannot access hospitals, workers lose income and women cannot move safely through public spaces, the state's ability to fulfil its obligations comes into question.

Cities are shaped not only by public policy but also by collective choices. Governance is, at its core, a social contract. Governments must enforce planning laws, regulate development in the public interest and protect ecological commons. Developers and investors must build responsibly rather than exploit regulatory weaknesses. Residents also have a civic responsibility to protect public spaces, follow planning rules and reject practices that weaken collective resilience.

The right to the city is inseparable from the responsibility to care for it.

The solutions are neither new nor beyond Bangladesh's capacity. Wetlands, canals and water-retention areas must be protected and restored as essential public infrastructure. Urban planning must become anticipatory, integrating climate resilience, drainage, transport, housing and ecological restoration rather than treating them as separate sectors.

Fragmented administration must give way to coordinated metropolitan governance with clearly assigned responsibilities and enforceable accountability. Nature-based solutions should complement engineering projects. Above all, communities – particularly women and residents of flood-prone neighbourhoods – must have a meaningful role in shaping the city.

Bangladesh has already demonstrated what capable institutions can achieve. Its cyclone preparedness, early-warning systems and community-based disaster management have saved countless lives through sustained political commitment and public participation. Dhaka deserves the same level of ambition.

A resilient city is not defined by how quickly its streets drain after rain, but by how effectively its institutions prevent predictable hazards from becoming everyday injustices. Every flooded street represents a broken promise between the state and the people it is meant to serve.

The challenge is not simply to build larger drains. It is to renew the social contract governing Dhaka so that every resident can enjoy the right to a city that is safe, inclusive, climate-resilient and governed in the public interest.

That right remains inseparable from the shared responsibility to protect the ecological commons on which Dhaka's future depends.