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When it Rains, it Pours

One of the first nursery rhymes taught in school is “rain, rain go away come again another day”, these days in Dhaka that simple nursery rhyme has far more serious connotations. While rain is inevitable in Bangladesh its consequences have reached epic proportions for Dhaka, the past two weeks have been a precursor of what is to come next if the rains continue and our rampant urbanisation goes on unabated. Currently 30 minutes of rain is all that is needed to temporarily flood the city. The result, hundreds of thousands of people left stranded and the capital coming to a standstill, all because of a simple monsoon shower. If the problem is not tackled now we may unwittingly turn Dhaka into the Venice of the great delta.

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