Choking from within

Drainage congestion and increased rainfall runoff over eight centuries are increasingly choking Dhaka, the "unplanned Capital of Bangladesh", and this is leading to internal flooding, reports Panos Features, citing a recent study by S Dara Shamsuddin and Rafique Ahmed. The two researchers used data collected by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

With more and more land under cement and concrete, squeezing out non-urban areas, runoff after heavy rains has increased 25-33 per cent. The study was carried out over 13,400 ha of Dhaka city, of which 66 per cent was built-up area.