The small and large parks of the capital once served as the city’s hubs for walking, exercise and leisure. Government-endorsed encroachment then steadily hemmed them in. Shops, clubs, fairs and amusement rides ate away at the open ground.
In most parks today, filth and rubbish render any notion of sitting or strolling impossible. Ramna Park, set in the ministerial quarter, is the sole exception. It has suffered no encroachment since independence. Successive governments have launched dedicated beautification projects on the site. A large team from four wings of the Public Works Department (PWD) including more than a hundred officers, staff and Ansar personnel maintains the grounds.
Officials note that senior civil servants, ministers and judges all take their walks here. That fact has ensured an unbroken focus on the park’s upkeep and security. The ruinous state of Dhaka’s other parks, by contrast, betrays a simple absence of official will. Urban planners and civic leaders see in this disparity a serious obstacle to public health awareness and the physical and mental development of city residents.
Ramna Park covers roughly 70 acres. History records its founding in the Mughal period, and it is known as the lungs of Dhaka. British administrators recast it as a modern urban park. It retained its pre-eminence through the Pakistan era and after independence.
Three sides of Ramna Park are hemmed by the residences of ministers, members of Parliament, justices and senior secretaries. The Hotel InterContinental, private apartment blocks, a major hospital and the University of Dhaka flank the fourth. Ministers, MPs, justices and secretaries walk there each morning and evening. Three engineers from the PWD supervise roughly one hundred employees dedicated solely to their security.
PWD sources detail the division of labour. The civil wing tends to infrastructure — repairing walkways, boundary walls and washrooms as damage accrues. The electrical wing maintains streetlights and CCTV cameras. Arboriculture handles the trees.
Dr Akter Mahmud, professor of urban and regional planning at Jahangirnagar University, observes that the presence of high officials has guaranteed Ramna privileged treatment under every government. He told Bonik Barta: “If the government singles out Ramna for special care because it is Dhaka’s premier park, that appears defensible on its face. Staffing every other park to the same standard would be both difficult and costly. The established norm would instead vest supervision in local representatives and the community.”
He continued: “What we’ve witnessed, however, is the government concentrating all conservation and beautification efforts on Ramna alone. The other parks have been left to filth, neglect and steady encroachment until they have simply vanished. To fixate on one park that serves bureaucrats, ministers and justices while remaining indifferent to the fate of all others constitutes a glaring instance of civic discrimination. This official apathy signals that clean urban air is a perquisite reserved for elite officials. Ordinary citizens must draw breath from the most polluted skies on earth.”
RAJUK chief urban planner Md Ashraful Islam offered a different view. “Ramna is Dhaka’s largest park,” he told Bonik Barta. “It’s not a site reserved only for senior officials or the elite. It remains open to everyone. All manner of people come and go.” He conceded that the park’s size places it under direct government management, which yields a visibly higher standard of upkeep. The city’s other parks, he said, have deteriorated precisely because their governing rules go unenforced.
Thirty-five Ansar personnel provide round-the-clock security at the Ramna Park. CCTV monitors the grounds continuously. Thirty gardeners tend the plantings and twenty cleaners keep the premises swept; officials say these numbers rise during peak periods or special events.
PWD sources confirm that a beautification, infrastructure and lake-dredging project launched in 2019 recast Ramna Park at a cost of roughly BDT 500 million. The works resurfaced the old internal roads, added a culvert and installed two LED screens that now display health guidance and park information. A timber walkway skirts the lake. The stretch from the Matsya Bhaban gate to the rear entrance of Hotel InterContinental was asphalted. The renovation also delivered 1,200 new lights and a full CCTV network. The Ramna Chinese restaurant was demolished and rebuilt as a coffee corner. The children’s area received new equipment, and four new toilet blocks were added.
The city’s other parks present a starkly opposite picture. RAJUK owns the park in J Block of Baridhara, an affluent quarter. Dhaka North City Corporation shares maintenance responsibility. Yet years of neglect have converted it into a garage for trucks, vans and rickshaws. The historic Queen Victoria Park in Old Dhaka fares no better. Thousands stream through it daily from morning till night to walk and rest. Under former Dhaka South mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, however, the corporation authorised permanent shops inside the grounds in the name of revenue. Local protests could not fully halt the encroachment.
Architect Iqbal Habib, vice-president of the Safety Awareness Foundation, argues that the privileged care lavished on Ramna flows directly from the presence of bureaucrats. “Institutions like RAJUK, PWD and the city corporations exist precisely to manage parks, fields and clean water bodies for citizens,” he told Bonik Barta. “What we see instead is the public being progressively shut out of the very spaces that sustain mental and physical well-being. Meanwhile PWD pours its utmost effort into maintaining Ramna Park for walking justices and bureaucrats. This alone proves that if the government possessed the will, not a single park, field or water body in Dhaka would have been encroached upon or left to rot.”
He added: “The park where bureaucrats and justices walk isn’t always open to the people. Ramna itself stays shut for large stretches of the day under the pretext of management. We’ve protested repeatedly. Such measures are enacted at the elite’s behest. They issue verbal edicts to bar entry and prevent disturbance. This style of management, however tidy, is egregiously discriminatory and impossible to overlook. That wrapping one park in a security blanket for the privileged while remaining mute as the others are destroyed is a crime — and it doesn’t even trouble their conscience.”
Directly opposite Ramna Park lies Suhrawardy Udyan, a site freighted with the memories of independence. Government agencies themselves have steadily encroached it. Shahbagh police station occupies one corner. A children’s park, the Independence Pillar and the Ansar building are wedged inside. The cumulative effect strips the space of any park-like character. No boundary wall encloses it and no security regime governs it. At night, the grounds turn into an open-air drug bazaar. And by day, hawkers and pavement dwellers commandeer the lawns.
Supervising Engineer (coordination) Swapan Chakma of the Public Works Department explained the disparity. He told Bonik Barta: “Ramna Park sits squarely inside a VIP zone. The ministerial quarter borders it, as does the State Guest House and the residences of secretaries and other senior authorities. These are the people who use Ramna. We therefore try to serve them well.”
Beyond Ramna, he said, PWD is striving to manage the other parks under its remit. “We face a manpower shortage and are handling the situation through outsourcing.”
On Suhrawardy Udyan he said: “We want to run Suhrawardy Udyan to the same standard. But Ramna is exclusively a park — it can’t be used for anything else. Suhrawardy is different. Fairs are held there. There’s no boundary wall. Events, meetings and various projects are all ongoing. So even though it is ours, we can’t exert the same control.”
As for the neglect of Dhaka’s other parks, the PWD official said the burden cannot fall on the state alone. “Those who use the parks also have a duty to keep them pleasant. It’s expensive for the government to beautify every park with its own workforce. Users must be more mindful and come forward.”