A picture carried in an inside page of this paper showing an excavator cleaning a clogged canal -- the Dholiakhal, in the capital city, is fairly representative of the conditions of many other canals and waterways in the country. Once a lifeline of Dhaka, it ran through the centre of the city into the Buriganga, it has been long dead and the small streams that ran into the canal are moribund like the three main rivers around the capital. 

Much of the current state of these water bodies is due to the way we have defiled them. These have been filled up to make way for buildings. Effluence and waste have been allowed to disgorge into these canals from industries making these unusable. Regrettably, cleaning up drives have been far and few between, and that too, in most cases, very cosmetic. And no sooner had a canal been cleaned up of the waste and restored to its previous form to some extent then it was illegally occupied and made a dumping area for the locals.  

The regretful part of the story is that most of the illegal occupation and the illegal structures along these canals are the work of 'influential' persons, as is the case depicted by the said picture. And the shops and shanties built along it cannot be pulled down because the influential person can 'cause trouble.' 

The question is how long will influence and links continue to impede delivery of public good, how long will the nexus of money and muscle continue to call the shots to the detriment of public interest?