Re-thinking Of Abandon Settlement Of The BIHARI Community

Premier University, Chittagong.

Project idea

BIHARI: A relatively large number of Pakistanis known as the BIHARI COMMUNITY have been stranded in Bangladesh since 1971. Bihari Community suffers from identity crisis of being Bangladeshis and Pakistanis or being refugees and minorities.

HISTORY: In 1947, India was divided and Pakistan, a Muslim-majority nation, was created. During the partition, marked by violent communal clashes, many Muslims from Bihar left for East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. In 1971 however, Bangladesh gained independence after war with Islamabad that was triggered mainly by language and ethnicity issues. Many Urdu-speaking Biharis, who largely maintained a pro-Pakistani stance during the 1971 war, failed to make their way to Pakistan. Their support for Islamabad caused Bangladeshis to be distrustful of them and consequently, Dhaka did not take any steps to accommodate Biharis into its society. As a result, hundreds of thousands of members of the community have been stranded in Bangladesh for several decades, sequestered in camps and lacking basic rights.

POPULATION: According to local NGOs working for Bihari welfare, around 400,000 members of the community live in camps in Bangladesh. Recent data released by the government of Bangladesh revealed that most Biharis are currently housed in 116 camps in the country's 13 different districts.

LIVING CONDITIONS: Houses inside these settlements are separated by a narrow passage hardly one meter wide and often occupied by domestic cattle. Families are crammed into tiny rooms, with little or no privacy for members. Rainy spells often lead to overflowing toilets and flooded paths, and lack of water and poor sanitation make life even more difficult. Additionally, Biharis are often uneducated and unable to find skilled jobs. "You will not find any Biharis employed in higher positions at government offices because they are not qualified enough," Khalid Hossain, Chief Executive of the Council of Minorities in Bangladesh says. Members of the community are therefore forced to earn their income working as barbers, butchers, rickshaw-pullers, transport workers or automobile mechanics. Children are also forced to work early because their parents have barely any financial means to educate them.

Project description

Regarding solving the housing issues of the Biharis, we particularly dealt with the Biharis living in S. B. Nagar, Chattogram district of Bangladesh. There were around 550 families of total 2800 Biharis living in an 16.5acres of land.

CONCEPT: Our main idea was to create a new identity of the Biharis. We created three main design principles to establish our thought, they are:

1. EQUITY: They get facilities like any other standard housing community. We creates standard housing with school, field, mosque, health clinic, training center, multipurpose space, karchupi workshop, waterbody, etc. We added organized pathways to their houses which can also be used by the vehicles during an emergency. The amenity facilities were kept in the middle of the housing and the houses were created in circulating the amenity area. For better air circulation, as in Chattogram, the summer air flows from the south-west direction, we oriented all the blocks in that direction with open spaces between the blocks to better circulate the air.

2. INCOME GENERATION: We found that, the Biharis have a traditional work environment with “karchupi” works. There are seven types of karchupi works, they are:
a) Stone work
b) Wool work
c) Pearl work
d) Jari work
e) Spring work
f) Embroidery work
g) Jardousi work
As a result, we re-created their housing by dividing their land in seven parts, everyone one of which was specifically being housed by the families of that particular specialty of karchupi work. We created workspace and meeting space along with their housing, so that they didn’t have to go anywhere. They could work being at home or in the work space in the same place. It will help the women workers to work and do the household works efficiently.

3. IDENTITY: We created bold walls (which are around 30-45 feet high) to highlight their product to the people or buyers who visit the area. The walls bear the identity of the seven specific karchupi works individually, but as a whole they represent the traditional work of the Biharis, as well as the Bihari community.

Technical information

We used low cost material for the buildings and structure which could be bought in installments from HBRI (House Building Research Institute) or could be got free with the help of some local NGOs.
1. Structure: concrete column beam
2. Slab: CWPC Hollow Slab
3. Stair: Ferocement
4. Windows: Kerosene wood
5. Walls: Sand Cement Hollow Brick

Besides, we used nature based solutions to overcome the existing 87% solidity of the land, for instance:
1. Brick pathways for better infiltration,
2. Waterbody for rain water collection,
3. Courtyards for better air circulation.
4. Green roofs for temperature control and earning livelihood through vegetation.

We suggested implementing some housing policies for the betterment of the Bihari community:
1. A segregated zone for bazar with proper pedestrian access.
2. ILLUSIVE HOME SOLUTION,HABITED FOR HUMANITY-these two NGO will provide the material and building construction loan.
3. Loan for roof garden for helping their economy, will be provided by FACULTY OF AGRICULTURE, BANGLADESH.
4. Every year a fair will be held in the central open field of the housing complex.

Co-authors

Tahrima Bakhtiar, Rahul Dey, Md Shohanur Islam Shojib