The pitch black water in the pond in front of me bubbles as if it were boiling. Nearby there is a woman with her little son, harvesting saag for dinner between the mounds of plastic waste. Fifty metres behind us abominably stinking smoke is rising from hand-made stoves. The slope to my left is covered with noxious tannery waste. In the free space between the toxic ponds a heavy stinking black mass is spread on plastic sheets to dry. Depending on the wind direction, the stench here is accompanied by corrosive smells or soot particles.

Nonetheless, I see only friendly faces around me: of men who hackle the black mass from the stoves with spades and their feet, and of women who spread the future fish and poultry food on the plastic sheets. White factory buildings and concrete skeletons can be seen along the horizon, and the clouded evening sky is shining in a bizarre purple tone.

To a Western eye it all looks like a scene from a science fiction film. But this is Hazaribagh, a district of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka. The Blacksmith Institute (an international non-for-profit organisation dedicated to solving life-threatening pollution in the developing world) ranked it as the fifth most polluted place on earth. In Hazirabagh alone at least 160,000 people have become victims of contamination due to the presence of toxic chemicals. But the region is considered part of the economic miracle in Bangladesh.

Making the most of their time

Half an hour later, I sit at a teashop next to a tannery surrounded by some tired factory workers. The toxic waste water of the tannery is flowing in the open sewage line directly beneath the teashop. The muggy air has a biting chemical taste. On the road in front of us, a mother is walking with two children, laden with food bought from the nearby fruit and vegetable shops.

A chemist-master of the leather industry strikes a conversation with me: “… I’ve been to India many times. Kolkata is much dirtier than Dhaka.” Without thinking I answer, “No. Even with 1.5m E-coli-bacteria per centilitre, there are still some fish alive in the Hooghly River. And not even Karachi, despite the black Lyari River, is like Dhaka.” Then in a calm tone I ask him why they have to work on a Friday (Fridays and Saturdays are weekly holidays in Bangladesh).

The chemist gives me a broad smile and answers: “The order books are full. So, it’s because of you.” I must smile. German companies are among the biggest buyers of the product of the 200 tanneries in Hazaribagh. At least one of these all-too-friendly people, who make the leather for our shiny shoes or the leather cushions for our brilliant cars, speaks it out. “And are your rivers in Germany clean?” he asks next. “Yes, very clean,” I reply.

As early as 2000 a report from the German Max-Planck-Institute mentioned that 14,700 people in Dhaka die due to air pollution every year, as a result of high concentrations of sulphur dioxide emissions and fine dust. Only one mega-city had more pollution victims: Karachi with 15,000.

Some time later, I sit in a teashop near the oil-tinted Buriganga River, where the last fish was seen floating on the water surface many years ago. The workers around me have come from the countryside in northern Bangladesh.

Lack of government commitment for development projects, collapsing infrastructure and floods drove them to Dhaka to look for a job in one of the hundreds of small factories there. In small smoky rooms or corrugated iron shacks full of chemical dust the workers are helping to produce plastic sandals and other goods. An older worker comes to me and shows me a rash on his waist.

His look seems to ask: Do you have a medicine for it? I open three buttons of my shirt and a short look at my chest shows him that three weeks in Dhaka have already left some traces on me, too. Another worker opens his shirt and we can see that his chest is in a much worse state. Suddenly the owner of the tea shop calls to a porter on the road, asking him to show us his arse. The laughter of the other workers and the pretended sulky expression of the porter let me guess what he doesn’t want to show.

On the next day I sit in a tea shop in the old town of Dhaka, with students from the nearby Jagannath University around me. The traffic on the road in front of us has collapsed completely, as usual. ‘The bachelor-holders from Bangladesh must be the most intelligent of the world. Where students in other countries have to hurry to get their bachelor degree within three years, the students in Bangladesh seem to study so extensively that they need up to 10 years,’ I say to the young people, who start to laugh.

On the black Burungi River

Then one of them replies: ‘Yes, in our university it’s the same thing. The youth organisations of our two big political parties fight each other and often paralyse life on the campus for weeks with their “hartals”’. The answer doesn’t surprise me. The two “big” women in this country have been giving an example since nearly 24 years as to what democracy means to them. Which of them rules the country as a prime minister and which of them is in opposition with her party respectively doesn’t matter much; the result is about the same.

To wit, the woman in power insults the other as a terrorist and has the opposition party members arrested. Meanwhile the other woman paralyses the whole country with hartals and says that the people were standing behind her because the country stands still. But a report from BRAC, a development NGO which works all over Bangladesh, tells a different story: The Awami League and the BNP are hiring street children in order to press people to follow the hartals. For payment, the street children also help to bulk up demonstrations and meetings of other political parties. Important for this system: The bhangariwallahs — scrap merchants — who are in charge of the small “armies” of innocent street children.

Finding someone on the street in Dhaka to talk about politics is almost impossible. People are completely disenchanted with their political parties. There is not even an Imran Khan in sight, either. Most of the 15m people of Dhaka solely focus on the struggle for their daily survival. During the last few years food prices have almost doubled, and 500,000 more people move to Dhaka every year. So I ask a young student next to me what he wants to do in the future: ‘Go Videsh. To Germany or Australia.’ ‘But why? Bangladesh’s economy is growing,’ I ask in reply. ‘I don’t want to work in a factory for one or two dollars per day. I want to do something with my brain.”

In the afternoon I stroll around Gulshan, a district in the west of the mega city. On the streets, instead of one of the 400,000 rickshaws of Dhaka, there are snobbish cross country vehicles and noble cars made in Germany. Nice cafes, high-class boutiques and galleries are situated in the ground floors of the office and business towers that line the streets. Here live the employees of the foreign embassies, businessmen and some of the 45,000 Bangladeshi dollar-millionaires. There are some small lakes the water of which is not completely black and a few green parks.

Nevertheless, In comparison to Islamabad, where people living in the ‘F’ sectors can cheer each other and easily ignore the problems of the country, you can notice even in Gulshan that there is something stinky about the economic miracle in Bangladesh.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 31, 2014