In Dhaka, every grievance now seems to come with a single, predictable solution: block the road. If a life is lost, if an injustice occurs, or if a demand is ignored, the response is almost instinctive, seize a major intersection and paralyse the city. Whether the protest succeeds is secondary. What is certain is that thousands, often millions, of ordinary citizens will suffer.
For those who live in Bangladesh’s capital, gridlock has become a routine punishment. This is not a recent phenomenon, nor is it tied to any single government. For more than three decades – under elected, unelected, political and non-political regimes alike, road blockades have shaped daily life in Dhaka. Chaos has become normalised.
That normalisation is dangerous. With a metropolitan population exceeding 30 million, Dhaka is already among the world’s most congested cities. Traffic crawls on ordinary days due to narrow roads, mixed transport, poor signal management and weak enforcement. Intersections such as Farmgate, Science Laboratory, Shahbagh, Technical and Mohakhali are permanently stressed. In such a fragile system, even a brief disruption can cascade into hours of paralysis. When key junctions are blocked for extended periods, the city simply stops functioning.
Yet this remains the default protest tactic. Wednesday’s student demonstrations exposed the pattern once again. At Farmgate, students of Tejgaon College blocked one of the capital’s busiest crossings, demanding justice for a fellow student who died weeks after being injured in a dormitory clash. Elsewhere, students from Dhaka College, Eden Women’s College and Government Bangla College shut down the Science Laboratory area to press for an ordinance establishing the proposed Dhaka Central University. The Technical Intersection and parts of Old Dhaka were also brought to a standstill.
The blockade continued for a second consecutive day. Office-goers were stranded. Patients failed to reach hospitals. Women, children and people with disabilities were trapped in unmoving traffic. Ambulances crawled or stopped altogether. Fuel was burned pointlessly. Time, the city’s most precious and irrecoverable resource, was wasted on a massive scale.
The demands may be genuine. Grief and frustration are understandable. But the method ensured that the burden fell not on decision-makers, but on the public. Road blockades do not pressure those in power; they coerce ordinary citizens. Protesters may gain attention, but they do so by turning the population into collateral damage.
This reflects a deeper institutional failure. In Dhaka, streets have replaced systems. Universities lack credible grievance mechanisms. Ministries remain distant and unresponsive. Legal remedies are slow, opaque and distrusted. Formal channels for dialogue either do not function or are ignored. Faced with closed doors, protesters choose roads because roads guarantee disruption and visibility.
But disruption is not persuasion. Repeatedly shutting down the city erodes public sympathy and corrodes the legitimacy of protest itself. When every cause, however justified, relies on holding the city hostage, protest begins to resemble collective punishment rather than democratic expression.
Dhaka’s urban design makes the damage even worse. Walking is barely possible. Footpaths are broken, occupied or nonexistent. Cycling infrastructure is virtually absent. Public transport is limited, overcrowded and unreliable. When roads are blocked, people cannot adapt or reroute; mobility collapses entirely. The city has no resilience.
A vicious cycle has taken hold. More protests create more congestion. Chronic congestion breeds anger and exhaustion. That anger, in turn, feeds further agitation. The result is a city locked in permanent agitation without resolution.
Other global cities offer a stark contrast. Protests there are managed, not crushed – through designated spaces, negotiated routes, time limits and strict protection of emergency corridors. Demonstrations remain visible and disruptive without paralysing urban life. Dhaka, by contrast, has no functional protest management. Political and non-political groups alike occupy roads with impunity and face little consequence.
This culture was learned over time. Decades of hartals, processions and spontaneous blockades taught citizens a blunt lesson: roads deliver results faster than institutions. Successive governments, by tolerating or selectively permitting such tactics, reinforced the idea that disruption works.
Infrastructure alone cannot fix this. The metro rail and elevated expressway have eased pressure in limited corridors, but no transport system can function when its critical nodes are routinely seized. Urban mobility depends as much on discipline, rules and enforcement as on concrete and steel.
At its core, this is a question of balance. The right to protest is fundamental. But so is the right to move, to work, to access healthcare and to live without constant disruption. When every grievance spills onto the road, protest loses its democratic character and becomes an instrument of coercion.
Dhaka cannot continue like this. A megacity cannot be run through improvisation and obstruction. Clear protest protocols, alternative demonstration spaces, responsive institutions and firm enforcement are no longer optional – they are essential. Otherwise, the city will remain trapped in a cycle where for every problem, the road is the answer, and everyone else pays the price.
The writer is the Editor, Special Affairs of Daily TIMES of Bangladesh.
