Published : 12 Sep 2026, 11:48 PM
Updated : 16 Sep 2026, 11:50 AM
Since Dhaka authorities launched localised bans on electric rickshaws, the capital has been plunged into a testy stand-off. Drivers of the vehicles -- under the banner of Jatiya Rickshaw O Van Driver Shakti -- have paralysed major thoroughfares to push for greater access to the city’s streets.
Despite continuous civic protests, repeated High Court injunctions, and high-profile eviction drives, the electric rickshaw remains a stubborn, immovable feature of Dhaka’s roads.
To me, it brings to mind a common saying on the streets of our capital, “Shomossha Nai”. The phrase comes casually to the mouths of people from all walks of life. Once harmless, it has now become a damning indictment of our collective civic conscience and national psyche. Instead of its typical meaning -- “no problem” -- nowadays it suggests “anything goes”.
The public discourse around electric rickshaws remains frustratingly shallow. We continue to treat this crisis as just a logistical bottleneck, a traffic management failure, or a binary debate over poor labourers' livelihoods versus commuter convenience.
The truth, however, is much more disturbing. The rapid, unchecked spread of the battery-powered rickshaw is more than a transportation problem; it encapsulates the downward spiral in our modern culture and morals, showing how economic forces have completely outrun regulatory discipline, scientific precision, and aesthetic sensitivity.
Sociologist Émile Durkheim conceptualised such a state as “anomie” -- a systemic breakdown of social values that allows everything to proceed unchecked.
Illegal, Unpermitted Vehicles? ‘Shomossha Nai’
The most alarming facet of the autorickshaw phenomenon is its foundation in institutionalised extra-legality. Recent administrative data reveal a staggering reality: unregistered, unauthorised battery-powered rickshaws account for the vast majority of the vehicles operating across Dhaka.
This is not a small shadow economy -- it is a normalised empire of public resource theft. The rickshaw workshop operates through unauthorised garages that siphon power from the national grid. Recent investigations have found these illegal charging points drain an estimated Tk 40 billion in stolen electricity each year.
When millions of citizens depend on transport that uses stolen state resources and routinely violates the law, it breeds a collective state of normlessness. The blind eye cultivates a dangerous civic mindset -- if an illegal setup is convenient and profitable, it will be tolerated.
It tears away at the social contract and trains the public to accept a culture where systematic lawbreaking is treated as a standard business model, not a violation.
Dangerous, Unstable Vehicles? ‘Shomossha Nai’
Even the manufacturing and assembly of these electric rickshaws reveal a deeper cultural disdain for structural discipline and human safety. Informal garages retrofit heavy lead-acid batteries and high-torque electric motors directly onto weak chassis originally made for human-powered, low-velocity travel.
The result is a vehicle that lacks all proportion, from its braking system to its suspension, and its geometric balance. On busy roads, they become dangerous, uncalibrated projectiles. And this is to say nothing of their “pilots”, perched precariously on top with their safety under constant threat.
This “Frankenstein engineering” demonstrates a complete disregard for functional design logic. It values immediate power and speed while completely dismissing the mathematical and physical principles needed to keep human passengers safe.
That society tolerates such unstable, poorly welded, and structurally flawed machines on a massive scale points to a worrying cultural shift. It shows an indifference to craftsmanship, mechanical honesty, and scientific rigour, that is replaced with a hasty, makeshift attitude where all is accepted as long as it makes a buck.
Ugly, Rootless Vehicles? ‘Shomossha Nai’
The shift from the traditional paddle rickshaw to the battery-powered variant is also, I think, a severe aesthetic tragedy.
Dhaka's traditional cycle rickshaw and its vibrant art are recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The old rickshaw was a masterpiece of appropriate technology, perfectly balanced for the flat delta landscape, built by generational master craftsmen, and treated as a mobile, hand-painted folk art gallery filled with vibrant storytelling.
The electric rickshaw strips away these human elements. It replaces local craftsmanship with imported electric motors bolted onto raw, unpainted tin sheets and generic, brightly coloured plastics.
It eliminates the artisan guilds and painters, replacing them with informal fabrication garages focused entirely on quick, soulless assembly.
In his seminal text “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, cultural theorist Walter Benjamin famously warned that when a society decouples its material artefacts from ritual, craftsmanship, and human touch, the object loses its “aura”, its unique cultural spirit. By replacing specialised artisan guilds with crude assembly shops focused solely on immediate financial benefit, we have normalised visual ugliness.
When the eye becomes used to such patchworks of steel and plastic on every street corner, the aesthetic sensitivity of the collective is eroded.
When a society replaces a highly evolved, culturally expressive, and mechanically honest artefact with an ugly, dangerous, and lawless alternative, it shows the degree to which our aesthetic values have declined.
Problems Everywhere? ‘Shomossha Nai’
Sadly, this “anything-goes” attitude is not confined to the three-wheeler. As an architect, it seems to be the exact same disease currently reshaping Bangladesh’s design and construction landscape.
Just as garage syndicates illegally splice into the electrical grid to power sub-standard vehicles, real estate developers routinely bypass building codes, add unpermitted extra floors, and ignore safety setbacks to extract the most profit from every square inch of land.
In both domains, the expert -- whether it is the industrial engineer or the architect -- is sidelined by commercial forces seeking the cheapest, fastest outcome. The results are identical: street vehicles that flip over due to poor balance, and commercial buildings that lack proper light and ventilation and compromise basic human safety.
Both sectors have signed a silent pact -- convenience over law. And where does that leave our material culture? A landscape of temporary, dangerous conglomerations.
It may be strange to think, but the moral and intellectual health of a nation is physically visible in the environment it creates. When we tolerate chaotic engineering on our streets and structural defiance in our buildings, we signal that we have lost our collective self-respect.
Changing this will need more than alterations of traffic laws. It demands cultural resistance against the “Shomossha Nai” mentality. We must restore a collective respect for design literacy, enforce strict accountability, and remember that our civic dignity is directly reflected in the objects and spaces we choose to build.
[Muhtadin Iqbal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Asia Pacific]
