The Bangladesh Poverty Watch Report 2025 is the fourth in the series of this Report jointly prepared by the Institute for Inclusive Finance and Development (InM) and the Center for Inclusive Development Dialogue (CIDD). These Reports aim to ensure that grass root voices of the ‘left behind’ disadvantaged and excluded populations are heard, and their voices are reflected in policies. The Poverty Watch Report 2025 examines the nature, extent and the dynamics of the slum dwellers in Dhaka city – which are concentrated in old city areas, along rivers and rail corridors, and on the city’s fringes where rapid urbanisation, poverty, vulnerability, exclusion and weak urban planning intersect. The central part of the Report consists of the voices and opinions drawn from face-to-face interviews and meetings with individuals from selected slums in Dhaka city conducted during September-December 2025. In the ‘stories’, the participants shared their experience of living in slums that led to their deeper poverty and exclusion; putting them into extremely difficult conditions re-inforced by systemic failures and structural inequalities. The Report also highlights the poverty dynamics in selected slums of Dhaka city using field level data and information, discussion meetings, and case studies, identifying the priority policy agenda for the slum dwellers.
The analysis brings out emerging priorities for policies as well as recommendations for policy makers which are intertwined throughout the Report. The key value addition emerges from testimonies, reflections, proposals and ‘stories’ of persons who are victims of endemic poverty and exclusion in Dhaka city, often described as ‘dark shadows under the light’—a poignant metaphor for the extreme socioeconomic disparities, where the glitter of modern, wealthy, and developed urban areas directly obscures the poverty, neglect, and precarious living conditions of the marginalised communities living in their immediate shadow.
