Mozidur Rahman Biswas :
There is no denying the fact that country’s capital city Dhaka has totally become overburdened. The city being the capital of Bangladesh, appropriate measures are necessary to relieve the pressure by way of moving the capital or decentralising the administrative sector to other regions of the country. This is the common feeling of all citizens and as such a visionary decision has to be taken. This matter has also been echoed by the experts of different sectors as they deem it necessary in the best interest of the country. This 400-year-old city was put on life-support long ago. While mega projects like metro rail, elevated expressway and underground subways may ease the pain, but unless we move the boulders, i.e., the increasing economic and administrative pressure constricting its lifelines, none of these projects will save our beloved city Dhaka from becoming an inhospitable hotchpotch of chaos and doom.
The most problematic aspect of such overdependence on Dhaka is the saturation of economic opportunities, as more and more places are being engaged to meet the need of industrialization. Specifically, investment in such crowded cities tends to exhibit diminishing marginal returns. That is why, no matter how many metro rails, subways or elevated expressways are added into the infrastructure by the government, without decentralisation all such investments will not bring about the intended outcomes in terms of generating revenue or employment opportunities in the long run.
In the real sense of the term, a capital city should ideally have a population of 6 to 7 million whereas Dhaka currently has a population of roughly 21.7 million people. The excessive population has a directly adverse effect on the environment, from polluting the water we drink to the very air that we and our children breathe in.
In the recent past, when one renowned newspaper of the country while making a comprehensive report on the subject, asked question how overburdened Dhaka will continue its functionaries, as a capital, Dr Adil Mohammad Khan, Associate Professor of Jahangirnagar University said, expressed with wide-ranging concern saying that “Dhaka hosts three or four times the population considered ideal for a capital city. In terms of infrastructure, Dhaka has three or four times less the infrastructure required to sustain a capital.” Dr Amanat Ullah Khan, a former Professor at the University of Dhaka, agreed with the sentiment saying that “If you look at the more efficient capitals of the world like Moscow, Washington DC, they were pre-planned in a way to allow for necessary expansion. But that is not the case for Dhaka, where, in real sense of the term, practically there is no place to expand anymore as such the capital city is seriously overcrowded with insane traffic where it takes 3-4 hours to get from any point to another,” said Dr Amanat Ullah. This begs the question: since Dhaka can no longer function properly in this state, should we follow the path laid by Egypt, Indonesia, and Myanmar etc. and move the capital away from Dhaka?
Bangladesh will also have to conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis before making any such drastic decisions. As Dr Adil says, “Uprooting the entire capital city is costly and being a lower-middle-income LDC, Bangladesh cannot afford such unnecessary investment right now. We should instead focus on administrative decentralisation.”
But we should gradually decentralise our administrative sector to other regions that better suit the purpose of a said ministry or an administrative sector. For instance, the Ministry and Administrative offices on Agriculture can gradually move towards the North-western region of the country, generally considered the agricultural hub of the country. The Ministry of Industry and affiliated bureaus could move to Chittagong, as most export-orientated activities take place in that region.
Dr Amanat Ullah Khan agreed and believed that Bangladesh should move its legislative branch away from Dhaka as well, as he says, “The parliament building was nothing but a consolation prize from the then Ayub Khan government and is merely a relic of the past. So, it is better to gradually move the legislative branch of the government away from the city.”
Apart from moving the executive and legislative branches of the government, there are other ways to release pressure on Dhaka. Countries like South Africa have more than one capital; its executive capital in Pretoria; judicial capital in Bloemfontein and its legislative capital in Cape Town.
Bangladesh could also declare additional business capitals on top of Dhaka being the administrative capital of the country, to release pressure on the capital while also attracting businesses to the new capital.
Besides that, business leaders often identify the lack of infrastructure, irregularities in power supply and voltage intermittencies as some of the reasons for not moving to other major cities in Bangladesh. Their complaints make sense given that only Dhaka and Chittagong currently have the capacity and proper infrastructure to attract businesses.
While shifting the entire capital city might be difficult, it is less expensive and requires fewer logistics to develop the essential infrastructures in other major cities to facilitate decentralised development.
Unfortunately, as far as the seventh and eighth five-year-plan of the government go, most of the mega projects of the government are either Dhaka or Chittagong-centric. Any targeted, well-thought-out decentralisation efforts on the government’s part remain to be seen. But with the change of time marked by global changes the present government has to take a pragmatic decision to gradually move the capital from Dhaka or start the process of shifting the functionaries of the government through decentralisation in the best interest of the country and people at large in all strata of the society across the country.
(The writer is a senior journalist).
