Kazi Amit Imran :
Bangladesh has experienced an average economic growth of 5.58 percent over the last decade leading to a persistent increase in the Human Development Index (HDI) reported by United Nations’ Development Programme. The HDI profile reflects that Bangladesh’s development was far more consistent compared to neighboring countries like Pakistan and Nepal. Although Bangladesh has progressed significantly in adverting maternal and neonatal deaths, reducing transmission of communicable diseases, ensuring food security for all, poverty and access to formal healthcare services in the urban slums remain as frontline concerns for Bangladesh.
According to UNDP’s Human Development Report 2013, 57.8 percent of the population lives in multidimensional poverty while additional 21.2 percent are vulnerable to multiple deprivations including access to healthcare services, education and other living conditions. With less than 1000 days remaining to attain the Millennium Development Goals, it is high time that the country re-evaluates its approach and designs new interventions to improve the living conditions of urban slum dwellers.
To understand why economic growth and improvement in overall HDI do not completely overlap each other, identifying the blockades towards poverty eradication and allocation of resources should be prioritised.
According to UN-HABITAT about 863 million people in the world live in slums and in Bangladesh alone about 31% of its population lives in urban slums. The living condition in slums is simply miserable with absence of formal healthcare, education system, basic amenities, poor physical and social infrastructures coupled with multidimensional poverty. Most importantly, urban slum dwellers are exposed to multiple diseases including cholera, measles, dengue, tuberculosis and other vector borne diseases. Moreover, urban slum population especially adolescent, women and children suffer from malnutrition.
The urban slum population growth rate is on the rise despite poor living conditions. One of the key reasons behind this can be tagged with the lack of development of other cities than Dhaka and Chittagong which had led to inter-city migration resulting in high population density in these two mega cities.
Relevant researches mirror that despite improvement in HDI and economic growth of Bangladesh, socioeconomic conditions have not improved substantially in the urban slums. The government of Bangladesh, private sector organisations, civil societies and NGOs including BRAC are working relentlessly to improve the living conditions and lifestyle of the urban slum dwellers especially focusing on healthcare, education and access to safe drinking water. Contemporary health services, educational facilities are established to increase accessibility of urban slum dwellers to these facilities reducing their deprivation and improving their living conditions. Many organisations are trying to connect these people to formal healthcare system but multidimensional poverty added with cultural taboos and mindsets are acting as behavioural barriers.
Though interpersonal communication and behavioural change communication is contributing towards increasing peoples’ demand for basic social services, yet more awareness campaigns are required to bring about further change in the community.
One of the major concerns of slum dwellers in Bangladesh is the absence of their recognition as contributors to the economic emancipation. A relevant survey represented that about 30 per cent of the GDP of Dhaka city is contributed by the urban poor most of which resides in urban slums but they are hardly recognised. Though the industries they are employed in are acknowledged for its contributions but the hard work of these people are never brought to the limelight.
These are some micro economic and socioeconomic concerns which have macro level impacts. Concentration of resources in pack of city hubs leads to disperse distribution of economic resources resulting in inconsistent regional development both in physical and social infrastructure. Moreover, geographical and administrative setting along with infrastructural and resource accessibility has stimulated people to relocate and establish new businesses in the growing economic hubs of Dhaka and Chittagong. The rapid growth along the economic hubs has induced the growth of adjoining secondary towns encouraging and leading to inter-city migration towards these regions.
The bio-product of unplanned development and regional growth is the emergence of a floating population who lead a life of uncertainty. Most of them lack access to education, basic healthcare facilities, safe drinking water, legal services and other basic rights. Research has also revealed that a part of the floating population assertively ignore accessing the available services because they are unable to afford them or simply because they perceive them as a high cost burden.
The challenge in this situation is to minimize regional differences and streamline the deprived population to the overall economic growth which would also reduce income gaps among the population. It is obvious that reverting unplanned urbanization is virtually impossible but initiatives can be taken to mitigate externalities and improve the lifestyle of the affected population.
Interventions to re-track unplanned development can be formulated from two broader perspectives; firstly, by advocating to alter national policy and decentralize economic activities; and secondly, by creating or inducing demand in low-demand areas. The main objectives of the initiative would be to reduce income disparity and regional discrepancies thus reducing multidimensional poverty in Bangladesh. It could be stated that unless multidimensional poverty is being minimized, achieving other socioeconomic goals would be difficult to achieve.
(The author is currently working in BRAC’s health, nutrition and population programme as Communications Manager and had previously worked in World Bank’s IPFF project cell as DPCG’s delegated Project Manager)
