A school of urban development experts focuses on decentralization of administration in the interest of saving the country's capital. They cannot be blamed because the Economist Intelligence Unit global "liveability" study finds Dhaka in its latest version as the worst liveable city in the world. The study takes into account features such as crime levels, threat of conflict, quality of medical care, levels of censorship, temperature, schools and transport links to determine how tolerable a city is to live in. Dhaka has beaten Tehran and Harare, the latest one holding the records for a few consecutive years. Clearly, it is time to take note of the city that stands on a dying river called the Buriganga, the water of which is hardly any better than that of a cesspool. Unless this river and others girdling this capital cannot be restored to their sustainable health, this city may be heading for a perilous future, say, within 50 years from now. It sounds like a doomsayer but reality points to a sad end like this.
Yet this is not the full picture of negative development paradigm. A larger picture of development shifts the focus from the centre to the periphery. In a small country of Bangladesh's size, the concentration of population has already posed a threat to its physical viability and with time the threat will only grow bigger with more people adding to its existing level and climate change causing a far greater number of development refugees. Climate-induced refugees, like their counterparts of river erosion, will migrate to the large cities, the capital being the prime target. So the planning with the demography, its education and employment and investment of resources included, needs to be made with an eye on the future need of a swollen population. Dispersal rather than concentration in a handful of urban centres ought to be the salient feature of an administrative policy.
It is because of such unavoidable compulsions that administrative decentralisation should be a priority agenda. The upazila system could serve the purpose well if further reforms were brought about to make the local government effective and strong. Resource constraints and lack of political will are often blamed for not going about the task of strengthening the local government. One cannot agree more with the second part of this observation. In fact, resource allocation under the annual development programme (ADP) has ever remained far greater than the administration can utilise. So, resources will be available if the will to make the local government strong is there. The present system of increasing concentration of money in a few hands has to be reversed in favour of decentralised investment so that people do not have to rush to the capital for better education, medical treatment, employment and entertainment. In short, a balanced development of the country has to be the objective of any future plan with this country and its people.
