Fix Dhaka first to help our life and growth

NOW Dhaka is the second worst city in the world in the global livability index just after Damascus.  We must ignore the case of Damascus since it is a war zone.  Then we are the 'proud owner' of the worst capital in the planet.  This adds another feather to our crown already overloaded with similar laurels for judicial tardiness, bureaucratic inefficiency, and corruption.  We Bengalis love to arrange numerous conferences on investment and growth, but we often forget that we have to fix our principal growth center, Dhaka, in the first place before we endeavor to stimulate investment and accelerate growth.  There is not a single example on earth to show that a nation developed well without fixing its capital.

The countries like Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand could never have been emerging tigers without ensuring mobility and modern transports in their capital cities.  The full power of money is realized when money is multiplied with its velocity.  The same is true for labor whose velocity is simply imprisoned in the traffic jam of Dhaka.  Unfortunate Dhaka dwellers squander a great part of their life and youth in rickshaws and buses, reducing quality family time and thus hurting the conjugal life, parental care, and education.  Our poor performance in the knowledge economy index can be greatly attributed to the miserable life of Dhaka and other megacities.   

When traffic jam takes a considerable amount of time in Dhaka's everyday life, people in Dhaka have one of the shortest time spans for sleep at night – a global survey expressed 2 years ago.  Dhaka has been recently branded as the 4th most polluted city in the world.  Many people, being recommended by the doctors, cannot walk in the metropolitan areas because footpaths have been usurped by petty businesses or sometimes urinals.  Streets are clogged. Safety is another concern because mastans are ready with traps. Not everyone in Dhaka can eat adequate food every day, but everyone must consume an equal amount of carbon air, causing health hazards and even premature deaths.  

Is this a city we should recommend to our foreign friends for direct investment?  They are not that naïve to jump into Dhaka without knowing what Dhaka means. That is why our foreign direct investment is hovering around one billion dollars for the last 5 years while neighboring China and India are attracting foreign investment at a magnetic speed.

Have we ever thought why writing on Dhaka generates little or no action from the government?  It is a peculiar branch of social psychology where our politicians fit in. When in opposition they suffer the ordeal of congestion in Dhaka and vow to solve it.  But the day they take oath and come out of Bangabhaban flanked by the security, they forget the torment of urban immobility.  Their enjoyable city commuting is preferentially guaranteed under police escort, and hence they need not worry about something that does not hurt them right at that moment.  They do not want to make the streets and footpaths clear of slow vehicles and petty businesses, because rickshaw pullers, illegal hawkers, touts, and cadres assemble a big vote bank, which they badly need to get reelected.

Our Prime Minister should convene a summit on how to streamline Dhaka by engaging lawmakers, mayors, city planners, economists, engineers, and expert expatriates.  This regime has taken the case of infrastructure seriously, but all projects will go in vain until Dhaka is dynamic.  From Mymensingh you can reach Dhaka's outskirt within 2 hours, but only a fortuneteller can predict how long it will take to reach Motijheel from Joydebpur.  We must get rid of the image of a dysfunctional Dhaka – which is a global notion nowadays.  Once the capital is regulated, other megacities will follow the trend.  Transport and communication will hit a new high, pushing national income upward.

Being surrounded by economic powerhouses like China, India, and Southeast Asia, Dhaka has enormous potentials to emerge as the hub of the Asian growth region.  Space should not be the biggest excuse to make a city pulsate with motion.  Strategic management is crucial to improve the productivity of the city.  Our nearest megacity Kolkata is a lesson for us – which has been managed by similar Bengalis as we are.  Cannot our top government officials and ministers use light helicopters to travel within the city instead of blocking our movement and taking thousands of work hours from our daily life?    

A congested city is always likely to breed hijackings and crimes, because the culprits know very well that the police cannot move to the spot unless the cops have wings.  Many lives would be saved if the hapless snail ambulances can move at the speed they should.  Hence, an elite force for Dhaka's traffic is much warranted to keep the city running, and thus to boost business activity and augment government revenues.  Reforming Dhaka's governance is of paramount importance.  

Living in a densely populated country with serious land scarcity, we are pushed against the wall to fix Dhaka anyway.  Otherwise growth will not be sustained and land grabbers will mutilate the city as per their agenda, making Dhaka a miserable case of human disaster.

The writer is Associate Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Cortland.