Cabinet meet away from Dhaka

The council of advisers of the caretaker government meeting in Rangpur on Saturday, not only the people of the district town but that of the whole North Bengal must have felt cared for. With the devolution of powers on to a well- structured local government system yet to be effected, any step to bring the top administration within the close proximity of the people away from the capital is to be welcomed. Some of the previous governments had tried it with a lot of fanfare mostly ending up distributing favours to ruling party followers. This government has only a greater reason to be holding cabinet meetings outside the capital because there is no parliament now with the grievances of outlying districts getting known at the centre of power.
Proximity of the highest administration to divisional or district headquarters has a way of revving up the local administrations from occasional sluggishness these might fall in to.
In our overcentralised decision making process with many-layered bureaucratic hurdles to be crossed before getting any results, the rationale for cabinet meeting outside Dhaka is only reinforced by the number of decisions on pending issues taken by the chief adviser in Rangpur. Altogether fourteen specific decisions have been made at the meeting. These include, among others, close monitoring of fertiliser distribution and irrigation activities towards ensuring good harvest of forthcoming boro crop, formation of a committee headed by education and commerce adviser Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman to address the multidimensional Monga problem, undertaking job training programmes to create a pool of skilled manpower for domestic employment and export, providing safety nets to vulnerable people and setting up of a university in Rangpur.
The decisions would be as good as their implementation. Follow up measures should be taken so that the hopes raised among the people of North Bengal are not belied.