Where have all the wise men (and women) gone?
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
One would have expected this, albeit unfortunately, from an undemocratic elected government, but to be handed an anti-people, anti-poor city development plan via the age-old tactful bureaucracy at fag end of an extended caretaker government, whose primary laudable mission was to bring the nation on a virtuous track is downright insulting and a stinker.
Although it is not uncommon for us to blame all our woes on conspiracies hatched by our opponents, it would not be an exaggeration to allege that the haste and timing of the promulgation of the Detail Area Plan (DAP) of Dhaka, the third stage of establishing a planned megalopolis, are devious tools employed by vested quarters to inflict a farewell culpability on a CTG that is about to present the country with a free, fair and neutral national elections.
Dhaka's DAP has violated government policies, is designed to rob the city and its surrounding areas of troughs that are essential to keep it flood-free, will eat up vital agricultural land to meet the profane lust of developers, and will do nothing for the people in whose name all our parliamentary candidates swear every time they file their nomination.
The concept of DAP is steeped in high probity, but as with several other apparently lawful tenets, the astute business people have found in it the right vehicle with which to pillage the countryside, the green urban islands and the hopes of a population who look up to city fathers to bring a 'change', if not for them but for their posterity. Through Dhaka's DAP as drafted and to be promulgated shortly, there is an effort to legalise the illegal, read immoral too, activities of the land dacoits.
There is no doubt that Dhaka and other cities require detail planning of its areas, but their spirit and content should be commensurate with the total planning of the respective cities. And that is where the community of architects, planners, environmentalists and lawyers find maximum disparity.
Today's presentation is an effort by the Bangladesh Institute of Planners (BIP) to make Dhaka's DAP readable for our readers so that they can grasp the gist of a plan that will affect how they live (or not) in a city that they consider their paternal and maternal property. Unfortunately, so do some narrow-minded personnel at the helm of affairs and their financially imbued partners.
In order to save Dhaka and our cities from the evil clutches of these self-seekers, we need not angels to descend from above, but the awakening of wise men and women from within the government and outside, who shall truthfully advise the CTG on the pros and the cons of DAP, and most essentially, the need to float it for wider inspection and evaluation, not mere eyewashes, so that when the rectified plan shall be implemented, the citizens shall gratefully recall the judiciousness of the concerned Adviser, the Secretary, and the professionals. There is no higher a blessing, Mr. Advisor, Mr. Secretary, and my dear fellow professionals.
Let us not organise our personal future at the cost of the next generation.