Amartya Sen's Love/Hate for Dhaka
Bangladesh is a country where the common people cannot get peace even after their death. They are evicted from their graves to make way for new arrivals. In such a country, the programme of industrialization has to be implemented with extra caution.
Did Amartya Sen Really Say That?! Reporting on Amartya Sen's address to the "Global Health Equity Initiative Conference" at BRAC center for Development Management at Rajendrapur, the Daily Star (December 18) mentions Sen as saying that "he would not recommend anyone to live in this (Dhaka) city, not even at the posh Gulshan or Baridhara."
Assuming that the reporting is correct, it is clear that Sen was not saying this to offend his hosts of Dhaka city. Rather, evidently, he was distressed by certain aspects of Dhaka City, and he meant the above statement as a way of drawing attention to these distressful aspects.
We all know how dearly Amartya Sen loves Dhaka and Bangladesh. There are many Bengalis who had to migrate upon partition, and who then moved on to become prominent figures in respective fields either in India or abroad. But, there are very few who displayed so much attachment to their ancestral land as Amartya Sen did. It is not the laurels and accolades that Bangladeshis wanted to shower on him in the wake of his receipt of Nobel Prize that made Sen fly to Bangladesh from Stockholm. He was scheduled for this trip even before Nobel was announced. Sen visited Dhaka and Bangladesh many times before, whenever he could fit such trips into his busy schedule. He even went to Chittagong to attend BEA seminar. In a rare display of attachment, he maintains contact with the family that currently occupies his ancestral Larmini Street house; takes the family's sons for lunch when they visit him at Harvard. So, there can hardly be any question about Sen's deep love and goodwill for Dhaka and Bangladesh.
Why did then Sen say (half jokingly albeit) that he does not recommend anybody to live in Dhaka, even in its posh quarters? What are the aspects of Dhaka City that distressed him so much? As we all try to revel in Sen's Nobel glory, it is incumbent on us to pay some attention to his statements and try to draw necessary lessons.
Dhaka: Once a Pleasant City
Dhaka indeed used to be a very pleasant city. This is true not only of Dhaka of thirties or forties, immortalized through the chronicles of another preeminent Bengali intellectual, Buddhodev Basu. Even during the seventies, Dhaka used to be a pleasant city. There were not as many highrise buildings, or as many motor vehicles, as today. But it was a nice and relatively clean city. In new Dhaka there were still many trees, many water bodies. The air was fresh, and the water was uncontaminated. People could move around the city with ease. Today's Dhaka abounds in multi-storied apartment buildings. Its streets are full with private cars. Yet it is today's Dhaka that reminds one Kobiguru Rabindranath's famous line, "Bring Those Woods Back; Take Away the City!"
Dhaka today is one of the deadliest places in terms of air pollution. The lead level in Dhaka's air is more than five times higher than the UN recommended safe level. Its streets are clogged. No one can be certain how long it will take to reach from one point of the city to another. Pedestrians find it hard to cross the streets. The trees are disappearing. The water bodies are vanishing even faster. The remaining water bodies are losing their connections with adjoining rivers and their annual recharge.
The lanes overflow with uncollected household waste and filth. Industrial waste and medical waste are becoming serious hazards to sanitation and health. The population of the city is heading toward ten million. Once ending at Nawabpur rail crossing, the border the city has now reached as far north as Turag. To the south, it is pushing toward the shores of Dhaleshwari.
There is hardly any open space. It used to be hard previously to conceive a school without an open playground. Now entire universities are crammed into a few building blocks. Overcrowding is assuming frightening proportions. There is no sign of this explosive growth slowing down any time soon. This growth in size and density is putting serious strain on the city's ability to provide basic public utilities as water, power, sewerage, drainage, transportation, waste disposal, etc. In this backdrop, all the talk of converting Dakha into a 'tilottoma nagari' is simply hollow and ironic. It would not therefore be surprising if Amartya Sen did not recommend anybody to live in Dhaka. He knows only too well what John Stuart Mill had to say about the necessity of space and nature for the development of human mind and soul. This is how Mill put it in his Principles of Political Economy:
"Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of the posterity, they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it." (Book IV, Chapter IV).
What Can Dhaka Do?
Despite this sorry state and alarming prospects, Dhaka is and will remain our capital city. Hence, instead of despairing, the question that we need to ask is: What to do? Looking back into its uncrowded and clean past and feeling nostalgic about it cannot carry us too far. We need to look into the future and find out ways in which Dhaka can be fast and modern and yet clean and comfortable; how Dhaka can have a better environment and ensure a better quality of life.
Population Control: There are of course certain things, which do not depend on Dhaka alone. First and foremost among these is population growth. Part of Dhaka's alarming growth certainly comes from natural growth of her own population. But a much greater portion of this growth is from in-migration from rest of the country. Unless population growth in the country as a whole is checked, Dhaka's disturbing growth cannot be stopped. Bangladesh has had some success in reducing population growth.
But, there is absolutely no ground for complacency. In fact, in absolute terms population growth may not have decreased at all. The following arithmetic can well illustrate the point. In the early seventies population of Bangladesh was about 75 million.
A 2.5 per cent growth then implied an annual increase in population by 1.87 million. Now the population size is about 130 million. Even if the current growth rate is assumed to be 1.5 per cent, the implied annual increase in population is 1.95 million.
The physical area of Bangladesh increases neither arithmetically nor geometrically. So the decrease in rate does not help much so long as the total size of the population keeps on rising. Note that there are many important countries in the world whose total population size is smaller than one or few years' increase in Bangladesh's population. For example, total population of Norway or Sweden is equal to Bangladesh's only 2 and 4 years' incremental population. This is simply unsustainable from any point of view. With regard to population, Bangladesh can learn a lot from China's example. China's density of population in 1992 was about 120 per square mile, which is about 10 times less than that of Bangladesh. Yet China is aggressively pursuing one-child policy (i.e., negative population growth) for already several decades.
Dhaka cannot be responsible for entire country's irrational population growth. But Dhaka is the capital. The central government is seated here. The people who govern the country are residents of Dhaka. So Dhaka can actually play a decisive role in leading the country rapidly toward a zero and then negative population growth. Other than checking population growth, which will require nation-wide effort, there are many things that are directly under Dhaka's control. Dhaka has nobody else for failure in these respects. The following gives just a few such examples.
Air Pollution: The most glaring example of such failure is with respect to air pollution. Take the simple case of eradicating the two-stroke-engine-vehicles (TSEV) - the scooters and tempos. Research shows that these alone are responsible for about 70 percent of Dhaka City's air pollution, particularly its poisonous lead in air. This is causing irreparable damage to the health of Dhaka's population, particularly its children. There is absolutely no reason why Dhaka should have allowed the TSEVs ply in such large numbers for such a long time. Clearly, low per capita GDP is not the problem. TSEVs are banned even in Nepal, whose per capita income is even lower than that of Bangladesh. This has been a criminal negligence on the part of authorities in Dhaka under several successive governments.
Mass Transportation:
A second example is that of mass transportation. Common sense indicates that, given its extremely high density of population, the mode of transportation that is most suitable for Dhaka is bus service and not private car. Yet unfortunately, over the years it is the number of private cars that has exploded, while the number of buses has remained pitifully limited and inadequate. Of course, the kind of development strategy that is being pursued at the national level has a direct effect on the mode of transportation that burgeons. However, Dhaka cannot absolve itself of its responsibility both as the city authority and, again, as the seat of the national government.
There is a lot that Dhaka can learn in this respect from Calcutta. The population density problem is no less severe in Calcutta. Yet Calcutta manages to have a well functioning bus system. Unlike in Dhaka, the middle class in Calcutta does not feel stigmatized to travel by bus. Note further that Calcutta's bus system is mostly under private ownership. The other day, the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, inaugurated a BRTC fleet of thirty new double-deckers. This is no doubt a good step. However, a fleet of BRTC double-deckers will not solve Dhaka's problem of mass transportation. The problem is more structural.
The authorities will have to ask the basic question: Why isn't private sector coming up with enough buses when hundreds wait at bus stands? It is likely that there are two main reasons for this. One is perhaps over-regulation of bus fares by the authorities. Bus owners should be given more leeway to choose the fare they charge. That will lead to different grades of bus service to emerge. That is exactly what is needed. A second likely reason for current inadequate bus service is the following.
It is often alleged that existing bus owners have organized themselves into cartels and thereby are not allowing free competition to work. Thus, a more effective way of ensuring adequate bus service may be to break up this cartel and to deregulate bus fares. Note that these two steps have to be implemented in conjunction. If the government just deregulates the fares and fails to break up the cartels, then obviously the situation will be worse. It is not that we always have to have a World Bank loan to solve every problem that crops up. There are many things that can be done without seeking loans. Exposing the cartel, generating popular support to break it up, and then actually doing so does not require a loan.
Similarly, banishing the TSEVs from Dhaka's street does not need a loan project. Common sense, good judgment, some measures of creativity and imagination, and a little bit of love for people should be sufficient for these steps.
Protection of Open Space and Water Bodies: This has been another area of neglect. The authorities have not tried hard to preserve the open spaces that were available in Dhaka. The damage has been particularly severe regarding water bodies. The authorities have often been eager partner with private individuals in letting the water bodies to be filled up. The constant encroachment of Dhanmondi and Gulshan lakes, either in collusion with or despite approval of authorities, is just one example of such neglect.
Connections with Rivers: Another mistake that authorities are doing is severing Dhaka's connections with her adjoining rivers. The Greater Dhaka Embankment has sealed off Dhaka from her rivers on the south and west. Now the 3000 crore taka Joydevpur-Demra embankment, that is under construction, will complete the circle by sealing off Dhaka from her rivers on the north and east. All this is being done in the name of flood protection. Unfortunately, in the long run, embankments are not going to solve Dhaka's flood problem. (For details of the argument, interested reader may see my flood essay that appeared in The Daily Star on October 6-7 last year.) Meanwhile, these embankments will bring slow death to the remaining water bodies of Dhaka. This will make Dhaka more arid and intemperate, and create new problems of water logging, drainage, and sanitation. These embankments may actually bring the arsenic problem to Dhaka's because they will obstruct replenishment of Dhaka underground aquifers.
With Jamuna Bridge in place, a Joydevpur-Demra Dhaka bypass may indeed be necessary. But there is no reason why it has to be built in the form of an embankment. The bypass may be constructed with bridges and culverts of adequate number and size so as retain Dhaka's connection with her rivers. The government should actually send some of its planners and decision-makers to Amsterdam to see for themselves how a great modern and sophisticated city can enormously benefit from her links with rivers. Instead of sealing the city from the adjoining rivers, Dhaka should consider the presence of rivers along its outskirts as a blessing and try to integrate these as much as possible to its life. It should try to rejuvenate the old canals and rivulets that ones existed and create new ones so that river water can crisscross the city.
Consumption and Life Style Pattern: It needs to be realized that it is perilous for Bangladeshis and people of Dhaka to try to slavishly imitate the US lifestyle. The density of population in the US is just 27 per square mile, which is about 50 times less than that of Bangladesh. Even in the US and other developed countries, there is now an increasing awareness that the life pattern that has emerged in these countries is not sustainable in the long run for the earth as a planet. There is a growing movement to curtail consumption of energy, fuel, natural resources, and synthetic and other non-biodegradable materials. The people of San Francisco and Portland are now increasingly moving away from cars and adopting biking as their mode of commuting. People are shunning plastic bags in favour of those made of natural fibers. The force of this increasing environmental awareness can be seen in Green Party's becoming a partner of the ruling coalition in Germany.
In Bangladesh we simply do not have the vast expanses like that of America to be used as landfills for waste disposal. Bangladesh is a country where the common people cannot get peace even after their death. They are evicted from their graves to make way for new arrivals. In such a country, the programme of industrialization has to be implemented with extra caution. Patterns of settlement, transportation, consumption, etc. all need to be determined in the light of the local conditions and local resource constraints. Foreign companies will obviously try to foist a consumption pattern that suits their marketing and profit needs. They can just pocket the profit and leave Bangladesh. But Bangladeshis and their future generations will have to live in this land. They, therefore, need to protect their environment.
Coming Back to What Sen Said. So, Dhaka and Bangladesh can indeed do a lot of things to change Sen's alleged negative recommendation regarding Dhaka. All is not yet lost. Through national and Dhaka-based measures, it is possible to turn things around, and to create a Dhaka that is modern and fast and yet nice and clean, comfortable to live and move around, in harmony with its physical setting in the midst of rivers, and friendly to the environment. Then perhaps Sen will not only recommend Dhaka to others as a place to live, but himself visit Dhaka more often and stay for extended periods and thereby enrich Dhaka's intellectual life.
The author is Professor of Economics, Emory University, USA, and Coordinator, Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN).