We are inclined to agree with the Road Transport and Bridges Minister in his exasperation behind the state of Dhaka’s roads and highways. Our capital was never really developed with much in the way of planning and vision and the result is the daily gridlock that citizens are forced to endure each and every day of the week.
However, while the administration’s retrofitted solutions such as the MRT are making slow but steady progress, more of such solutions -- such as the minister’s proposed subway system -- are untenable in the long run.
Decentralization is the only way out of this mess.
Bangladesh’s centralized nature is, in fact, one of its biggest impediments to future development. Dhaka’s concentrated nature when it comes to every facet of our economy is a problem that experts all over the nation have been pointing at as far back as a decade. The relative silence on the end of our government regarding the issue has been frustrating, to say the least.
But the burgeoning problems that our centralization has given way to has finally prompted government officials to say something about it, but the solutions offered will do little to nothing to improve conditions. The minister has given a projected timeframe of eight years for the first four subway routes to be built -- one can only fathom just how much worse our traffic situation would be by that time.
A subway system can only be considered when Dhaka’s existing infrastructural woes are fixed, it certainly isn’t the exit we need at this moment.
Inadequate housing, hospitals, markets, educational institutes, recreational spaces, farmland, and industries in and around our rural areas invariably lead to ever increasing influxes of people into the capital. This can be easily bypassed if the focus of our development included the rest of the nation and not just our metropolises.
More infrastructure will not solve Dhaka’s long-term issues. We need to decentralize our economy now or be forever stuck in a state of arrested development.