Despite Bangladesh’s rather scattershot development thus far, it would be incontrovertible to claim that connectivity is one area that our nation has been making steady, if rather slow, progress over the past decades.
From large-scale projects such as the Padma bridge finally seeing fruition to inter-city projects such as the metro rail transit and the elevated expressway bringing some much-needed relief to citizens of Dhaka, the government’s commitment to improving the state of our connectivity infrastructure deserves its plaudits.
Increased connectivity is the only way that we can achieve our long-term goal of decentralizing our economy away from its current over-reliance on the capital city and ensure that each and every corner of Bangladesh is eventually developed to the point where they can become self-sufficient economies themselves. To that end, there is perhaps no aspect of our infrastructure that deserves more focus than the expansion of our railway network.
The continued development of our railway systems is incredibly important for Bangladesh and the completion of the Chuadanga-Dhaka rail line via Padma Bridge is a big milestone to that end giving residents of Chuadanga district direct train access to Dhaka from next month.
This is indeed a great achievement.
The train is not only the most affordable form of mass transportation but arguably also the most sustainable due to its low carbon emissions, and as a nation on the front-lines in the war against climate change, enabling our citizens to adopt more eco-friendly modes of transport should be an obvious step.
Achieving middle-income status is perhaps the most important goal for Bangladesh as things stand, and investing in connectivity can most definitely lay down the tracks for us to arrive there without any delay.