All roads lead to Dhaka!

Once all roads led to Rome in that mighty empire of the same name. Now that empire has shrunk, and the roads have devolved in other destinations. Even in those mighty days of the empire, only the highly ambitious made the trek to that mighty city. Consisting of provinces with its own regional bureaucracy, the common citizens did not have to traverse those long roads to Rome, nor did the royal fortunes of the ruling Caesars affect the commoners. Life, compared to what has evolved today, was simple.

Within the confines of our own borders, we are also a mighty empire, not necessarily acknowledged by the rest of the world. We have a huge bureaucracy, layers of government, countless ministries, a vibrant political dialogue that is more bile filled rhetoric than productive conversation that would lead to the betterment of a commoner like me. Oh, another thing….over here, all roads lead to Dhaka, the teetering cosmopolitan of 15 million plus, known for its expensive kitchen markets, congestions, corruption, and lining up for queues from day to night.

As the provincial capital of eastern Bengal and then East Pakistan, Dhaka, then known as 'Dacca', was a sleepy town devoid of amenities like that of Kolkata close by. In those days, for education, health, and career the upwardly mobile and the ambitious headed for that city in the same way we are all marching towards Dhaka these days. A simple transfer of deed, for example requires layers of signatures sometimes leading to all the way to the minister. With the best of private and public universities and schools all located in Dhaka, anyone with the ambition and means to move to Dhaka will do so.

But why? Better institutions are created when there is patronage, both economic and political, for those institutions. With everyone who matters being in Dhaka, the institutions have not developed in other cities. In a federal system like that of the USA and India next door, there is a strong system of local elected government. The bureaucracy that matters to daily life is defined and limited to the confines of the state borders. There is also a very healthy competition between states in both countries to attract talent and investments based on the facilities they can provide. Thus every Indian or American does not have to head for Delhi or Washington DC for anything. All services are available in some form or another within a certain geographic parameter of where one lives in both countries. In India, we have seen the diversified economies of IT based Bangalore and Hyderabad, the entertainment and trading hub of Mumbai, educational hubs like Kharagpur, Pune and Kolhapur, highly educated pockets of education like Kerala and evolved local panchayet systems in West Bengal. In the US, the wealth, facilities, culture, and other means are well spread in each and every state, with cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston faring better than other cities.

We roughly have half of the population of the US. Except for the short experiment back in the early '70s, we never talked about a federal option for Bangladesh. In a centralised political system of winners take all, it is indeed a system where once the election is won, we have to wait for another five years to see any significant changes. The recent election in the US, held only two years after the historic win of Obama, showed the sentiment of the US populace about the disgruntlement about his policies and the lack of speed with which his economic recovery programme is being sustained. Oh, how I wish I could vote in local elections every two years to express myself! Instead of the solely concentrating on dominating the parliament every five years and then being stagnant for the next five, the political life would be a lot more active had there been state elections to be fought. We, Dhakaiyas could be spared and also the non-Dhaaikayas could reach bureaucrats more easily than having to apply for a pass at the Segunbagicha Secretariat. In the past two decades, even the United Kingdom, whose laws are used as the base for the system of our government, have elected Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish Parliaments, thus reliving London of some of the activities pertaining to local government.

The use of technology could also be used for an argument for devolution, if not in the federal sense, but at least in the argument for physical decentralisation. There is enough technology out there even at this current state to set up teleconferencing between Dhaka and other cities. I personally don't see why, other than the ministries of home and foreign affairs, establishment, defence, and finance, any other ministries have to be in Dhaka. Their mere presence in other outlying cities would have created a catalyst for creating institutions that would have attracted residences away from Dhaka, not only reliving the capital of the pressures it can't seem to contain, but also would have distributed the wealth all along the country. Only in the past decade, the second city of Chittagong has been able to reverse its population decline. The presence of the port and later, the setting up of the export processing zone acted as the positive catalyst. With expats also moving into the city, there was a demand for better schooling, housing, and amenities that the city is finally catching up to. Yet, the trend to move to Dhaka is still prevalent in Chittagong, with the moneyed class investing in residential properties in Dhaka. Even as far as cultural activities are concerned, Dhaka rules. Be it concerts, festivals, 'melas', and fairs, the facilities in Dhaka rule supreme. Naturally, for the quality of living, I would rather live in Dhaka.

Let me end by referring to a study named 'Canada's Hub Cities: A driving Force of the National Economy', conducted by an urban think tank called Metropolitan Outlook Service. Canada has a federal system of government. The report suggested that the government in Ottawa strategically focus municipal investments in its hub cities instead of spreading funds across the country on a per-capita basis.

The argument is based on the assumption that, when the economically leading city of a province prospers, so does the rest of the province as a whole. Economic growth in a provincial or regional hub has, what has been called a 'coat-tailed' effect, driving an even faster rate of growth in small communities within that province.

Other than Dhaka and Chittagong, we already have the templates of other existing cities that can be utilised in the same way. Barisal, Khulna, Rajshahi, Comilla, Rangpur, Mymensingh, Sylhet, and other townships as well, deserve to be nurtured into economic and cultural cosmopolitans in their own rights.

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MK Aaref is an architect. He studied architecture and urban planning at the University of Houston. Later, he specialised in privatisation during his MBA from Aston University, UK. He currently resides and practices in Dhaka