Dhaka has emerged as the 2nd largest megacity in the world in terms of population. The United Nations World Urbanisation Prospects 2025 report finds Jakarta to secure the top position with 42 million people. Taking urban sprawl into consideration, the UN applies a new gauge to measure the world's megacity areas. Both Jakarta and Dhaka have enveloped satellite towns around them and hence the largest city Tokyo 15 years back has been relegated to the 3rd place. Thus Dhaka is home to 3.36 million people. Shanghai and Delhi complete the list of top five megacities in the world. Only one of the top 10 megacities lies outside of the continent of Asia.
The fast-pace expansion of Asian cities tells a story of development full of opportunities on the one hand and missed chances on the other. Sure enough, Tokyo and Shanghai belong to a different league altogether. But other Asian megacities struggle to provide their inhabitants with adequate civic services. Breakneck urbanisation has already prompted 45 per cent world population to live in cities with at least 50,000 people. Another 36 per cent population live in towns with at least 5,000 inhabitants.
Now what matters most is if the influx of people from villages to urban centres has made them better off. Yes, in case of rural people who have left behind grinding poverty to move to urban centres livelihood options are many. But this does not mean they can change their fortunes overnight. Except a rare few, the rest lead a life at subsistence level. Unskilled labourers as they are, their chance to move up the social ladder is well-nigh impossible. The recent unrestricted proliferation of battery-run rickshaws of all shapes and sizes in Dhaka exposes chaotic employment opportunity in a single area and the danger of a lack of city governance.
Expansion of city limits is, therefore, not an occasion for celebration. Squalor, air and sound pollution together with gridlocks on streets turn the city dysfunctional. Long tailbacks alone cost Jakarta's economy around $6.0 billion and Dhaka's $6.5 billion in lost productivity annually. Heavy crowding of city puts further pressure on the already stressed civic amenities. So, 'the bigger the better' does not apply to the unrestrained growth of all Asian megacities. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) 2025 Global Liveability Index (GLI), Jakarta ranks 132nd out of 173 cities and Delhi occupies the 145th slot. Dhaka is third from the last with Damascus and Libya's Tripoli trailing behind.
This shows that the capital city of Bangladesh is struggling to survive. Its lifeline the Buriganga has virtually been reduced to cesspool, courtesy of release of untreated effluent from industries and factories. The condition of other three rivers the Balu, the Turag and the Sitalakhya are no better. A little further, Dhaleswari is now an unwilling receptor of untreated effluent from the Savar leather industrial park. With green cover of the capital falling to as low as 2.0 per cent of healthy vegetation by 2020 from 17 per cent in the 1980s, the city is heading for a disaster. The rising river water and air pollutions are fast deteriorating its local ecology and environment. Then a powerful earthquake seems to be inching closer to cause a human disaster for this chaotic and messy urban hotspot.
What then awaits this city sends a chill down the spine. No matter if the city falls a victim to a natural calamity like a quake or its manmade disasters strangulate it, the very prospect of its survival looks untenable. The core areas of Dhaka are most densely populated with 34,000 to 45,000 people huddling in per square kilometre. Even the metro area hosts 14,000 people in a square kilometre. The core area's population density is highest in the world.
With all its negative attributes, however, the city could run in a tolerably regulated and disciplined manner if the responsibilities of delivering the goods were delegated to different agencies making those accountable to a supervisory body. Like most of the Asian megacities, Dhaka is run chaotically with several agencies in charge of providing different civic services. Apart from two municipalities, there are a national development authority, a number of ministries and several agencies individually responsible for utility services like electricity, water, sewage, transport, piped natural gas etc. Kolkata has as many as 423 different government entities and the result is "Too many cooks spoil the broth".
The management of megacities is certainly challenging and yet two types of governance such as the one that makes Shanghai run well under a command economy and the other model developed and practised by Tokyo prove successful. It has not a single government body but the work loads are distributed among the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) and municipalities. The TMG is responsible for providing broader civic services such as water, sewage and public hospitals. Elected mayors and assemblies of municipalities, wards, prefectures or peripheral cities and towns look after schools, waste management and community planning. The TMG plays the role of a coordinator between and among them.
A city government in Dhaka with such delegated responsibilities for ward commissioners without the interference from ministries or departments could avoid chaotic and overlapping development works. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy is reluctant to let go its hold on the city affairs. In the absence of coordination, the city is becoming stagnant. Thus the initiative for franchising bus service was thwarted by bus operators and employees. Many other solvable problems that make the city inert are left unaddressed because of coordination and cooperation. If introduced, city governance could solve many of the problems, including traffic, facing Dhaka City. Mobility in the city would gather momentum, allowing its own and national productivity to pick up.
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com