Farmland and urbanisation

Bangladesh is, apparently, moving fast towards transforming itself into an urban state, shedding its age-old agrarian character. Experts, while taking part in a recent day-long seminar in Dhaka, made a forecast indicating that nearly 55 per cent of the country's population would live in urban centres by the year, 2051. The total number of inhabitants is projected to reach 250 million by then. A renowned town planner also told the seminar that in addition to the existing 325 city corporations and municipalities and 200 growth centres, the 4,500 union parishad centres would become small towns gradually by the middle of the current century.

There could be unending debates over the issue of good and bad effects of rapid urbanisation in a country like Bangladesh where resources are too scarce. But the process of urbanization is unstoppable. From that context, the situation will tend to worsen in Bangladesh, when it is considered in the context of allocation of resources to urban and rural areas and the quality of governance. More and more people have been migrating continuously over the years to cities and towns from rural areas in search of livelihood, better living facilities etc. When large cities and towns would not be able to accommodate any more people, then the smaller towns would grow bigger gradually and rural centres would turn into small townships. In the process, urban population will become larger than the rural one.

But this process of fast urbanisation, when it gets the momentum, would give rise to a myriad of social and economic problems that the present-day policymakers are either not being able to foresee or unwilling to take note of.  For instance, the first casualty of rapid urbanisation will be the arable land. During the last four decades and more, starting from the year 1971-72, the country's population more than doubled and the loss of arable land during the period was around 6.0 per cent. The extent of loss of land would be far greater in the coming years because of, what is projected as, an unabated rise in population and growth of urban centres across the country.  

The loss of arable land would again take a toll on food production. Despite the loss of land during the last four decades or more, the production of food went up manifold. This is mainly because of the increase in area under cereal crops and employment of improved farm practices. But it might prove difficult to raise the food output further even if the area under cereal crops remained the same. However, the size of arable land would surely decline in the coming years to accommodate people, build new infrastructural facilities and meet other needs. The possibility of increasing the production of food will then become further remote.

On its part, the government can address the situation better and more efficiently through proper land management policy. It does not have any control over the growth of urban centres other than Dhaka and a couple of other cities. The local governments in many places remain silent witnesses to the unplanned growth of urban centres at the expense of valuable arable land since they do not have any lawful authority to deal with this issue in particular. So, the government should prepare a comprehensive land management policy, empowering the local government (LG) bodies with the authority to check unplanned growth of urban centres.