Preparing participatory master plans for districts

FE Team | Published: May 18, 2024 21:14:01

It is now difficult to predict what will pan out finally, but the idea of preparing five-year development master plans for districts, as mooted by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the just-held meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC), appears to be realistic under the prevailing circumstances. The head of the government wanted the formulation of the proposed master plans to be made participatory. To make it happen, in addition to lawmakers and government officials, the process should involve the local-level public representatives, including Upazila chairmen. The idea of taking up such an approach could be to make the plans realistic and need-based. When plans are conceived centrally, the planners, deliberately or otherwise, overlook some specific yet important needs of districts. If plans are made at the district level, that problem, hopefully, would be resolved.
However, getting a new approach integrated into the overall development plan might not be that easy. Under the prevailing system, the Upazila administration takes up small-scale projects that are mainly implemented using grants made available by the government. Large and medium projects in districts are prepared and financed centrally. It is understood that the basic reason behind suggesting formulation of district-based master plans is to get rid of the rivalry between the upazila parishads and the lawmakers in the local-level development activities. The rivalry that has turned bitter lately is hurting the local-level development activities. Whether the problem will go away or not with the changed approach is difficult to say at the moment. But if the district-level officials are entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing the preparation of master plans and their execution, new problems are likely to crop up.
As the government is in partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country has witnessed a raft of policy reforms that had been toyed with for decades by successive administrations, but never implemented. Apart from the IMF, bilateral and multilateral development partners like the World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), JICA, China's EXIM Bank, etc. have, at different times, expressed dissatisfaction over the slow-paced implementation of donor-backed projects. Indeed, rate of implementation in the past budgets for foreign aided projects have rarely passed the 50 per cent mark. Obviously, something had to change at the policy level. Even so, such a gigantic step in that direction has taken everyone by surprise. The prime minister has asked the various branches of the government to "speedily complete the foreign-aided and grants-funded projects with additional efforts, if required, to expedite further the country's development drive".
A very tall order, but it needs to be administered with great care. There will obviously be a lot of resistance coming from various quarters, for the plan hopes to achieve a number of milestones that will make a serious dent in corruption. But, if the government wishes to propel growth at a time of global economic downturn, it must initiate reforms and implement the budget focused on realistic needs of the people. In that respect, the new budget and its operational plan makes a lot of sense.