A ground reality that mocks
Saturday, 22 September 2007
WHILE our magnetically levitated train (MLT), as dreamt of by ex-Communication Minister Barrister Nazmul Huda, still rumbles in the Ionosphere offering us no opportunity to board and travel by it, the ground reality of shabby trains moving on the worn-out tracks across the country is a cause of serious anxiety. The flinch-plates of these dilapidated tracks in many areas along the border belt are reportedly stolen oftener than occasionally and sold in workshops by the drug-addicts to collect money for purchasing phensedyl, which pours in from across the border not seasonally like flood waters but year-round.
But no industrial society can handle its import and export businesses efficiently and continue to grow economically unless it keeps up its transportation sector efficient and steady by grooming up its railway very well. For Bangladesh, a land-short country with a large population--the ninth largest in the world, this premise is more applicable. Yet the railway continues to receive very little attention. We should have known it clearly by now from our past experiences, had we remained alert about our own precarious problems and positive global developments.
The fact that we lament about high cost and slow speed of transportation conveys that our management expertise and vision are still rudimentary. The lack of imaginative and farsighted planning in the transportation sector, where emphasis has been wrongly, unwittingly and thoughtlessly put on road communications, has led to fast shrinkage of agricultural land and high incidents of import of foreign-made buses, trucks and their spares. The cost due to the requirement of recurrent replacement and import of such vehicles and their spares alongside the unseen cost of production losses in lands already occupied by new roads would have been more than enough, if it could be forestalled with proper development of the railway, to groom up and maintain an efficient nation-wide train service for both goods and passengers traffic.
While Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, which are also land-short, but not as badly as this country, fill up their respective adjoining sea to claim new land, we have been spoiling our scarce precious land by constructing new roads that could be found unnecessary on developing the railway properly. Are we fools who pave way for their future pains?
Khalid Hossain
Mirpur, Dhaka.
But no industrial society can handle its import and export businesses efficiently and continue to grow economically unless it keeps up its transportation sector efficient and steady by grooming up its railway very well. For Bangladesh, a land-short country with a large population--the ninth largest in the world, this premise is more applicable. Yet the railway continues to receive very little attention. We should have known it clearly by now from our past experiences, had we remained alert about our own precarious problems and positive global developments.
The fact that we lament about high cost and slow speed of transportation conveys that our management expertise and vision are still rudimentary. The lack of imaginative and farsighted planning in the transportation sector, where emphasis has been wrongly, unwittingly and thoughtlessly put on road communications, has led to fast shrinkage of agricultural land and high incidents of import of foreign-made buses, trucks and their spares. The cost due to the requirement of recurrent replacement and import of such vehicles and their spares alongside the unseen cost of production losses in lands already occupied by new roads would have been more than enough, if it could be forestalled with proper development of the railway, to groom up and maintain an efficient nation-wide train service for both goods and passengers traffic.
While Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, which are also land-short, but not as badly as this country, fill up their respective adjoining sea to claim new land, we have been spoiling our scarce precious land by constructing new roads that could be found unnecessary on developing the railway properly. Are we fools who pave way for their future pains?
Khalid Hossain
Mirpur, Dhaka.