New horizon of connectivity

The Padma Bridge has brought the western and southern parts of the country closer to its central and eastern regions by bridging the yawning land gap caused by the mighty river Padma. But it has done more by extending the connectivity up to the Indo-Bangladesh border. Further, it has the prospect of opening up a wider horizon with the entire Dhaka-Padma Bridge-Benapole forming a part of the Asian Highway (AH) 01 and the South Asian Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Road Corridor-02. But the Dhaka-Bhanga Expressway, the first six-lane national expressway in the country, is yet to reap the desired benefits because the section from Bhanga to Benapole is just a two-lane corridor. The Bhanga-Barishal section of the road is narrower still. So the increased volumes of vehicles pressed into service on both these routes with the commissioning of the wonder bridge and the expressway on both sides put those narrower roads under severe stress, increasing the risk of accidents.
It is against this backdrop, the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) has initiated a laudable move to turn the Bhanga-Benapole segment into a six-lane highway within the next five years. It has submitted a proposal for the project involving a total cost of Tk138.41 billion. Hopefully, it will receive the green signal because the lion's share of the fund amounting to Tk 110.825 billion will come from the Indian Line of Credit (LoC)-III. Like the highway from Dhaka to Bhanga, this section of the highway will have two service lines for slow-moving vehicles and other required infrastructure such as overpasses including two railway overpasses, flyovers, bridges, culverts, trumpet interchanges for vehicles to enter and exit the multi-lanes from single-lane connecting roads giving it a genuine character of a highway. After all, it will have to serve as part of the Asian Highway and SASEC corridor.
Thus the link to be established with the Mongla Seaport at home and with India, Nepal and Bhutan in the neighbourhood for both cross-border and regional trade and transport is certainly going to bring about a paradigm shift in shared economic activities and prosperity. All the countries, particularly landlocked Nepal and Bhutan, stand to gain immensely from the road link. At some point in the future, with the Asian Highway coming into the picture, the connectivity is likely to extend up to South-east Asia. If Myanmar changes its way, this is quite possible. Such an option for wider trade and transport link can indeed help augment the Asian Age with China extending its road link up to Myanmar.
However, regional trade boost does not necessarily mean increase in domestic productivity. For a small country like Bangladesh, its unutilised areas have to be introduced to suitable economic and productive enterprises. The country's southern districts, now connected by roads to the capital, courtesy of the Padma Bridge, are a prime candidate for such manufacturing ventures alongside their agro-products. So, the Bhanga-Barishal-Kuakata road also deserves to be developed to a six-lane highway in order to increase productivity and export from Bangladesh to the neighbouring and other Asian countries. This is necessary to reduce existing trade imbalance and maintain parity in the future. Bangladesh must learn how to add value to technologies it receives, as Japan and China did initially, in order to join the bandwagon of successful Asian peers.