Stopping the city bound exodus
Saturday, 16 January 2010
The various pull factors have been causing large-scale migration to the few major cities of Bangladesh during the last couple of decades. Specially, Dhaka city has been bearing the brunt of this migration with the maximum number arriving in it. There is no sign that this migration would slow down in the near future. Rather, under the current circumstances, this exodus appears poised to only increase as the economic opportunities between the cities and the rural areas are increasing by the day. This is a glaring example of the lack of vision and action in the planning process.
The faster trend of urbanisation was noted long ago and to some extent it is also unavoidable. Urbanisation is a growing phenomenon worldwide and Bangladeshis cannot be expected to be unique and remain free from the irresistible appeal of living in the cities. But this migration could be kept manageable through proper planning at the national level, taking care to create selectively industrialisation and other forms of entrepreneurship in different regions of the country. Among the reasons that draw people to the cities in Bangladesh, the economic ones seem to be the most important. From river erosion and other distresses, people at the grassroots in the rural areas are compelled in many cases to come to Dhaka and other cities. In their state of desperation, the destitute people perceive the cities to be better provider of employment or means to earning a livelihood. Thus, a singularly important way of controlling this rural exodus could be the creation of local growth centres in the economic sense. But this again is dependent on the government which has to take the political decisions to pave the way for greater resource flows to the rural areas. Besides, these greater allocations also will need to be spent efficiently and for this purpose decentralisation of the government, with stronger local governance, would be important. This, coupled with mechanisms in place to spend the increased allocation in line with the objectives would be indispensable.
Government can also go for assisted area schemes or the establishment of special enterprise zones away from the cities. The entrepreneurs can be drawn to them through all kinds of fiscal and other incentives that would make them interested to set up their enterprises in these zones, foregoing their otherwise natural impulse to set them up in the Dhaka, Chittagong or Khulna regions. From the countrywide dispersal of entrepreneurial activities through the setting up of these special zones, considerable employment activities can be expected to be created away from the cities. This would ease the migration pressure on the cities.
Indeed, there is no need to explain why the slowing down of the rural migration has become an imperative. Dhaka, a city of over 13 million people, is already too burdened with more people stressing its limited facilities. Slums and shanty dwellings are proliferating in the city leading to rapid decline in its environment. The slums are also posing as a potential source of social and political instability apart from their serving as the spawning grounds for crimes and all types of anti-social activities. Thus, it has become so necessary to implement plans at the macro and micro levels to have an arresting impact on the rural migration along with addressing the poverty and deprivations of the slum-dwellers.
The faster trend of urbanisation was noted long ago and to some extent it is also unavoidable. Urbanisation is a growing phenomenon worldwide and Bangladeshis cannot be expected to be unique and remain free from the irresistible appeal of living in the cities. But this migration could be kept manageable through proper planning at the national level, taking care to create selectively industrialisation and other forms of entrepreneurship in different regions of the country. Among the reasons that draw people to the cities in Bangladesh, the economic ones seem to be the most important. From river erosion and other distresses, people at the grassroots in the rural areas are compelled in many cases to come to Dhaka and other cities. In their state of desperation, the destitute people perceive the cities to be better provider of employment or means to earning a livelihood. Thus, a singularly important way of controlling this rural exodus could be the creation of local growth centres in the economic sense. But this again is dependent on the government which has to take the political decisions to pave the way for greater resource flows to the rural areas. Besides, these greater allocations also will need to be spent efficiently and for this purpose decentralisation of the government, with stronger local governance, would be important. This, coupled with mechanisms in place to spend the increased allocation in line with the objectives would be indispensable.
Government can also go for assisted area schemes or the establishment of special enterprise zones away from the cities. The entrepreneurs can be drawn to them through all kinds of fiscal and other incentives that would make them interested to set up their enterprises in these zones, foregoing their otherwise natural impulse to set them up in the Dhaka, Chittagong or Khulna regions. From the countrywide dispersal of entrepreneurial activities through the setting up of these special zones, considerable employment activities can be expected to be created away from the cities. This would ease the migration pressure on the cities.
Indeed, there is no need to explain why the slowing down of the rural migration has become an imperative. Dhaka, a city of over 13 million people, is already too burdened with more people stressing its limited facilities. Slums and shanty dwellings are proliferating in the city leading to rapid decline in its environment. The slums are also posing as a potential source of social and political instability apart from their serving as the spawning grounds for crimes and all types of anti-social activities. Thus, it has become so necessary to implement plans at the macro and micro levels to have an arresting impact on the rural migration along with addressing the poverty and deprivations of the slum-dwellers.