Special issue on 36th anniversary: Urban governance in Bangladesh : Myth or reality?

Md. Nasir Uddin :
Bangladesh is a unitary system of state with the constitutional obligations for local government to provide every kind of facilities to mass people. For urban citizen, local governments such as city corporations for large cities and paurashavas for secondary cities and small towns were created. As of now there are 11 city corporations and 317 paurashavas in Bangladesh. The urban local government institutions are working for the benefits of urban people. However, there are some other service providing agencies in the cities. They are WASA, PDB, CDA, RAJUK etc. They are primarily responsible for the development works and service delivery to the city dwellers.
Simply, “governance is the process of decision-making and process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)”. Urban governance constitutes the activities carried out by city managers in dealing with physical and non-physical issues in cities. It is the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, plan and manage the common affairs of the city. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action can be taken. The delimitation of rural- urban areas varies widely from country to country. Some countries distinguish between rural and urban entity based on population size, space, density, and economic organization. According to existing law in Bangladesh, an urban area can be declared under four conditions: Firstly, three-fourths of the adult male population must employ in non-agricultural occupations; secondly, 33% land to be non-agricultural in nature; thirdly, a minimum population must be fifty thousand; and fourthly, its population density should not be less than fifteen hundred per square mile.
The population in Bangladesh is predominantly rural, with 66% of the population living in the rural areas. Many of them live in remote areas that lack services such as education, health and adequate roads, particularly road links to markets. They suffer from persistent food insecurity, own no land and assets, are often uneducated and may also suffer serious illnesses or disabilities. Currently, world population reached 7.3 billion with an annual growth rate of 0.9%. The estimations of United Nations show that the 54% of the world’s population live in urban areas where it was 30% in 1950. It is expected that the world population will be 66%, roughly the reverse of the global rural-urban population distribution of the mid-twentieth century.
The process of urbanization historically has been associated with other important economic and social transformations, which have brought greater geographic mobility, lower fertility, longer life expectancy and population ageing. Urban living is often associated with higher levels of literacy and education, better health, greater access to social services, and enhanced opportunities for cultural and political participation. Nevertheless, rapid and unplanned urban growth threatens sustainable development when the necessary infrastructure is not developed or when policies are not implemented to ensure that the benefits of city life are equitably shared. Today, despite the comparative advantage of cities, urban areas are more unequal than rural areas and hundreds of millions of the world’s urban poor live in sub-standard conditions.
Bangladesh is no exception to global urbanisation trends, although a large majority of people continue to live in rural areas. Its urban population was 5% of the total population in 1960, and today it is 34%. It is also estimated that urban population in the country grew during the past three decades at an annual rate of about 6%, compared to the rural population growth of just around 2% per annum. Internal migration has contributed the most to the high rate of urban population growth. This trend is likely to continue in the future as well. Basically, urban population is increased in two ways: natural increase of population and migration. Due to positive population growth rate, the urban population is naturally increased in urban areas. Since the dawn of
human evolution, people have migrated across continents in search of food, shelter, safety, and hospitable weather. People still move for these reasons, but new reasons for human migration are arising, such as job relocation and overpopulation. That means there are two important factors that affect migration. These are “pull” and “push” factors. Pull factors are opportunities in cities, including high urban wages paid by transnational corporations. Push factors are poor conditions in the countryside, e.g., health, fragmentation of farm land, limited job, educational, and economic opportunities.
The incidence of poverty in Bangladesh is one of the highest in the world. Millions of people suffer from the hardship of poverty. About 30% of its population is living below the poverty line. The number of population under poverty line is still increasing, though the percentage of population living in rural areas has decreased. Whereas, in urban areas, it might witness an increased population of 17.1 and 21.7 million by 2013 and 2021 respectively living under the poverty line in urban areas. For those living in urban areas, especially in the capital Dhaka, and major industrial cities such as Chittagong, Khulna, and Rajshahi, they enjoy a better standard of living, with electricity, gas, and clean water supplies. Despite this, there is still a significant proportion of Bangladeshis living in slums that fall apart during the monsoon season and have no regular electricity, limited access to health care and to clean drinking water. Crime and violence are no longer considered just a ‘social’ or ‘law and order problem, but also as an obstacle to the peoples’ socio-economic and psychological development. Urban crime is a security issue for the urban people that affects all levels of society: the rich and even more the poor, women and men, and young and old.
Decentralisation does not mean only the transfer of authority and responsibility to the lower level of government rather it is the empowerment of people through the empowerment of their local governments. Decentralisation should be pursued in order to empower people over the public sector so as to achieve improvements in the delivery of public services. A successful decentralisation requires mechanisms to be in place that allow local communities to participate in local decision-making processes and allow them to hold their local officials accountable for the delivery of local government services in accordance with local priorities.
Urban local government institutions especially paurashavas have existed in India since ancient times but it appeared as representative character/constituted on legal basis only during the British rule in India. At the time of partition of India in 1947, there were 45 municipalities in East Pakistan and the numbers were increased only to 56 in 1971. Before that Mughals paid special attention to the development of municipal administration. Successive governments made different acts/ordinances to make it closer to the people. During Bangladesh, the number and nature of urban bodies has increased and changed. Articles 11, 59 and 60 of the constitution of Bangladesh promote and prescribe to have democratic local government institutions. According to Article 59, Local government in every administrative unit of the Republic shall be entrusted to bodies, composed of persons elected in accordance with law. Parliament shall, by law, confer powers on the local government bodies referred to in that article, including power to impose taxes for local purposes, to prepare their budgets and to maintain funds [Article 60]. Here it is definitely clear that the articles 59 (2) and 60 of the constitution empower the legislature to determine the frame, terms of reference, nature of power and degree of autonomy of local government institutions. The local government would not just be the creation of the central government or of the Act of legislature, but also it ought to go under the control of the rules and regulations of the government. In addition, MPs hold wide-ranging control on these bodies.
This is very common even in the context of urban local governments of Bangladesh. Whereas it is crucial to decentralise the power and authority so that the local demands can be fulfilled effectively. We believe that the country has strong and updated local government acts (city corporations and paurashava acts of 2009) where detailed functions of these institutions are incorporated. It is also matter of concern that how much this institutions are capable of performing their long-listing functions actively and efficiently. Different studies show that these bodies do not enclose strong command of human, financial, infrastructure and logistics capacities. It is also clear that national government does not have strong commitment and or are reluctant to decentralise power to city corporations and paurashavas.
Although it is found that the city corporations and paurashavas are autonomous in plain words, the actual scenarios are different. There are many other specialised urban agencies that are crucial to provide effective and cohesive urban services to the city dwellers. These agencies are accountable to their respective line ministries in the central government not to the City Corporations. As a result, overlapping in decision makings, service delivery, resource wastage occurs. Unfortunately these specialized urban agencies are not accountable to the Urban governments but to respective line ministries. For example, Bangladesh Police is the key organization to maintain the law and order situations in the urban areas. However, they are accountable to their line Ministry of Home Affairs. As a result the problems of coordination exist in the urban administration and it exaggerate the urban problems.
The country does not have a comprehensive policy on urban governance. There are between 16 and 40 different bodies involved in urban matters with little coordination and planning. While a new authorities for Urban Development like RAJUK, CDA were set up and have achieved some progress in the coordination process. It focuses on solving day-to-day problems and not on medium to long term strategy. The cities in Bangladesh desperately need strong management, better coordination across agencies, effective and transparent local government, improvements in infrastructure, better access to basic services, enabling reforms in land and housing markets, credit markets for the poor, and a reduction of the disabling problem of crime and violence.
(Md. Nasir Uddin, Lecturer of Public Administration, University of Chittagong)