Decentralized Bangladesh: A silver-lining approaches toward inclusive development

Fatema Tuz Zohra Nowreen :

Abul Mia (pseudonym, 41) was a sweet seller from a distant village in Bangladesh. He was the only earning member of his family and the father of two sons and a little 3-year-old daughter. Abul Mia was sick for several days but couldn’t make it due to the one-and-a-half-hour road distance to overcome just to visit the doctor. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t make it to the doctor till the very end and left his last breath midway.

Stories like these are prevalent but aren’t ignorant enough to pass on the current situation in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a Tier 3 South Asian country.

While constantly fighting poverty and economic fluctuation since its birth in 1971, Bangladesh graciously managed to acquire lower-income status in 2015 and aspired to be an upper-middle-income country by 2031.

Bangladesh is diligently working on its track to conquer economic growth in association with technological advancement, rapid industrialization, and the implementation of well-developed infrastructure.

Lately, Bangladesh has managed to achieve many long-anticipated development projects, e.g., the third terminal of Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, the Padma Rail Bridge, the Agargaon-Motijheel part of Dhaka Metro Rail, and the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Tunnel, which are called the four mega projects of Bangladesh. Other mega projects include Chattogram Cox’s Bazar rail link, the Rooppur nuclear power plant, the Matarbari 1200 MW coal-fired power plant, and the Payra deep sea port.

As the IMF’s proposed blueprint for the upper middle-income goal by 2031 for Bangladesh includes infrastructure and substantial investment in human capital. Bangladesh is earnestly managing to achieve potential growth for imposed goals while tackling unforeseeable challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and many uncertain climate change issues. However, the progress of Bangladesh is pacing accordingly to meet the economic ascension as a result, but some parts of Bangladesh are still living in great hardship.

The rural areas of Bangladesh are sadly still not well structured. The system has not been made properly to provide a mere basic need in time.

Correspondingly, urban people daily encounter themselves in a scenario to justify their common rights just to live on the trail of default and somehow get minimal vigor to fight against their plight the very next day.

Apart from actual infrastructural and systematic enhancement, people from rural areas are less likely to be acknowledged for the significance of education and the practical consideration of physical and psychological well-being.

While keeping the upper middle-income goal in mind, Bangladesh needs to reconstruct the plan of financial ascension by acknowledging and empowering the rural and unseen parts of the country to move further and faster with the pace of time.

The new suggested plan demands a pivotal shift as a nation, namely, introducing the implementary decentralized proposal.
Decentralization is the transfer of authority, responsibility, and resources through delegation or devolution from the center to lower levels of administration.

In 19996, David Osborne and Ted Gaebler proposed a decentralist public administration theory in their best-selling book, “Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector,” where the authors argue that systems of governance can be fundamentally reoriented to function as efficiently and productively as the best-run private sector businesses.

This inventory plan took off with President Clinton’s launch of the National Performance Review and with his famous 1996 declaration that “the era of big government is over.”

Seemingly, Bangladesh can ensure rapid advancement in rural areas by proposing a sustainable plan prioritizing each area with the notable approach of decentralization. In tandem with all other mega projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh should take the initiative to reconstruct the regime in distant areas by distributing power and authority, while suggesting local resource utilization, infrastructural development, inclusive rural development, and reducing regional disparities.

As a result, everyone in a distant place may access developed infrastructure such as road, bridges to connect urban areas with cities, improved transportation networks to facilitate the movement of goods and people between regions, better constructions e.g.

large hospitals or healthcare center to receive medical care timely, schools offering primary education with minimum or no fees,local offices identifying specific energy to escalate more targeted and efficient expansion of the electricity grid, technology modification to strengthen communication systems at a reasonable cost, enhance productivity and income in agricultural land, sustainable management of local resources including water, forests, and fisheries to ensure long-term environmental and economic benefits, establishment of regional economic zones in different parts of the country to attract foreign and domestic investments, inauguration of new business branches in countryside to create job opportunities and stimulate local economies and regional disparities to ensure a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities .

Abul Mia would have been alive if he had received emergency care from his nearby health care center. Or he wouldn’t have to face an intense heart attack due to the lack of medical care situated 20 kilometers away from where he lived.

On that note, A dynamic plan like decentralization should be proposed with the intention of ensuring the feasible upbringing of lagging regions, especially the people. A country’s economic prosperity can’t be attained by keeping half or more than half of its population neglected, unempowered, or unnurtured.

In a democratically authorized nation where people’s voices harness the power of decision-making, an augmented structure like decentralization is necessary to validate the visible participation of people while facilitating the basic human rights of every native by claiming economic upsurge as decentralized governance.

(The writer is an undergraduate psychology student of Dhaka University affiliated with Eden Mohila College.)