DHAKA MEGACITY: FROM REACTIVE GOVERNMENT TO ANTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE
Mahmud A. Farooque
Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes
Arizona State University
Abstract
Land use governance is a complex undertaking with inherent challenges even in an advanced industrialized country with abundant land mass and mature physical and institutional infrastructure. Hence for Metropolitan Dhaka, a city ranked near the very bottom of the world’s worst cities (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2010) where none of these conditions are prevalent, urban planning and development have become a pure reactive, costly and corrective exercise. Current ideas about reforming the governance regime are radical in scale, conventional in theory and limited in creativity and imagination. These ideas tend to focus too heavily on the governmental aspects and a command and control approach, viewing the fastest growing megacity of the world as a closed mechanistic construct rather than a complex adaptive system. This paper argues that viewing the urban governance challenges of Dhaka City with the complexity perspective opens the door for building capacities that can be combined to transition the current regime from its reactive posture to one of anticipation based on the principles of foresight, integration and engagement.
INTRODUCTION
The rationale and thus justification for land use planning is fairly easy to articulate—deciding what goes where, is indeed an important public policy function for a democratic society aspiring for prosperity and equal opportunity. The process of making that decision, however, is anything but easy (Bollens, 1993). First, there is the question of which government, local, state or national, will get to make that decision. Second, there is the question of which priorities and thus agency or department of the government should weigh in on that decision and in what order. Then there are questions of planning horizon, scope, financing, implementation, and like any other form of investment or public policy, the question of linking the plan to desirable economic, environmental and social outcomes. One has to then step out of the government sphere and into the governance sphere and incorporate the roles of the private sector, the nongovernmental sector and the civil society. Hence what can be seen as a very simple rational exercise in the beginning could turn into an inherently complicated and cumbersome undertaking. Even in an advanced industrialized country like the United States, the rational process can easily be derailed by irrational fears and contested symbols of community identity as demonstrated by recent controversies surrounding the location of an Islamic Community Center in New York City (Bardach, 2010).
DHAKA MEGACITY: AN URBAN GOVERNANCE NIGHTMARE?
For Dhaka City, governance challenges start from the very first layer of the urban planning onion with the governmental bodies that get to determine what goes where. The main planning and development agency for Dhaka Metropolitan Area is the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartipakkha (Rajuk), which reports to the Ministry of Housing and Public Works. Rajuk formulates what are known as master plans, establishes the developmental controls, and implements major public works projects (Begum, 2007).
The determination of what goes where however cannot be separated from who does what, particularly in terms of providing essential services. Depending on how one is doing the counting, Rajuk has to work with some 20 to 40 different units of the government as well as Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) for the administration of basic services from sanitation to telephone (German & Pyne, 2010; Begum, 2007; Talukder, 2006). The coordination and efficiency challenges on the planning and service delivery side are dramatically magnified by population pressure, which has few international parallels. Indeed, with a current population estimated to be 14.5 million people and projected to reach 18 million people by 2015, Dhaka is the city with the highest population growth in the world (UN, 2004).
The result, of this convoluted city government structure on one side and rapid influx of migrant population beyond the city’s capacity to house and provide basic amenities on the other, is an urban governance nightmare. If one performed an Internet search for the term “Rajuk” in a twelve month period between September 2009 and August 2010 for The Daily Star Website (www.thedailystar.net), one would find many nightmarish tales like the tragic loss of lives from the collapse of a five story building in the Begunbari area or from a massive fire in buildings in the Neemtali area. Both incidents were avoidable tragedies attributable to illegal constructions and building and fire code violations (Hossain, 2010).
One would essentially find a resource poor agency that is always working in a reactive mode, often without any degree of consistency, regularity and transparency. For instance, the June 14 eviction drive in a Gulshan area plot removed the illegal tin-shed and bamboo-made structures that was built on it, but spared the residential buildings that were being used illegally for commercial purposes. The February 10 parking space retrieval drive targeted illegally built shops in the Mugdapara and Khilgaon areas before undertaking similar drives in prime areas of Gulshan and Motijheel. The February 5 demolition drive to knock down the four floors of the Jamuna Future Park amounted to breaking down the glasses but sparing the structure.
One would also find an agency that makes it next to impossible for an average law abiding citizen without any political, financial or criminal clout to obtain a simple trade license (Wahid, 2010). One will find an agency that does not play well with other agencies of the government. For instance, the Purbachal New Town Project required the filling of a portion of the Shitalakhya River, which was a clear and blatant violation of environmental laws (Roy, 2009).
URBAN GOVERNANCE REFORM
This very brief and rather unscientific exposition has an alarming side—it was limited to just one agency and therefore returned only building related news. The search excluded similar nightmarish tales related to transportation, utilities, education and environment—all matters falling under city administration. There has been no shortage of studies and recommendations about what needs to be done to improve Dhaka’s planning and administration.
Bureaucratic tinkering has been a common practice from the very beginning. Dhaka Improvement Trust (DIT), the predecessor to Rajuk, was formed without planning being a part of its original charter. In 1958, proposals were thus made to rename DIT as Dhaka Planning and Development Authority to indicate that planning had been added to its mission. Since the proposal was never implemented, from the very early days of Dhaka, there existed an inconsistency between DIT’s name and what it had been entrusted to do. (Talukder, 2006)
Since independence many changes have been proposed, some were implemented and some were not. For instance Metropolitan Development Authority Ordinance was passed in 1974 proposing to replace DIT with a powerful metropolitan development authority with strong planning, coordination and directive powers. It was not implemented. In 1983 Dhaka City Corporation Act was passed. The 1993 amendment to that act gave birth to the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and the administration of the city under an elected Mayor. The 1953 Town Improvement Act was finally modified in 1987, transforming DIT into Rajuk. (Talukder, 2006)
Taking the longer view, attempts to reform city governance can be broadly grouped into two categories, direct and indirect. The indirect efforts have taken on single issues such as transportation, power, water, air quality, health and poverty and proposed changes of city government mostly at the margins. The direct efforts on the other hand have focused on city planning and administration with the primary goal of lowering transaction cost and reducing system loss due to inefficiency, corruption, manipulation, and theft—the pervasive problems of public administration in Bangladesh.
Specific to Rajuk and DCC, recent reform efforts have concentrated mostly on the service delivery side. For example, in 2007 Rajuk introduced a single window approach for obtaining building permits. Instead of having the user shipped from agency to agency, the idea was to have the relevant agencies come to the user. This attempt, by some accounts, failed miserably (Wahid, 2010). The problem was already hard enough to bring the agency tops at the planning level. Now imagine the greater degree of difficulty of these resource poor and technically deficient agencies to field staff to attend bi-weekly interagency meetings that may or may not present an issue which would involve them. It is therefore not surprising to learn that there were many critical no-shows at these meetings, which, in turn, sent the user back to running from agency to agency, just as before. Hence the idea of one stop shopping, however appealing in theory, ended up being at best an illusion or distraction, or at worst an additional point of inefficiency for an already confused bureaucracy.
The failure to produce the intended result in this and other similar cases are generally attributed to the lack of resources and training for Rajuk, DCC and other key government agencies (World Bank, 2007). Hence the next steps have usually meant investing more resources in terms of recruitment, training and automation. Indeed it is possible to keep throwing more money and resources at the solution with the idea of lowering transaction costs without ever attaining it. Eventually the remedy itself becomes an unworkable problem and a new source of inefficiency and corruption.
The record of attempted government and planning reforms both in Dhaka and similar cities around the world have prompted some to argue that effectiveness of additional spending, leaving the current system in place, will be rather limited. Instead, they invite a fundamental and systematic rethink of city Governance. One suggested idea has been to use a two pronged approach that focuses on redefining public-private roles on the service delivery side and establishing greater degree of accountability on the city government side (Ahmed et al, 2007). Drawing from relatively better performance of private providers in the telecommunications and health sectors, and government and NGO cooperation in the education sector, arguments are made in favor of devolving central government’s monopolistic hold on core urban services from electricity to water to gas. With respect to city government, the focus of reform is placed on devolving authority from the national level to the city level while ensuring both political accountability and financial autonomy. The question then is to find the right size and place of government. Recommendations in this area tend to range from non-metropolitan government to metropolitan government and include all political and financial combinations that lie in between (Ahmed et al 2007; Talukder, 2006; German & Pyne, 2010).
Some have argued that in addition to reforming city government, efforts also need to be made to rethink the process of developing the master plan or plans that guide, dictate and manage the growth of the city itself (Begum 2007; BIP, 2010). To properly develop the context in this case, a little bit of historical perspective is in order. According to Talukder (2006) the first master plan for Dhaka was formulated in 1959 based on a population and area of approximately 575,000 and 570 square kilometers respectively with the primary responsibility for development and planning entrusted to DIT. In1992, the government of Bangladesh undertook a revision of that master plan under the auspices of UNDP and UNCHS, producing the Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (1995-2015), which included a structure plan, master plan and detailed area plan. From 1959 to 1992, Rajuk’s jurisdiction nearly tripled (1,528 km2) while the population of Dhaka doubled (913,200).
A major failing of this master planning approach has been its rigidity with respect to the time allowed for the implementation of the formal plans. Another failing has been government’s inability to combine planning and implementation process. Reaching consensus among the multiple agencies involved has been a source of perpetual difficulty. Taking these factors into account, some have argued in favor of a move away from master plans to master strategy with shorter planning periods to adapt to changing contexts and situations. (Begum, 2007).
GOVERNMENT OR GOVERNANCE?
These three principle reform ideas, (a) redefining public-private roles in the delivery of city services, (b) rightsizing city government, and (c) transitioning planning from master plans to master strategies with shorter planning periods, are propelled by a larger vision of urban governance based on the principle of accountability, transparency, sustainability and responsiveness. Since all three ideas focus primarily on the role of the government, even when taken together, other critical elements of urban governance are not sufficiently explored.
Perhaps part of the problem stems from the rather narrow definition developmental agencies such as the World Bank (1991) uses in defining governance. It interprets governance as the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development. Although the concern with sound development management extends “beyond the capacity of public sector management to the rules and institutions which create a predictable and transparent framework for the conduct of public and private business” it remains limited to “accountability for economic and financial performance” and therefore fail to capture the roles other critical actors play in growth and development.
For instance, the reform ideas we reviewed do not address the roles private sector, NGOs, and civil society have to play as contributors, beneficiaries and responsible citizens of the city. In a similar vein, while accountability is discussed, roles for the residents are not envisioned beyond voting elected officials in and out of the office. The idea of giving citizen’s a voice does not seem to transcend beyond collecting feedback for individual services. Rajuk’s (2010) draft term of reference for reviewing the existing Dhaka Structure Plan calls for consultation with local community leaders in a very limited manner. It focuses on what rather than how and calls for avoiding issues of conflict.
In all essence, by omission there seems to be an effort to limit stakeholder participation mostly to the delivery end of services and far from the actual planning and implementation of projects. Since it is not possible or preferable to tie every urban planning decision to an election, failure to grant the residents a formal and active voice in the process forces citizens, as is often the case, to resort to violent street protests as a means for conflict resolution. It also makes them vulnerable to manipulation by vested quarters. A recent journalistic investigation by the Daily Star found the existence of syndicated campaigns to spread rumor about government’s land acquisition in the Gazipur area, which in turn produced widespread unrest based on a premise that was completely false and outdated (Roy, 2010).