Need for proper land planning  

At a seminar titled, 'Bangladesh Graduating from LDC to Developing Country: Role of Planners' in the city, planning experts have been highly critical of the misuse of land and market-driven archaic development projects. So far only 6.0 per cent land of the country could be brought under plans but there is no budgetary back-up to implement those, they complain. Thus, they claim that not even one per cent of the land area in the entire country is under a proper plan. Additionally, the projects are undertaken in order to benefit privileged groups instead of ensuring social justice for the disadvantaged and the marginalised. These are serious charges, no doubt. Some of the observations made at the seminar on the rising inequality in the country are quite known to economists and political leaders but they argue that in the first phase of development wealth creation is a priority. Its equalitarian distribution can wait sometime before welfare and social programmes are geared to bridging the income gaps.

The academic discourse on this subject shows no sign of coming to a conclusion right at this moment. But one thing is clear that in a country with scarce land, judicious use of this resource and total avoidance of project profligacy are the demand of the time. If the capital city suffers non-implementation of its master plans to the tune of 90 per cent, the situation in the rest of the country beggars description. There has been an insane competition to grab government property all around. River banks are encroached upon and land-filled in order to build permanent structures and the possession is legalised with help from dishonest land officials in exchange for bribe money. Today not only the four rivers around the capital have become shrunk on account of indiscriminate grabbing, many other rivers across the country are struggling to maintain their flows.

Had there been a proper plan with land, water bodies, markets, haats or baazars and road networks, the random anarchy involving dispossession of government property could be stalled for ever. For sometime it has been claimed that the country will go for digitised land recording soon. By the time such a system will be introduced, the government will discover that misappropriation of the resource would then be legalised beyond recognition. Even if there is litigation, its protracted nature will give the illegal possessor or occupier an advantage.

Proper land planning calls for wealth creation and raising the living standard of people. Experts are of the opinion that it can help achieve 40 per cent of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). How? The expected graduation from the status of LDC to a middle-income country will have to create employment for a better skilled and trained crop of job-seekers and workers. This will require setting up of small and medium enterprises on well planned sites of lands with an eye to the environment. Benefit sharing has to be rational instead of allowing the rich to become richer. Here lies the key to sustainability of a middle-income country and a decent living standard of the people.