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Housing the Capital People
Reduction of population pressure on our capital city .is as ureent a job as it ts a difficult one. The Prime Minister has sought a veiy logical way of achieving it by developing the suburbs into more habitable residential areas, with more amenities than now. We feel that the good idea nevertheless needs to be given a little more thought than it has received until now. If the government thinks only in terms of improving the amenities — such as supplying power and water — that would probably create more problems than solve them. The result would be a sium-like development, the possibility of crores going into each unit of housing being largely immaterial then. There is no end of justified complaints from the residents of the palaces' in Uttara and Baridhara to the making of which the government has been as much helpful as it can be. Needless to say. unsparing government support notwithstanding, this type of building suburbia is in no way relevant to the job of dissipating population pressure on the capital.
In fact, we do have suburbs well inside the metropolitan area, literally housing countless people. These need to be properly urbanised before any related programme is undertaken. And this would probably add to the problem we have proposed to address. Proper development of late accretions to the city like the so many bagh's like Shantibagh and Sabujbagh would no doubt thin out the population there and create new problems of housing for those now enjoying some kind of housing.
An effective way to make people not to rush the city should invariably involve staggering the places of work for the persons manning the many kind of services and establishments. After that the most urgent task would be to see that districts of low-cost housing are built along the three sides of the city — one side is taken by the Buriganga — in no way not very far from the city. People essential for running the city and indeed the whole state are. as things are. low-income people. They must not be made to commute from far off places.
Where shall we find such areas — near and big • and a lot of them and yet not occupied .already ? There are three very ready answers to that. One. what are you going to do with the land you will get after the removal of the central jail from its present site ? Don't build shopping arcades for the benefit of the graft-looters: bufld multi-storied accommodation for low to middle income people whose place of work is somewhere around. Two. remove the cantonment to some newer site and put the area with its well laid out roads and the greenery to use by the middle-Income intellectual workers and professionals — all living tn blocks of high-rise buildings.
Way-out number three is the most promising of all — but one that has already been almost lost to us. Cross the river, and you have a world of space for urbanisation — well up to the Dhaleswari. It is strange as well as very mysterious why successive governments kept their eyes averted from what was straight before their nose — the Zinjira-Kallganj-Konda flatland river front, well-served by river inlets and going deep into the interior — leading to strips of high land lacing the low-lying areas upto Syedpur-Phalhar on the Daleswari. Any government could, with some imagination, make a Venice out of this side of the Buriganga. Instead, very evidently all the governments played, with a will, into the hands of slumlords of the type exposed by the great GBS in Widower's House.
The problem needs urgent action. The first requisite for that is the right idea and the right will About the right will we do not have suspicions. The Prime Minister has some right ideas too. Wanted now is a lot of imagination and generous helpings of audacious daring.