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Private Affluence and Public Squalor

insight

kabir U Ahmed
***Every economic activity has two sides, the positive (goods) and the negative (bads). The positive side brings forth goods which increases the income and wealth of the economy while the negative side gives rise to the bad products like industrial and other wastes which reduce the positive values of income and wealth since a por-tion of the values of the positive part has to be spent in disposing these wastes.
THE words in the title of this article were written
In 1960 by Professor John Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard University, a liberal economist, democratic stalwart and a foremost social critic of the United States, in his famous book. The Affluent Society. He was showing a contrast between the private wealth of individuals and the sordid state of public facilities and services in a rich society. This contrast was an eye-opener to anyone with any social conscience anywhere in the world.
However, it is amazing to see how apt this contrast between, and the co-existence of. private affluence and the miserable state of public facilities and services in Bangladesh today. As the economy is growing, however slowly it might be. this contrast is becoming starker everyday. Rich people spend their money on luxurious goods and use the scarcely available public facilities which, when are not expanded and maintained properly for want of public revenues or for lack of appropriate policies, deteriorate faster. This gives rise to the wretched condition of the giver, services. Therefore, an inverse relationship will continue to be there between the growth of private affluence and the state-run public services, unless remedial measures are taken at the right time. However, the main purpose of this short article is to focus attention on what is happening with various public facilities in the countiy.
Since the oirth of Bangladesh, thousands of people nave become multi-billionaires (a quick proof of this can be found among the owners of plots of land and buildings in the business centres, rich residential areas and suburbs of big
cities of the country, let alone thriving businesses) but the state of almost every public facility has gone to the pits. This is visible in every aspect of social and public facilities. Some examples would illustrate the point.
First, take the case of transport facilities in the country. As any observer can see now, there are too many cars, trucks private business vehicles, private scooters and rickshaws on too few roads. The consequence have been disastrous. First of all, the roads are over-crowded and most intensively used by the owners of all kinds of vehicles and it takes much longer time to cover the same distances now than it used to take about five years ago causing a huge waste of working hours of the day. It slows down the office and business transactions. Secondly. the road condition is deteriorating rapidly without any improved maintenance services. Thirdly, the number of accidents is increasing every day. Fourthly, the air is polluted with black, poisonous fumes emitted out of the oil burning vehicles on the roads causing severe health hazards for all the city-dwellers.
The questions that immediately come to mind are the following: Does anybody care about these ever-increasing life-threatening hazards? Where and how these life-hazards are going to end? One can only see these growing in numbers and volumes and no remedies planned by the policy makers. If all these continue to oc-
cur at the present rate, one can be rest assured that the existing cities will not be liveable in the next decade or so.
This raises the most elementary but fundamental question as to what is meant by development. Every economic activity has to sides, the positive (goods) and the negative (bads). The positive side brings forth goods which increases the Income and wealth of the economy while the negative side gives rise to the bad products like industrial and other wastes which reduce the positive values of income
and wealth since a portion of the values of the positive part has to be spent in disposing these wastes. If, however, the waste disposal is not taken care of in the right way and at the right time, it can give rise to an amount of social cost in terms of environmental pollution, sickness, deaths, and injuries the values of which may far outweigh the initial values of the positive products of the economy.
So on the surface, the national income accounting, which takes into account only the positive goods and not the negative ones, may show the
growth of the values of outputs neglecting the losses due to the economy's waste disposal will not mean economic development. Therefore, the values of life and properties involved in accidents, insurance costs and hospital and medical costs due to polluted environmental etc. will have to be deducted from the positive values of national products as the proper Index of development. Otherwise, the development Indicators will be fooling the people.
What about the quality of inter-city and inter-district
transportation system? Roads and railways exist to connect various parts of the country. The state of the railway service is apalling. Its lines, being used and abused by political parties during hartal days, have made them unsafe and vulnerable to accidents. No one cares about replacement of these lines.
However, the two-lane highways connecting various parts of Ihe country are being heavily used by private truckers, bus owners and private car owners. There is no sign of speed limit, let alone enforcing them, anywhere in the country and accidents have been taking place
every often. Who cares?
What about the quality of garbage disposal, water supply, electricity and gas supplies, health care ana educational services in the cities and the countiy? Everyone sees thb piles of garbage on the streets, now these rot and pollute the air. and how crows, dogs and humans compete for whatever they can recover for their consumption. These are visible even in the most elegant test dentlal areas of the city. Neither the city authorities nor its affluent residents bother much about their filthy environment. The roads in the interiors of the cities are over used by the private builders and developers. No one wants to pay taxes for repair and maintenance of these public roads. The apalling situation with electricity, water and gas supplies is hurting almost everybody as well as the economy. It has become a political issue now and everybody blames everyone else.
The situation in the hospitals is far worse in terms of dirt and filth in and around these institutions. The stories of neglect of the patients by doctors and nurses, the non-availability of doctors in the hospital and the wrong treatment are well known. The affluent patients, of course, go off to India, Singapore. Bangkok and Europe or the United States. Who cares for those who cannot afford such luxuries of foreign treatment? Similarly, the state of public education is simply pathetic. Teachers in schools are busy in earning money by glv-
ing private tuitions and less in spending time and efforts in the class-rooms. They have become used to selling examination questions to the examinees. What kind of education is taking place in these schools? What kind of products are these schools producing for future generations? At the level of higher education, the institutions have become battlegrounds of political parties. Everyone talks about depoliticising the universities, but nothing really happens. Gun battles erupt every often. No one seems to know how to free the universities from the mess they have gone into.
What can be done? On the questions of transport and environment. something concrete can be done. First, increase the import duty on reconditioned and new cars and increase the tax on the gasoline to reduce the automobile use. Require every tar. truck, bus and the scooter to introduce catalytic converter to eliminate the emission of black fume in the air. Introduce strict controls on the number of’ scooters and rickshaws permitted on the roads. Introduce and enforce speed limits for all vehicles in the city roads and on the inter-city highways. For environmental protection inside the cities, enforce a proper garbage collection system and charge fees for their clearance and disposal. Measures for improving utility supplies, healthcare and educational systems need thorough overhaul, and national commitment of all political parties which cannot oe discussed in such a short article. Mechanism should be devised to collect more taxes from the affluent ones lo eliminate the country's public squalor.