MOST of the Ills of Dhaka city seem rooted in the fact that we have eschewed all planned approaches to her development agenda with consummate ease and passion for opportunism. More than the absence of plans It is the lacK of their implementation which characterises the tentativeness we have always displayed about the city's development needs. Turning a blind eve to the haphazard growth of the city amounted to no ordinary kind of stoic indifference. On the contrary this seems to have been actuated by purely selfish motives of a handful given to bending the law at the drop ol a hat. what if Dhaka city becomes a concrete Jungle stewing in its own heat of noxious fumes?
Dhaka City has had two Master Plans, one dating back to 1954 when it was a provincial capital with Madani as the chairman of the then Dhaka Improvement Trust (DIT); and the other one. a product of lour years hard work since 1993 got adopted in 1997 through a gazette notification.
The second Master Plan could be considered as an updated version of the previous one quite markedly designed to chime in with the status of Dhaka as the capital of independent Bangladesh. But the fact of the matter is. we allowed the citv to develop from 1971 to 1997. albeit most chaotically, without the benefit and guidance of any master plan whatsoever. What a pity?
As If this was not enough of a lapse, we made it a point to have discretionary powers' vested in Rajuk Chairmen to overrule the master plan.
The second Master Plan, just to gauge how much we are losing out through an attitude ol indifference to it, has had three important elements: first is the structural content said to be valid between 1995 and 2015: second one is the urban area planning having to do with improvement of built-up areas, valid again from 1995 to 2015; and the third aspect relates to detailed area planning including zoning with an eye to proper land use and management of environment.
Why must a master plan prepared by local and lorelgn experts be allowed to be fiddled or tinkered with by any Rajuk chairmen0 We think it is the abuse of so-called discretionarv powers bv successive Rajuk chairmen that has been Ilie banc of Dhaka city. Approval of building plans in sites designated for opcti spaces, parks or lakes in the master plan has been a pastime with Rajuk chairmen. Mostly they felt impelled to accord it under pressure from politico-monetary elites or they did it themselves as an act of favouritism. Even the land allocational and grabbing scandals owe their origin to the impunitv with which uie master plan could be flouted by those who are supposed to be its defenders and implementers.
It is understood that the authorities are thinking of divesting the Rajuk Chairman of his ‘discretionary powers to overrule the master plan' and making these over to the Minister for Housing and Public Works. Does it not mean one and the same thing. Who can guarantee that those powers would not be abused by the minister as well?
We want to see the master plan as an immutable product, not a plaything for any official functionary or a minister. Update it or enrich it if you must, but don’t let it be a pawn in the hands of greedy people who give three hoots to the concept of modern, balanced and mainrifv-servin^ urban develooment.