Almost all the countries of the world have two capitals i.e. administrative and commercial. The administrative capital of our neighbouring giant is New Delhi and the commercial capital is Mumbai. Then again, Islamabad is the administrative and Karachi is the commercial capital ofPakistan.

Bangladesh too has a commercial capital, Chittagong, but that is not functional in the true sense of the word. Everything is Dhaka based, in order to get anything done one has to come to Dhaka, and there is no alternative. Furthermore, most of the garment factories are located in Dhaka. All these have complicated the lives of the residents of Dhaka. The residents of Dhaka face manifold problems; severe traffic jam, power shortage, water scarcity, gas scarcity, water-logging, environmental pollution and so on. Almost 40 years into independence, nothing worth mentioning has been done in the way of decentralisation to lessen the burden of population in Dhaka. Decentralisation ought to be the top most priority of all the political parties in power and opposition for the survival of the nation.

I fail to understand why the political leaders do not realise the importance of such an issue, when late Bangabandhu realised the importance of decentralisation way back in the 1970's and planned to implement it accordingly. Now that the Awami League is in power headed by the daughter of Bangabandhu, I hope decentralisation becomes a reality in Bangladesh.

Saleh Ayub, One-mail