Bangladesh in the eyes of an expatriate who left 42 years ago

I went to spend a month in Dhaka after about seven years. I have been living abroad for 42 years now.

During these 42 years I have visited the country many times, after every two or three years. Sometimes even after just a year's gap. This time it was after seven long years. So the changes in the country, particularly in Dhaka, were eye-catching. Quite startling, actually.

There is a big difference between Dhaka's landscape of seven years ago and Dhaka's landscape today. There were no flyovers then, no expressway leading to Padma Bridge, where 20km can be covered in just 10 to 15 minutes.

There were not any such high buildings in Dhaka seven years ago. Now such buildings can be seen in remote areas of the city.

Seven years ago I didn't see so many supermarkets either. I was not only surprised at the array of restaurants all over, but was flabbergasted too by the prices and the burgeoning number of customers. I was surprised by the amount of foreign items on the shelves of the stores in Dhaka. I was also taken aback by the high quality and high prices of locally-made clothes in the shops.

These were not export-targetted garments, but clothes for the local consumer. I felt like I was in Bangkok or Singapore. Had I been a foreigner, not an expatriate Bangladeshi, I may have left with such a misconception.

But I am a Bengali by birth. The beginnings of my life and my youth were spent in Bangladesh. I began my career in this country. I live abroad now for unwarranted and unforeseen reasons. So when I view Bangladesh, it is not through the eyes of a foreign tourist, but through the eyes of a local man.

To comment on Bangladesh after spending just a month here may be like a blind person describing an elephant. Whatever I have seen may be akin to feeling the trunk of the elephant and describing the entire animal. I am making my observations accordingly.

First of all, I saw visible development in Dhaka and in two districts I visited outside of Dhaka -- Sylhet and Gazipur. Gazipur is almost a satellite town of Dhaka, actually, just 30km away from the capital.

Sylhet is a distant district and city. So it can realistically be seen as another benchmark of Bangladesh's development.

What has taken place over the past seven years that has brought about this visible development? Is it all about infrastructure? Padma Bridge is one of the major instances of such infrastructure, which according to official records cost over Tk 320 billion (Tk 32,000 crore) (without the railway track). The government reportedly funded this with its own resources. Along with this, a 12km expressway leading to Padma Bridge was constructed too which takes vehicles straight to the bridge, avoiding the Dhaka city traffic congestion.

Adding to the vast development work in Dhaka city is the 20km elevated expressway, four flyovers and another 20km highway along with the new township Purbachal.

That was about the roads. The elevated expressway was constructed with loans and under shared ownership with two foreign companies. The Purbachal highway is being constructed completely with local technical support under the supervision of the Bangladesh army's engineering corps. The 20km highway is near completion.

Over the highway, the metro rail is being constructed, something that was just a dream two decades ago. With funds and technical support from Japan, 21km of this metro rail began operating from last year.

The rest is under-construction or undergoing technical work. The first line of the metro rail costs an estimated Tk 330 billion (Tk 33,000 crore), that is, Tk 10 billion (Tk 1000 crore) more than Padma Bridge.

The remaining mega projects are outside of Dhaka and so I didn't get to see them. I didn't get to see Chattogram's Karnaphuli tunnel or the expansion of the highway. But from whatever I saw, I understood that a huge infrastructure development initiative was underway in Bangladesh.

I do not know what measures the government will take concerning the implementation of these mega projects and how the loans from the partner countries and agencies will be repaid.

Another noticeable factor of this development is wide expansion of Gazipur and Sylhet cities, the changes in these cities and the mushrooming of shopping centres and eateries. I am not sure whether to call this development, or the inevitable consequence of urbanisation.

In every city, particularly Dhaka, high rise buildings have arisen, for which often sunlight in not visible in certain places. Dhaka city has spread so far that it is hard to discern the demarcation with neighbouring Narayanganj and Gazipur.

The traffic is so congested that despite the flyovers and expressway, it can even take half an hour to one hour just to cross 2km. That is not surprising. According to the Bangladesh motor vehicle registration statistics, last year (2023) around 175,000 vehicles were registered in Dhaka.

Statistics of the same organisation said that over the past 12 years the number of vehicles in Dhaka went up by 63 per cent. Roads have not increased in that proportion. The population in the same span of time has increased by 66 per cent. It is only natural for there to be traffic jams with so many cars and no many people. But there are many other densely populated cities in the world. Do they face such problems?

The variety of consumer goods and eateries is perhaps another yardstick of development. Even seven years ago I did not see such costly and varied shopping malls and restaurants. The shopping centres (mostly in upscale areas of Dhaka) sell high quality products at exorbitant prices.

It seems that the customers were more concerned about quality than cost. It was the same in the restaurants.

There was a time in Dhaka where we would be so delighted just to have paratha and kebab. There were a few Chinese restaurants here and there and we would imagine these to be so classy. Now Dhaka is a hub of world cuisine.

It is not just in the upscale areas, but all over Dhaka that there are eateries offering all sorts of cuisine -- Indian, Nepalese, Sri Lankan, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Lebanese, you name it.

I was quite astonished to see how the people had such gusto for all sorts of cuisine. They didn't seem too concerned about the prices, particularly in the wealthier areas of the city.

I couldn't spend too much time in Gazipur because of the traffic jams. It took me 15 minutes to reach Gazipur from Dhaka by the expressway and a flyover. But then the traffic congestion began.

After entering Gazipur, I turned around and came back. What I remember as Gazipur thana is now Gazipur city. It is the hub of Bangladesh's major export-oriented industry of readymade garments.

This certainly is another significant step of development. But if the residents of this hub have to spend so much time in commute and traffic jams, where do they get the time to work?

While the visible development in Sylhet may not be as startling as in Dhaka, there are many changes. There are no high rises as in Dhaka (thank you, Sylhet authorities), but the city has expanded.

My village home is 5km from the city and it takes 15 minutes to reach by car. The river Surma cuts Sylhet city from the rest of the district. There are four bridges over the river. When I would live here, there was only one.

There are a few universities other than the government engineering university. A kidney hospital is being constructed under private initiative with government support. It has already begun functioning for the past two years in rented premises. The four-lane Dhaka-Sylhet highway is also underway.

Shopping centres and restaurants are steadily increasing. Also increasing are traffic jams, though nothing near Dhaka. The hard work of the huge Sylheti diaspora is behind this development in Sylhet.

At the beginning I had said that my comments are based on a month's observations. It is not possible to write any research paper in a month. Still, I would say that there are miles apart between the first decade of Bangladesh and Bangladesh today. Today's Bangladesh is not a bottomless basket. The basket may not be overflowing, but it is full to the brim.

The thing is, how can this basket be kept full for the future generations? In 1972 the per capital income of Bangladesh was USD 576. Today it is USD 2,677. While these figures will never give an accurate picture of the actual earnings of the common people, I have seen the economic changes of the common people from by indirect observations.

In the villages where I visited, I saw people working in the fields, in construction, working on buildings, roads and brickfields. They are the ones building Bangladesh. They may not be able to savour biriyani, or a large slice of the per capita pie, but they are getting rice.

While development continues, what is needed now is to pay equal attention to the expenditure in development. Mega projects are good, but the ongoing projects should be completed first before going on to new ones.

Also, it must be ensured that the future generations do not bear the debt burden of loans being taken today. A skilled workforce must be built up in a planned manner to run the country. Education standards must be improved. The quality of educational institutions must be improved. These are the real pillars of development.

* Ziauddin Choudhury is a former World Bank official and a former government official.       

* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir