Metropolitan government : an examination into its prospects for improving urban basic services governance in Dhaka city, Bangladesh

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate the contribution of basic services namely water supply, electricity, sewerage, telephone, roads and drainage network etc. for urban living in Dhaka. In the last three and a half decades, Dhaka’s urban basic services governance has been functioning scantily because of supply shortage, sub-standard quality, lack of inter-operator coordination, resource constraints etc. Fragmented governance of urban services – which allowed functioning of several independent special purpose providers in the city - has been argued to be the key contributor by the concerned local researchers, academics, politicians, user groups etc. The same have professed integrated governance of these basic services under the single institutional canvas of a general-purpose metropolitan government headed by elected leadership as the potential remedy.

The research is aimed at examining the prospects of metropolitan government for rendering improvements in this connection. In the process, the research investigated the institutional capacities of the selected service providers based on secondary information, carried out questionnaire interview on sampled users to gauge on their level of satisfaction with the present service governance. The above two investigations examined the effectiveness, equity, efficiency and responsiveness of the existing arrangement as in broad terms, these determines the governance performance. Additionally, the research reviewed cases of metropolitan government from overseas to learn how the arrangement can contribute in this regard. Investigation results from Dhaka align with the assertion that fragmented mode of governing urban basic services have caused the surfacing of the present ailing status. Review of overseas experiences revealed that metropolitan government arrangement has been quite successful in improving governance problems of urban services similar to Dhaka. Based on the results, the current research favors the establishment of a general-purpose metropolitan government in Dhaka with sole powers over urban basic services delivery and management. The research also suggests that key considerations for enacting such a governance arrangement needs to reflect on the prospects of consolidating functional and areal jurisdictions, financial affairs of urban basic services under its single institutional framework. The research is significant in context of Dhaka as well as Bangladesh in way that it crafts scope for conducting further examination on issues related to the strengthening of urban local government bodies, tentative functional domains and prospects of implementing metropolitan government in other Bangladeshi cities.