Bangladesh’s Padma Bridge inaugurated: Here’s how PM Sheikh Hasina turned adversity into alternative

Bangladesh has come of age as an enormous turnaround story with the formal inauguration of the 6.15-km rail-road bridge on the Padma River on June 25, Saturday.

This is the nation’s greatest infrastructure venture since independence from Pakistan, which left Bangladesh bloodied and battered. But in 50 years down the road and with Sheikh Hasina on the helm, this youngest nation in South Asia has excelled to develop into the bull case for the area.

Bangladesh can end the $3.9 billion Padma Bridge venture (authentic estimate) with its personal funds and has paid again truthful and sq.. Hasina’s long-term adversary, the US, sided with Pakistan within the 1971 liberation warfare and seemingly persuaded the World Bank to drag out of the venture.

For PM Hasina, the rosy financial image emanating from the Padma Bridge will come as a shot within the arm within the rundown to the parliament elections due in December 2023. Despite opposition protests over enforced disappearances and rigged elections, even her critics have admitted that Hasina has a superb document of financial development and human growth throughout her 13 years in energy.

But for Sheikh Hasina, this can be a second of nice pleasure and vindication of her decisive management that has given Bangladesh its ‘Golden Decade of Development’.

It was she who determined to do the venture with Bangladesh’s personal sources after the World Bank stalled the proposed funding, citing ‘credible proof of corruption’, later trashed away by a Canadian court docket.

“I am the daughter of the great Bangabandhu (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman). I do what I promise,” Hasina advised mediapersons just lately, recalling how detractors together with her bete noire, Khaleda Zia (opposition BNP chairperson) had dominated out completion of the Padma Bridge.

PADMA BRIDGE TO BOOST GDP

Economists, like former Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman, predict the Padma Bridge, which can now join the capital Dhaka with all southern districts and the nation’s second port, Mongla, will contribute 1.2 per cent to annual GDP development.

“The bridge will add a whopping $10 billion to the national GDP,” in accordance with various nationwide economists too.

Bangladesh has now bridged its two mighty rivers, Padma and Jamuna, which makes the nation an built-in and well-connected financial system.

WHY IS PADMA BRIDGE ‘CAN DO’ MOMENT FOR HASINA?

Since independence, your entire inhabitants of the southern area needed to financial institution on a waterway to cross the Padma River and attain the capital. Speedboats, launches and ferries have been the only hope and crossing this treacherous river, second solely to the Amazon, typically turned out deadly as numerous lives have been misplaced each time a ship or a launch capsized.

“Few in Bangladesh know all our rivers as well as Sheikh Hasina, because she has physically visited every remote nook and corner of the country on her return home in 1981 to take charge of the Awami League. The moment she came to power in 1996, she ensured the completion of the Jamuna Bridge and laid the foundation stone of the Padma Bridge,” stated former Information Minister Tarana Halim.

“Her vision of these bridges as part and parcel of an integrated economy is now materialised in a really positive direction. It will spur growth in the entire eastern part of South Asia,” stated Indian economist Bipul Chatterjee.

Following the pre-feasibility take a look at by the Awami League authorities, then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina laid the inspiration stone for the development of the bridge on 4 July 2001.

In the identical 12 months, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat e Islami mixed alliance fashioned the federal government and the venture hit an enormous roadblock.

However, within the run as much as the Dec 2008 parliamentary elections, the Awami League pledged to construct the Padma Bridge in its ballot manifesto. Immediately after she got here to energy, Hasina reached out to multilateral funding companies just like the World Bank for the Padma Bridge venture.

HOW DID HASINE PREVAIL WORLD BANK’S CONSPIRACY?

In April 2011, the World Bank signed an settlement with Bangladesh to finance this mega bridge. Strangely, inside 5 months of the signing, the worldwide lending company raised allegations of corruption with out releasing a single penny for the venture.

Soon after, the Hasina authorities launched an inquiry and her shut associates, from an financial advisor to a minister and a secretary, needed to step down in a determined effort to adjust to the World Bank’s prescriptions.

The World Bank even went forward with the appointment of Gabriel Moreno Ocampo to research the alleged corruption over the Padma Bridge venture.

Finally, nearly six years later, a Canadian court docket discovered these allegations levelled by the World Bank as being on ‘flimsy grounds and defective proof’ in 2017.

But fed up with the World Bank’s flip-flop, Hasina determined to fund the venture with Bangladesh’s personal sources. Many thought this was insanity, however time has vindicated what Indian High Commissioner Vikram Doraiswamy just lately described as ‘Hasina’s distinctive braveness and sincerity.’

A LESSON FOR CIVIL SOCIETY AND NGOs

Like her father, Hasina is aware of precisely the wants of the nation’s individuals and could be very decided to go the additional mile with regards to making life simpler for the general public. And her agency conviction to go forward with this engineering marvel, braving the World Bank, absolutely stands as a transparent marker.

Ironically, in Bangladesh, some teams underneath the facade of civil society typically conveniently promote the western narrative of growth and undermine the function of leaders like Bangabandhu, whereas Hasina has not been spared too. Days after WB introduced such allegations, these teams went gaga over Hasina, with some even demanding the resignation of Hasina as the one manner out to construct the bridge, a requirement solely to spice up the morale of the Islamist opposition get together.

A take a look at the tenor of that marketing campaign would absolutely put their credibility on line, whereas their actions can finest be described as a ‘pressure multiplier’ for the WB.

“When Hasina’s mannequin of distributive justice lifted thousands and thousands out of poverty and helped Bangladesh march previous its neighbours by way of human growth indices, the identical quarter went hell bent on showering reward on Dr Yunus and different NGOs. Of course, NGOs have performed a major function within the nation’s pursuit to emerge as an Asian tiger, however believing in narratives like NGOs have a much bigger function over authorities is a mere joke, ” said Ajoy Das Gupta, an eminent researcher and journalist.

BIG BOOSTER FOR REGIONAL TRADE

The Padma Bridge will sharply boost regional connectivity with India as the main beneficiary. Rail and road travel between Calcutta and Dhaka will be reduced by half, with a similar cascading effect on travel time between West Bengal and India’s northeastern states.

A World Bank report observed last year that improved connectivity between Bangladesh and neighbouring Indian states can boost national incomes of the two nations by 8 to 10 per cent and exports by 182 to 297 per cent.

“The opening of the bridge to road and rail traffic will bring immediate benefits to the direct users. The road distance from Dhaka to nearly all major destinations in the southwest region will be reduced by 100 kilometres or more, bringing tremendous savings in the time and costs of passenger and commodity movement, vehicle operation and maintenance costs and reducing wasteful burning of fossil fuels,” said Zahid Hussain, former lead economist at the World Bank.

Significant impacts are also expected on international trade between neighbouring countries such as India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar.

The southwest region, approximately 27 per cent of the country’s land area, and home to nearly a quarter of its over 160 million population, has remained one of the least developed parts of Bangladesh, primarily due to lack of connectivity to the rest of the country, according to an Asian Development Bangladesh (ADB) study in 2011.

The Padma Bridge will be an integral part of the Asian Highway One and Trans-Asian railway network systems (Sylhet-Kanchpur-Dhaka-Mawa-Jashore-Benapole, connecting Calcutta in eastern India, said the World Bank’s appraisal report.

“This report card is what she is going to maintain as much as the nation to beat incumbency when she seeks a document fourth time period in energy,” said Sukharanjan Dasgupta, who has authored books on Bangladesh.

“There isn’t any chief in South Asia who can provide you with such a robust monitor document of financial development which trickles down,” Dasgupta stated.