[chottala.com] Bangladesh:Troubled waters

Bangladesh:Troubled waters

A foreign-funded bridge is hostage to murky local politics

The ECONOMIST Sep 8th 2012 | from the print edition

THE biggest infrastructure project in South Asia to be paid for by
foreign donors is a $3 billion bridge in Bangladesh intended to span
the Padma river, which is what the main branch of the Ganges is called
as it flows through its delta to the Bay of Bengal, receiving the flow
from the vast Brahmaputra river for good measure.

The bridge is the stuff of donors' dreams. Its point is to end the
isolation of Bangladesh's poor south-west, home to 30m people who are
cut off by these vast waters from the capital, Dhaka, and the rest of
the country. The region's isolation is compounded, to the south-west,
by a high-security fence along the border with the Indian state of
West Bengal; and, to the south, by the tidal Sundarbans, where dense
mangrove forests are home to tigers. The proposed 6km (3.8-mile)
bridge could be a gateway to India, tying Dhaka to the great
metropolis of Kolkata. It is also a crucial piece of an even more
ambitious dream of connecting South Asia with South-East Asia, via
Bangladesh and Myanmar. Official estimates say the bridge could raise
Bangladesh's annual growth rate by 1.2 percentage points.
In this section

The planned bridge, some 40km south-west of the capital, is designed
to carry four lanes for traffic, as well as a freight railway and a
gas pipeline. Complex works to channel the Padma's flow are planned.
Alas, it is easier to train the 5km-wide river than Bangladesh's
politicians to keep their hands out of the till. In June the World
Bank cancelled a $1.2 billion loan, citing alleged corruption by
Bangladeshi public servants. The World Bank has identified various
officials as being unable to leave the money for the bridge alone.
Sacking crooked-seeming officials has, for the World Bank, become a
precondition for resuming lending. Bangladeshi newspapers have said
that the prime minister's chief economic adviser, Mashiur Rahman, is
in the Bank's sights. He says he has done nothing wrong and will only
resign if the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, tells him to. Regardless
of Mr Rahman's case, Bangladesh has a culture of impunity. Only one
senior politician has ever gone to jail under an elected government
for corruption, and that was a former dictator.

The Asian Development Bank is more ready than the World Bank to be a
cheerleader for the Bangladeshi government and is keen to resuscitate
the project. Like the Japan International Co-operation Agency, another
backer, it has kept the door open. However, more Bangladeshi officials
will have to step down before the World Bank is prepared to return.
Probably the government will come back to the table, but not without
hectoring its perceived enemies first. Sheikh Hasina has accused
Mohammad Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance and a Nobel peace laureate,
of putting the World Bank up to walking off.

The Padma bridge project has been in the works for over a decade.
Western governments do not want to see it snapped up by a state-backed
Chinese company (in return, perhaps, for an equity stake and for
economic influence, as has happened with ports in Sri Lanka and
Pakistan). India, with which Bangladesh has usually had good
relations, would do its best to block a high-profile Chinese
involvement in its neighbour's economy.

Sheikh Hasina says Bangladesh will "not beg" from the World Bank. A
sense of injured national pride has given rise to the unworkable
notion that the bridge must now be built with Bangladesh's "own
resources". The government is mulling a levy to help finance the
bridge.

The only politician openly to reject Sheikh Hasina's obsession with
self-reliance is A.M.A. Muhith, the finance minister and a former
World Bank official himself. Mr Muhith is too venerable to be required
to call the prime minister "elder sister". He knows that Bangladesh
needs the multilateral agencies: only earlier this year the IMF helped
out with a $1 billion loan. Bangladesh relies heavily on Western aid
for a vast array of projects that otherwise would not exist. Without
the Bank, there can be no bridge.

Sheikh Hasina's Awami League is livid enough that it will be unable to
keep its election promise of building the bridge before the end of
2013. Yet it would be even more appalled if the Bangladesh Nationalist
Party, led by Sheikh Hasina's arch-rival, Khaleda Zia, took office at
the next election, bagging credit for the bridge. (That prospect is
real: no elected government has won a second term.) And so, in the
end, Sheikh Hasina has no strong incentive, other than the country's
best interests, to mollify the World Bank.

http://www.economist.com/node/21562263


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