Compact Township
I strongly support Professor Salim Rashid's idea of Compact Township (CT) as explained by him in the article on CT in DS on April 9, 2008. This year's food crisis and skyrocketing prices have shown us the need for protecting our agricultural lands by all means. CT is one of the means in this regard. The huge problem of increasing population, their housing and producing enough to feed them needs out of box thinking and the concept of CT is one of those. I would like to add a couple of points of my own in support of CT.
CT will alleviate the problem of drinking water supply in rural areas, especially in arsenic-prone areas. In our country, most of the arsenic mitigation technologies have failed for one reason or the other. In order to save the population from arsenic contamination, the government is now seriously contemplating supplying piped drinking water from deep tube-well. The only drawback of piped water supply in a rural setting is that it is not very cost effective as the houses are scattered. A CT will largely overcome this problem and will become more attractive to the people if it has a piped water supply system, especially in arsenic-prone areas.
Professor Rashid has mentioned many potential sites for CTs. I would like to add the proposed Padma bridge site to that list. The bridge will require resettlement of a large number of people. We can take this opportunity to build a number of CTs not only to settle displaced people but also to attract other people.
Many projects in our country-- for example, Char Livelihood Project-- are assisting poor people to raise their homesteads above the flood level. If such projects explore the possibilities of building CTs, instead of individual homesteads then it will be quite helpful.
As Professor Rashid has mentioned, resettlement in CTs will be voluntary and people will pay a charge for housing in the CT. Some economic incentives however, can be thought of. For example, if by moving to CT, a person frees up some land and brings that land under cultivation or any other productive use, he may be allowed certain rebate.
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