Sunday | 12 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
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Sunday | 12 January 2025 | Epaper

Call not ‘Nogor Pita’....rather call ‘Nogor Shevok’....

Published : Thursday, 30 January, 2020 at 12:00 AM  Count : 408
Mahbubar Rahman
Mahbubar Rahman

Mahbubar Rahman

A nine month long war of Liberation was fought in 1971 in the name of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman where 3 million beleaguered sons and daughters of the soil laid down their lives and embraced martyrdom. Out of supreme sacrifice of the martyrs, Bangladesh emerged as a nation state having a suitable niche in the tapestry of world map with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the founding father of the nation.

Any new nation state that emerged across the world needed a man to be crowned as the father of the nation for expressing unwavering gratefulness and giving due adulation that comes from within the core of heart to the man who play a charismatic role through his political career, towering leadership and sacrifice in making a nation state. If we focus our vision in the page of history we can see the name of George Washington as the founding father of the United States of American. Similarly the name of Mahtma Gandhi comes in as father of the nation of India for his long enduring struggle in freeing India from British domination.

 In Pakistan people recognize Mohammad Ali Jinnah as father of the nation with due fervor and respect. Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria are equally venerated as the fathers of their respective nations. There are lot more names of their likes in Asia, Africa and Latin America who are regarded as the father of the nation. The name 'father of the nation' is placed in such a great height that no other institutions other than the nation state qualify or deserve to bear such name. It has been observed with great concern these days that the 'father' is unduly attached to City Corporation or Municipal Corporation to refer to its head as Nagor Pita or father of the City Corporation.

As stated the 'father' can only be attached while referring to a father of the nation state. Attaching father or Pita in referring to the head of any other institution other than the nation state is a blatant attempt to abuse the terminology 'father' that remain exclusive while referring to the father of nation only. Whenever we speak of City Corporation or Municipal Corporation, it comes in the back of our mind an autonomous body that remains in charge of managing the affairs of a city like ensuring cleanliness and free the city areas from the scourge of mosquitoes and other pests which make the life of city dwellers miserable if such menace goes undeterred. Managing a city of huge population load like Dhaka is much difficult task in deed, which the corporation does with an army of efficient and capable work force under the dynamic leadership of a person we call Mayor who is the highest ranking official in City Corporation government.

There is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well as the means by which a mayor is elected depending on the system chosen a mayor may be the chief executive officer of the municipal/city corporation government. If we look back at the history we may find that the position of mayor descends from the feudal lords system.

 The chief magistrate of London bore the title for considerably more than a century after the Norman Conquest. The official was elected by popular choice a privilege secured from King John. By the beginning of the 12th century, the title port reeve gave way that of mayor as the designation of the chief officer of London. In the 19th century, in the United Kingdom, the Municipal Corporation Act 1882, Section 15 regulated the election of mayors.
In Bangladesh it is not that long since the Municipal Corporation was upgraded after enacting a law of City Corporation Act for governing duties and responsibilities of corporation under a mayor elected by popular vote of city dwellers for a tenure of 5 (five) years.

During the tenure of his office, the mayor governs the activities of the corporation to the satisfaction of the city dwellers. At present there are 12 functioning city corporation in Bangladesh of which two are prominent like Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) obviously for their locations being in the populous capital city. With resource constraints both in financial term, skilled manpower, lack of proper vision and perspective planning; the city corporations with its mayor often fail to deliver goods to the city dwellers as per expectation. As a result, with the increasing trend of population in the city, problems, other than mitigating simply multiplies day by day in higher proportion. Moreover, the city corporations are not that autonomous as they are painted autonomous.

A ministry seating on the top of the corporation is reluctant in no way to give autonomy like procuring insecticides for killings mosquitoes and other pests to City Corporation for the reason not clearly known. This kind of attitude is simply ridiculous both in contents and spirit. Due to lack of visible co-ordination between the ministry and the corporations, mosquito eradication drive fails which the city dwellers have observed with great pain during Dengue outbreak in the recent past.

Moreover lack of desired co-ordination between City Corporation and other functional utility providers like WASA, PDB etc stands as stumbling block in the proper functioning of City Corporations. As the situation demands, therefore, city corporations should be made more effective in materializing their plan exclusively free from the unnecessary interference and bumbledom of the ministry. City Corporation should be made compatible to a world class system of city government in operation in London, Paris and New York under which fold all services and utilities like water supply & sewerage, traffic management, conservation etc duly remain.

That is how the office of the mayors of the above noted City Corporation works effectively and the city remains free from all chaos and anarchy in the given circumstances. Despite all the noted adversaries and inherent short-comings, persons from different political camps with their lofty ambitions and promises of giving a world class clean city free form the menace of mosquitoes & pests to the city dwellers strongly express their desire to become the mayor by earning support from the people through public voting. After being elected a city mayor, one cannot clearly comprehend as to how effective these city mayors will be in delivering goods to the people in the given circumstances. But one thing is certain that after being elected, they will be accomplishing their goal of becoming Nogor Pita (city father) in mad rush instead of Nogor Shevok which the poor city dwellers wish to see them as. What the city dwellers need, is a mayor who happily volunteers to attach the insignia after their name as Nogor Shevok instead of lofty brand name of  Nogor Pita.

In Bangladesh, there is one and only Jatir Pita (father of the nation). Any other Pita like high sounding Nogor Pita should, therefore, stand void. Eected mayors should feel proud to call them Nogor Shevok as because in the election campaign they vow to give services to the people to their highest ability and make the city clean with other lofty promises that they make for earning public support during their breathless campaign with tons of money that they spend from their known and unknown source of income. Therefore, let us do way the phrase Nogor Pita from the lexicon of our mind-set and instead use Nogor Shevok when we address our city mayors with due respect and deference. Congratulations in advance to those who will win the race in up-keeping Dhaka City Corporations election soon close to beginning of Mujib Borso. God bless us.   

The writer is a former Civil Servant.











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