Weekdays, time: 10:45am, location: Kakrail, destination: Farmgate – how long should the journey take? Fifteen or twenty minutes at most, right? Wrong. One will be lucky if one makes it in one hour and a half. Commuting on weekdays in the month of Ramadan can be even more daunting and energy sapping. A trip from Motijheel at around 4:30pm to Mirpur Section 12 could well mean for a fasting commuter that he or she would have to break his or her fast on the road. What is truly ‘mega’ about the so-called mega-city of ours, it seems, is its ‘mega traffic jam.’
   The city traffic, most of the time, is simply unnerving – lack or complete absence of discipline; jam-packed buses, minibuses and tempos loading and offloading passengers in the middle of the roads; very few traffic-policemen either busy checking the license of a motorised vehicle or chatting or in many cases resting away by the pavement waiting for the jam to ease off automatically. At some places, the automated traffic lights are out of order while, at others, where these still work, neither the traffic policemen nor the drivers pay any heed. Pedestrians, on the other hand, follow their own rules. Be there any zebra crossing or footbridge or underpass or not, most of them would make their way through the speeding cars, trucks, buses and what have you, endangering not only themselves but also others.
   The ever-deteriorating and never-ending traffic congestion in the city is the result of a number of complex issues. One of them is the stupendous increase in the city’s population. As more people come to the city for education, employment, services, the demand is for more and more transport which on the one hand encourages unscrupulous people to get involved in the transport sector and carry on with their business illegally, for example with invalid documents, fake licences, untrained drivers, and on the other makes the task rather difficult for the authorities concerned to control and monitor the system in a coordinated and regulated manner.
   There are just too many vehicles, too few roads and fewer traffic policemen to maintain smooth operation of traffic throughout the cities. With the population increases the number of vehicles; more and more new automobiles take to streets every day. However, as is the practice in the developed world, the old ones are not withdrawn from the streets. The city roads are short in length and not as wide as they should be to accommodate the ever-growing number of vehicles. As an obvious outcome, the traffic control system are going bad from worse as thousands of automobiles choke the roads from dawn to late in the night while the dilapidated conditions of most of the roads cry for an urgent need for repair and carpeting.
   There are too many traffic signals on Dhaka roads to make driving or commuting a hassle-free experience. For example, the three-kilometre road from Cantonment third gate to Shahbagh roundabout has as many as eight signals. The frequent stops at the traffic signals not only slow down the normal flow of traffic but also waste valuable working hours. The situation deteriorates when vehicular flow comes to a halt at any one point because of an accident or a procession. Ideally, in a large city, roads should be wider and they should run for miles with only a few smaller roads traversing them at strategic points. But in Dhaka we find private cars, taxis, auto-rickshaws and small trucks spilling dangerously into the main thoroughfares from dozens of smaller roads and lanes on the two sides. About 15 narrow roads and narrower lanes join the main road between the Dhaka Cantonment and the Shahbagh crossing.
   In 2004, a World Bank-funded modern signalling system was taken up under the Dhaka Urban Transport Project with the intention of bringing discipline and order in traffic management. By August the modern signalling system was installed in 59 points of the city. The authorities claimed then that this would help reduce emission by seven per cent, fuel use by 12 per cent; delay caused on roads by 20 per cent and stop time at different city points by 40 per cent. In 2007, the traffic congestions and jams are getting out of hand of the authorities with electronic traffic signals going on and off diligently but ineffectively while the traffic department of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police are at odds over duration of the traffic lights making on-duty policemen overriding the automated signals at will, creating more chaos.
   The city and traffic administrations have regularly been criticised for failures to bring some semblance of order in vehicular and pedestrian movements. They have been charged with corruption, ineptitude, lack of planning and coordination, what not. It is true that traffic constables do take even Tk 2 in bribe to let vehicles take the wrong lane or a wrong turn. It is also true that traffic sergeants let unauthorised drivers get away in return for hefty bribe and that the authorities sit idle when most drivers of public transport run their vehicles with forged documents and driving licences.
   Nearly four lakh rickshaws that ply on the city roads are often seen as the biggest contributor to the traffic gridlock. There have been calls for banning these altogether, and efforts have already been taken to restrict rickshaw movements from certain thoroughfares. However, as a practical matter, it cannot be ignored that the rickshaws serve some very important purposes. For those associated with this sector, it is a source of income and for those belonging to the lower-income group it is a one reliable and affordable mode of transport besides its zero contribution to air pollution. Banning these without creating alternatives for the rickshaw-pullers and the passengers makes no economic sense; neither does it do any public good rather separate lanes for bicycles and rickshaws seem quite viable.
   If anything the authorities suffer from a myopic notion that the rickshaws are the sole reason of traffic jam. Instead of making sustainable plans and policies on how to streamline the city’s overall traffic, the authorities seem more enthusiastic about throwing the unlicensed rickshaws off the roads. While doing so, they don’t bother about providing an alternative mode of earning to those rickshaw-pullers whom they are making unemployed or doesn’t care about the commuters who will be
   suffering due to want of enough transportation.
   For the planning and management of traffic and maintenance of roads and highways, a number of organisations are involved in our country. The communications ministry is the highest regulatory and policymaking body of the government in the sector while the Roads and Highways Department is responsible for construction, reconstruction and maintenance of national highways, regional and feeder roads. City development authorities like Rajuk, Chittagong Development Authority, Khulna Development Authority and Rajshahi Development Authority, district councils and local government bodies are responsible for the development of roads in their respective areas. City corporations and municipalities maintain transportation infrastructures in cities and urban areas and issue license to rickshaws while the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority issues license for motorised transports and also the route permit to passenger buses. The Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation operates state-owned buses and goods carriers and manages the Rupantarito Prakritic Gas Company Limited to provide compressed natural gas as fuel for automobiles. And as for controlling the traffic, the police authorities are responsible. Despite having all these organisations we have a deplorable traffic system as instead of giving a concerted effort in improving the overall communication, transport and traffic situation, these organisations – most of which complain of manpower shortage and fund crunch, suffer from mismanagement and corruption and so on – work almost autonomously without zero coordination among them and there doesn’t seem to be any initiative taken on the part of any quarter to improve the situation.
   Some drastic measures have to be taken to bring sanity on the roads and it’s been long overdue. Stern action should be taken against all unfit and old vehicles and need to be taken off the roads. The BRTA and other relevant agencies should give more efforts to educate the drivers of public transports regarding the importance of obeying traffic laws and regulations. The existing city roads need to be made wider and new roads constructed so that commuters may have three to four alternate roads to reach destinations in any given direction. The city badly needs many more flyovers for inter-city vehicles to circumvent all the major roads in the city centre. Steps need to be taken to keep the city roads free from rain water logging.
   Other steps include installing better traffic control technologies (better road signs, easily visible and properly timed traffic signals, creating one way streets, etc), strictly enforcing traffic regulations by deploying well trained and closely supervised traffic police can be considered as some important steps.
   To make a system work, it requires collective willingness and the habit of following the rules and regulations. But in our country, nobody – be it the commuters, the drivers or the authorities concerned – appears willing to put in the effort to make the traffic system run smoothly. It doesn’t matter how much fund we provide, how modern system and equipment we introduce, how many traffic police we deploy things will remain as deplorable as it is now, if we — the commuters and the authorities — remain reluctant to make it work.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, had a difficult task in trying to convince people during her most recent swing through West Asia that the American-sponsored conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, planned for November, would not be a photo opportunity. For good reasons, because no occupant of the White House other than President George W Bush has been so total in his support of Tel Aviv’s goal of permanently subjugating Palestinians.
   During the first term of his presidency, through the fog of ‘road maps’ and a promised Palestinian state, Mr Bush let Ariel Sharon destroy the physical infrastructure of a Palestinian state down to Yasser Arafat’s last helicopter – the first fruits of the Oslo accords – but also blessed Israel’s major illegal settlements on occupied land and an enlarged Israel. The Israeli army re-entered major Palestinian towns, cutting up the area into Bantustans, building apartheid roads and a maze of checkpoints that made life hell for Palestinians.
   The cruellest joke of all was the evacuation and abandonment of the Gaza Strip, locking it up on land, in the air and on sea. Hamas, which came to power in a free election, was all but excommunicated, ultimately to claim the Strip from the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas in a nasty fight. In the Israeli dictionary, it is now an ‘enemy entity,’ threatened with further privations for its unfortunate people.
   But the crowning glory of the US-backed Israeli state is the building of a wall zigzagging around settlements, eating up more occupied land, separating Palestinians from their fields, schools and kith and kin. The wall encompasses the heart of the Israeli state, with access to occupied East Jerusalem cut off, while the rest of the West Bank is cut into ribbons by exclusive settler roads and illegal Israeli settlements.
   I recently asked a Turkish expert on Israel in Ankara whether he saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He answered with the question, why leave the tunnel? While his inference was that both sides were dreaming their dreams, his answer was prescient in a larger sense. The Israelis are sitting pretty, continuing to occupy Palestinian land and expanding their stranglehold on Palestine; the Palestinians, meanwhile, are quarrelling among themselves, and the benign Uncle Sam is smiling.
   Why should Israel do anything to give Palestinians their land and justice? Yes, there is ‘world public opinion,’ but Israelis have found that it is easily assuaged by token acts of releasing some Palestinian prisoners while arresting some more. And there are the talks with an ineffectual President Abbas, photo opportunities showing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas wreathed in smiles. The time for substantive talks is not yet, Israelis say. With luck and America at their side, it may never arrive.
   The fly in the ointment is America’s role in the region and the world, and the large shadow that President Bush’s underwriting of a Greater Israel has been casting on his ability to extricate his troops from the Iraq quagmire and fight his ‘war on terror.’ Iraq is now a new breeding ground for terrorists where none had existed, and America’s ability to convince the world’s Muslims that they are not fighting a crusade is severely dented by the continuing subjugation of Palestinians, with active US help.
   President Bush’s predecessor too tried his hand at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict towards the end of his final term of presidency. He got as close as any US president could to a framework for a solution, but was defeated by time. Here one gets to the compulsion of American politics and the power of the American Jewish lobby to help elect or defeat a US president. Which explains why President Bush also waited so long to call a peacemaking conference. But his credentials are poor, compared to his predecessor’s, and Israel now is in the driver’s seat and will offer Bush grand declarations and crumbs for comfort.
   For the first time in America, a beginning is being made in questioning the Jewish lobby’s promotion of policies that harm American interests. The incipient revolt was begun by two academics, which questioned the basis of US policy towards Israel. They had to seek the hospitality of The London Review of Books columns to present their point of view. They have since expanded their thesis into a book that has been published in the US and somewhat gingerly reviewed. It will take long for this questioning to have an impact on US policymaking.
   In the meantime, Israelis are effectively destroying the prospect of a viable Palestinian state, with splendid American help. What can an American-sponsored conference achieve when President Bush’s motives are highly suspect and the tragedy of the Palestinians is being enacted before the Muslim and Arab world each single day? What levers can a lame duck US president employ to get Israelis to give anything more than loose change?
   Indeed, Israelis’ ability to achieve what they have secured is remarkable. The Oslo accords – tilted as they were in favour of Israel – were based on the land-for-peace formula. Several Israelis never accepted this hypothesis and even acclaimed doves of the like of Shimon Peres, who has now assumed his country’s presidency, had second thoughts. A core of Israeli leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, cleverly employed the second Palestinian intifada to gut Oslo, send troops back into major Palestinian towns and physically destroy all the potent symbols of the Palestinian state, such as the airport and the Fatah headquarters in Ramallah.
   Perhaps the biggest achievement of the Israeli leadership was to confine Arafat to his battered headquarters and get America to accept the Israeli view that he had become, in the Soviet fashion, a non-person. Israelis knew that Arafat, for all his faults, was Mr Palestine and that he would never compromise his life’s mission: the creation of a viable state of Palestine. He died after being flown to a Paris military hospital. Now Israelis and Americans have to deal with a weak successor facing divisions in Palestinian ranks even as the state that was promised has disappeared.