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A Quiet Revolution in Bangladesh
2006-12-20
'Stealthy Positive Deviances in Rural IMTs: A case study from Bangladesh' is a recent paper by Scott Justice describing a rural transport revolution taking place in Bangladesh that, until now, has escaped international and even national attention.
A big national innovation system has developed entirely outside government regulations and policies, where locally manufactured motorised rickshaws and tempos or auto-rickshaws, numbering in the tens of thousands, have silently changed the face of rural road transportation in Bangladesh.The paper describes how the cultural and academic fascination with urban transportation comes at the expense of the much more far reaching and fascinating spread of rural transportation technologies and their impacts. An example of such a technology is the urban rickshaw's country cousin, the flatbed rickshaw (vanghadi). Despite numbering in the hundreds of thousands in rural Bangladesh there is still little or no data on the vanghadi. Another example is the now ubiquitous Chinese two-wheel tractor (power tiller), with a trailer attachment, that probably numbers close to one hundred thousand. Little or no formal studies have looked at this widespread use and tremendous impact on the lives of the rural poor that both of these technologies have had.
Yet another rural transport technology that is slowly appearing on the public radar screen, and the subject of this paper, is the stealthy rural based thoroughly unorthodox locally manufactured, no two being the same, Chinese motorised IMT, the botbordi. They are so named for the distinctive sound their single cylinder diesel engines make. Their stealthiness, as compared to the vanghadi and the power tiller, stems from the fact that no government agency or international project has ever been involved in the promotion of these IMTs and they apparently exist in contradiction to all traffic rules, regulations, and norms.
Since the author's own limited research is the only research that exists the facts surrounding this IMT are still sketchy and figures given are best guesses.
To find out more contact the author for a copy of the full paper:
Scott Justice Email: justice@wlink.com.np
