Author(s)

Shamsul Arefin^1*, Tamanna Rashid¹, Didarul Habib²

¹Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University, Gopalganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
²Freelance Researcher, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Does infrastructural development cause underdevelopment of the third world peripheral states like Bangladesh? Can flyover project overcome traffic congestion? Does it create vulnerabilities for the common people? This paper is an attempt to answer all the above questions. Depending on the qualitative research design, this study was conducted on the two selected flyover projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh named Mayor Hanif Flyover and Khilgaon Flyover. Theoretical arguments of development and underdevelopment on modernization and dependency school were incorporated for critically examining this research. Hence, the researcher followed conflict approaches given by Dahrendorf (1959), later used Coser (1956) and Guangshe Jia, et al.’s (2011) arguments to understand how mega projects like flyover operate through different channels in third world countries. The study then reveals that although these mega projects benefited communication system, it literally failed to fulfill public core demands and interests by making people marginalized and vulnerable. Besides, this study explored that mega projects like flyover are an outcome of bureaucratic decision in which social and environmental impact assessment was ignored.

Infrastructural Development, Underdevelopment, Flyovers, Vulnerability

Arefin, S. , Rashid, T. and Habib, D. (2019) Infrastructural Development and Vulnerabilities: A Sociological Study of Two Selected Flyovers in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 18-29. doi: 10.4236/jss.2019.77003.