There are 932 registered owner and worker organisations in Bangladesh’s road transport sector, according to the Labour Ministry. That number alone should make us pause. In a country where the bus conductor still shouts for passengers as if the loudspeaker has not yet been invented, the industry has somehow mastered the art of organisational multiplication. We know there are central bodies such as the Bangladesh Road Transport Owners Association, the Bangladesh Bus Truck Owners Association, and the Bangladesh Truck Covered Van Owners Association. We also know that beneath these umbrellas, district-based bodies flourish like roadside tea stalls. We even have separate associations for non-mechanical transport. What we do not know is the exact number of owner organisations. That detail seems to have slipped between the gears.
The opacity is interesting, especially in a sector where money is never opaque for long. According to a government intelligence agency, Tk 22 million is collected every single day in Dhaka alone from this sector. That is Tk 2.2 crore daily. Multiply that by 365 days and you are looking at roughly Tk 803 crore a year in the capital alone. Transparency International Bangladesh estimates that Tk 1,590 crore is collected annually from privately owned buses and minibuses across the country. Even if we assume some overlap in categories, the scale is staggering. We are not talking about petty change dropped in a conductor’s pouch. We are talking about an industry within the industry.
Labour organisations say they collect Tk 30 per vehicle. Owners’ bodies say they collect Tk 40. The federation’s fixed rate is Tk 10. On paper, these numbers resemble service charges. But field investigations suggest that daily subscriptions can range from Tk 10 to several thousand taka, depending on the vehicle and route. And yet, we are told that much of this money goes to ‘management.’ One federation reportedly spends Tk 8 to 9 lakh per month to run its operations. Even if that figure is accurate, it is modest when placed beside the hundreds of crores circulating through the system. Those who work in the sector argue that visible expenditures are insignificant compared to the amounts collected. The rest, they suggest, disappears into a shadow ledger.
This is where the script begins to resemble a scene from The Godfather. Not because of cinematic glamour, but because of structure. In Mario Puzo’s world, protection money was never called extortion. It was described as a necessary cost of doing business. The shopkeeper paid so that ‘order’ could be maintained. Here too, the money is rarely called extortion by those who collect it. It is framed as a fee, a subscription, an industry expense. Chaos, we are told, must be managed. And management has a price.
What complicates the narrative further is the chorus of denials. Labour leaders say they collect only small amounts. Owners’ leaders say the allegations are misrepresented. Another owners’ association claims it does not collect any money at all. Some suggest that shadowy, undocumented groups are responsible. According to one account, unidentified individuals in small cars stop vehicles at intersections and collect money in broad daylight. No one knows who employs them. They are powerful, yet invisible. It sounds less like a regulatory framework and more like an episode from Narcos, where multiple cartels operate in overlapping territories, each claiming innocence while the cash flows uninterrupted.
Politically influential figures, city corporations, municipalities, local authorities, members of law enforcement agencies, and some government officials have been identified in research and investigation reports as being involved in extortion in the transport sector. When everyone is accused, accountability dissolves into abstraction. Responsibility becomes a communal fog.
Historically, the sector has had its titans. After the political transition, new alignments have emerged. The colours of influence change, but the structure appears resilient. The system survives electoral cycles with impressive adaptability. In that sense, it resembles House of Cards, where power is less about ideology and more about control over networks.
The moral irony is sharp. Transport is a public service. It carries workers to factories, students to universities, patients to hospitals. Every additional unofficial fee paid by a bus or truck ultimately trickles down to passengers and consumers. The price of vegetables in a market, the fare of a bus ride, the cost of a construction project all absorb these invisible levies. Extortion in transport is not merely a sectoral issue. It is a tax on daily life.
One cannot ignore the theatrical dimension. Each organisation claims legitimacy. Each frames its collection as necessary. Each distances itself from the darker aspects of the system. The result is a performance in which everyone condemns extortion while extortion continues. It resembles the bureaucratic absurdity of Kafka’s The Trial, where the accused is trapped in a system without a visible accuser. Here, the driver pays, the owner pays, the passenger pays, but the perpetrator is perpetually elsewhere.
If 932 organisations exist in one sector, then perhaps the first reform should be arithmetic. How many associations are necessary to run buses and trucks? How much money is officially collected each day? Where does it go? Who audits it? Why are there no exact national figures when intelligence agencies can estimate daily collections in the capital? Why does an industry that moves millions of people daily operate under financial fog? The answer may lie not in policy but in power. Extortion, as depicted in cinema and literature, thrives where enforcement and influence intersect. In our context, control of terminals, routes, and checkpoints determines leverage. Whoever controls the chokepoint controls the cash flow.
The road transport sector is often described as the lifeline of the economy. If that is so, then it is also the bloodstream through which informal money circulates. An artery clogged with unaccounted tolls cannot sustain healthy growth. The irony is that those who defend these collections as necessary management fees may be undermining the very industry they claim to protect.
Perhaps the most honest statement would be this: extortion in the transport sector is not an aberration. It is an institution. And like many institutions in our political economy, it survives by being simultaneously denied and normalised.
Until we decide whether we want a transport system or a toll theatre, the buses will keep moving, the money will keep flowing, and the public will keep paying. In the end, the fare we pay is not only in taka. It is in trust. And trust, unlike subscriptions, cannot be collected by force.
The writer is an academic, Journalist, and Political Analyst. E-mail:[email protected]
