Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque and Nasir Uddin :
The prospect of governance reveals a strong desire for synchronization of various policies and programs with the coordinated efforts of the stakeholders. It necessitates truly autonomous local governance sufficiently decentralized for conducting a vast area of development activities. It needs to be operative with its own organization resources, funds, field units and various partners of development working at the community level. Within this research purview administration in local communities is to be studied as institutional intervention intended to utilize development potentials for real prosperity and social advancement. It is not wrong to say that thinking development objectively conscientizing the stakeholders will set the traditional villages, staggering with barrenness into motion.
Development in Bangladesh can hardly be materialized without institutional efforts. This is to be observed that how far a network of community organizations vis-à-vis elected institutions, promotional agencies, public utilities and parastatal bodies serve to mobilize the beneficiaries for development.
Both urban and rural citizens faced score of problems urging the concerned bodies to address them properly. During periodic local level elections the contenders promise to steer clear of all nagging problems. Both the major contenders approached the voters with a list of electoral pledges. On the eve of 2010 city elections Nagarik Committee backing ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury presented an election manifesto with a long list of priorities and Chittagong Unnayan Andalan supporting Manjurul Alam placed 15-point development agenda. New component added to Nagarik Committee agenda was IT village and digital Chittagong and city government. Chittagong Unnayan Andalan emphasized among others: combating water logging, traffic jam and a host of welfare measure putting the poor first.
It may be argued that the city mayor can hardly redeem the promises of change. We cannot expect much from the elected mayor. This is because this city body is not sufficiently empowered to fulfill mss expectations for a change. Its financial strength is limited with a poor taxation base. The image of city government is not reflected in position of City Corporation. So, the promise of doing the things with a long list of priorities is mere political gimmick to conjure up votes. From common feelings and general mass reactions against fuzzy urban governance it seems that they consider pledges, harangue, tall talks about change as catch phrases and common tactics employed in political game. A well informed voter commented ‘voting forced upon the silent masses helps the dominant groups to acquire legitimacy for wrong doing and wanton corruption. The post election scenario is one of frustration, increasing apathy and disenchantment’.
During Union and upazila parishads elections a barrage of priorities was highlighted. Among the issues highlighted included price hike, terrorism, negligence of the port city, holding tax, licensed rate for cycle rickshaw, water logging, landslide and environmental degradation. Yet little has been achieved. Rural local chapter can hardly be changed economically as important projects run by politico-bureaucratic triangles serve to protect coterie interest all to the disenchantment of the voters.
In rural areas and peri-urban communities structural relationship is by and large characterized by institutional conditions of living. The community of people is thus institutionally organized specified by role relationship and value orientation. Public life is shaped by on going structures and sub structures that contribute to institutionalization of the community with pre-existing customs, operative values and well-defined roles and obligations.
In the realm of development the role of community organization like loosely structured internal administration, cooperative, union parishad and the upazila parishad, paurasavas, city corporation and development authorities deserve mention. These on going structures operate to mobilize potential resources both human and materials. Governance necessitates patterned participation among these structures.
However these structures responsive to public demands are well linked to the institutions like nation building departments at the intermediary level and non-governmental organizations through the ties of development relationship. As a matter of fact the institutions that lie beyond the locality have been created to administer development in collaboration with indigenous institutions, representative organizations and other operating structures.
Local governance is tantamount to proper direction of development administration through organizational and promotional activities of three sets of institutions:
1. Community organizations at the village level (micro political institutions) those at the urban level
2. Local self government at the union and upazila parishad and urban levels
3. Several public promotional institutions and non-governmental organizations.
Only local governance through participatory administration can create environment. Local leadership needs to be dynamic to galvanize the sleepy rural community with gospel of self-development.
Bangladesh does not have the ideal type of organizational setup at the local level. Local government is not properly organized. It is far from effective and not capable of ensuring the function of service delivery and coordination. Distressingly preexisting operating structure and substructure with overlapping program content provide enough ground for haphazard development intervention. Local governance is a relatively new institutional concern. The phenomenal growth of donors development projects have prompted the policy communities to express utmost concern about governance to ensure structural resilience and sustainable development.
An overarching consideration for local governance cannot by pass the issue of participatory governance. Participatory governance seems to be a much valued policy premise as an essential part of local governance. The idea of popular participation in development is to redynamize local government institutions, community structures and various professional bodies. Community participation in need based development can be ensured through participatory governance approach.
True preexisting structures found in local government field administration, as a sub system cannot be subsumed as the potential of contributing to participatory development. Bangladesh has a chequred history of local self-government. Nevertheless the painful process of governance by the bureaucratic elites both at the center and the peripheries impairs participatory governance at the local point. Bureaucracy at the apex manipulates development process with communication, information, and networking, budgeting and planning. Local self-government with facade of democracy has yet to mature for full-blooded operation having little or no capacity to initiate people centered development activities involving a large variety of NGOs, professional organizations and other associations. Governance warrants dynamic political leadership at the base as well as a meaningful interface between local government and the larger community organization.
However, it has been increasingly realized by the civil societies that community wide consensus on generic and specific issues of local governance needs to be reached. There needs to be a broad brush initiative with the participation of citizen bodies and community stake holders. The new perspectives in local governance reveal a strong desire for promoting local government initiative with new vision in the ‘art of the state’ to set appropriate agenda of action. Much is left to democratic local government that is expected to take a planned approach to local governance providing a platform for community participation in need based development. The civil societies can only play second fiddles with advisory roles.
The crisis of non-participation of the ordinary rural citizens is crystal clear in a “soft” and “predatory” state like Bangladesh. Here the structure of governance is subservient to “extensive rent seeking” an omnipresent policy to obtain private benefits from public actions and resources. So fuzzy governance bedevils the otherwise seemingly stable community life. Repeated policy failure is thus a foregone conclusion.
This is evident from the frantic attempt of the governing elites to grab more resources. Bureaucracy is found to be bolstering fuzzy local governance using manipulative skills and techniques. The governing class including the tycoons may not benefit from the “enforcement of rules of law,” transparency and anti-corruption state action. Instead they “gain from extensive unproductive and profit seeking activities in a political system they control than from long term efforts to build a well functioning state in which economic progress and democratic institutions flourish”.
The protracted fuzzy governance is an inevitable outcome of triangular manipulation with bureaucracy going strong to practice corruption. A plethora of organizations influenced by a triangular alliance are not effective mechanisms to articulate the interest of the deprived class as policy inputs. Local government bodies, co-operatives, several committees and civil societies (not all) have become more or less the “ploys of intensive political hobnobbing.”
(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Professor of Public Administration, Chittagong University and Nasir Uddin, Lecturer of Public Administration, Chittagong University)
