Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
Development intervention by implications involves inputs from service led and promotional activities within organizational context. It functions well in odrly institutional arrangement. Organizations developed as built-in mechanisms provide enough ground for mobilization and utilization of resources. Contrarily unplanned organizational development with conflicting superstructures prevents utilization of man power and quick decision making. It promotes development of mismanagement and mal-administration. The result is fuzzy governance.
Bangladesh does not have the ideal type of organizational set up at the local/field level. Local government is not organized in a desirable manner to ensure efficient function of service delivery system and co-ordination.. We are not definite about the precise definition of local government so far as Bangladesh is concerned. The term may be used synonymously with local administration, local politics and field administration. Here local governments emerged merely as political institutions like union parishad or municipality/city corporation. At times they are subsumed as extension of central bureaucracy to perform the functions of field administration.
Practically, diarchy has crept into local public administration characterized by two-way communication – management by local political organization and field administration. This state of confusion in real lrfe operation is a sign of misgovernance. Local government is not truly autonomous body politic with buil-0n system of field administration. .
The objective of this article is to examine functional context of the two on-going structures at the locality – local government and field administration. In analyzing an interface between local government and field administration the article seeks to establish rationale for integrated local government combining all operational structures including filld units for convenience of development administration. At the local level. While analyzing local government and field administration in Bangladesh the study is concerned only with rural-local government.
Both Local government and field administration spread over different administrative units. We have thana/upazila administration the district and the and finally, division.The district is perhaps the oldest administrative unit. Its emergence as a unit of administration is closely associated with the land system of Bengal.
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 concerned 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.
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”.
(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Professor, Department of Public Administration, Chittagong University)
