PERSPECTIVE
Thoughts on the Crises of Our Governance
IN a bizarre reversal of trends and priorities in the statecraft the people at the helm are today seized with an issue as basic as governance. It has assumed almost the same importance as those of nationalisation in the late 60's and privatisation and free market economy since the late '80s as if all of our future developmental prospects hinge to it. That is how it is viewed at least by the pundits of the international monetary organisations who are nowadays increasingly demanding sound governance and eradication of corruption as preconditions for the grant of the aid money to the developing countries. They together with donor countries and United Nations agencies who had been monitoring our state of governance find it to be in a kilter. There is hardly anything attributing to governance functions in Bangladesh. The country's normal political process is interrupted with the parliament virtually paralysed. The law and order is at its nadir. The administration is stagnant. The economy is wobbly. The growth is marginal. The production is ever declining. The social scenes are chaotic. The politics is purposeless. Only things that thrive are corruption, violence, extortion, unrest, nepotism and so on. When seen through the prism of donor agencies the governance has come to a stand still. The symptoms abound all around us to suggest that there is no authority in the country to impose an order.
Where do we go from here? How do we turn to an effective governance? The United Nations agencies and donor countries promptly come up with elaborate prescriptions, which if achieved, would hit upon the "open sesame" to sound governance that they have been insisting. This is not however grossly different from what our social scientists and myriad other academics have been suggesting and exhorting in seminars, symposiums and round tables. When summed up these are all about an uninterrupted political process ensuring democratic elections and public accountability at all levels. The recipe also calls for a public information system providing free access to accurate data. There have, of course, to be an independent judiciary, an enterprising private sector, a vibrant local self government and a civil service managed according to a standardised and transparent sets of rules. All these are in fact the essential ingredient of a vigorous civil society and by all means an excellent collection of characteristics to effect a sound governance. The crucial question, however, remains - how to go about achieving all these attributes. Aid or no aid, we all want that we have democracy with accountability, a vigorous civil society and other allied features for a good governance. So we still need to determine what practical steps can be taken to achieve them and what is more important, by whom?
At this stage of our statehood it is however somewhat intriguing and of irony for us that we are to take afresh a lesson in governance. Because we in Bengal were particularly groomed by the British for the rule of law and democracy. With their exit from the subcontinent the British left behind for us an elaborate infrastructure of governance : a legal and revenue system, a network of railway, road and P T, radio, colleges, universities, hospitals, agricultural research institutes, a relatively corruption-free administration and above all democratic ideas - in fact, all the compliments of a modern state which European nations took five hundred years to build up. We never had to embark on a historic struggle for rule of law, individual freedom and fundamental human rights as in Britain itself. By all reckoning it was a great inheritance. But even before that the India Act of 1935 afforded us the first direct exposure to governance. In 1937 Bengal had the opportunity to choose its own government and the period from 1937 to 1941 could be considered as a golden period for the development of parliamentary democracy in Bengal. Though the Muslim League government of the period functioned under 1935 Act with all its limitations it acquitted itself with great credit.
The democracy struck its root firmly in Bengal with surprising speed and success. The text book recipe of governance that we are today reminded of was exemplified by us with great skill. The political parties developed democratic norms and traditions. The political process was not totally interrupted even during the Second World War. The elections were not only held on schedule, the credibility of those elections was above the board. There was no violence, no criminalisation of politics. The civil servants were rarely blamed for partiality. There was vibrant local self-government. British administrators in Bengal established as many as 4000 Union Boards. The boards were primarily local security units which kept law and order and tried minor disputes. The local boards and district boards were used as training institutions for higher leadership. These were in addition to indigenous tradition of local people managing their own village institutions, discipline and orders. Where did we then stumble? What went wrong?
Our senior citizens would recall that the country was effectively governed even during the early days of Pakistan. The civil society remained untempered for a period. A highly credible election was held in 1954. Even after many twists and turns in Pakistan's murky politics the election held in 1970 was admittedly free and fair although a visible erosion started taking place in other fronts of the governance. In an inexorable erosion of the rules and principles of governance during Pakistan period, the worst setback was perhaps suffered by the local self government. Because the successive governments were unable to tolerate strong governments at the local level which were henceforth able to function only under the wings of party or person in power. The local bodies were rendered virtually ineffective and in a series of experimentations with the local governments by various regimes and through its politicisation a very reliable tier of our governance was destroyed.
In determined effort to make those self governing bodies subservient to the incumbent government we have undone those time honoured institutions at the local levels. The sound governance will begin to take shape in Bangladesh only when local government is allowed to come out of the clutches of the control of incumbent government and through a drastic decentralisation of governmental powers and functions a new devolution of power is effected down to local bodies with sufficient clarity.
Now turning to the higher plane of the governance it would be pertinent to focus more on the implementation part of the policies and laws enacted by the government. Bangladesh has a fine legal framework and a long history of law making. Although existing laws are sufficient to ensure good governance our rulers have a proclivity to overlegislate for concentrating more and more power in their hands. Our failures are not so much in the making of laws or in their absence but in implementing them. Over the years the government institutions and administrative machinery have gradually lost their capacity to act upon the laws in a fair, impartial and effective manner.
The disregard for "due process of law" is what lies at the core of most of the problems relating to governance. Good governance is nothing but the obeying of laws by everyone from the highest to the lowest in the same standard manner. When the laws are broken whether for good reason or bad the result are always adverse. Unfortunately, breaking always begins at the top because then few can check the law-breaker at that level. One who breaks law at the top, however, instantly loses his moral authority to make others obey the law. Once the ruler at the top breaks or circumvent law, rule or tradition is left with no authority to stop those under him from doing so. This is the crux of the whole problem.In our country there are often deviations and exceptions as regards the application of law while making political favour or committing nepotism. That sets in motion a series of actions deflecting one from "due process of law" . In despicable culture of allotments, permits and quotas in our political arena one has to show utter disregard for this "due process of law". When the rulers begin to deviate from the established procedures the permanent bureaucracy also gets mutilated in the form of a desperate search on the part of the rulers for pliant subordinates thus compromising the competence of the entire administrative machinery.
It is indeed futile to institute a commission or consultancy or hold seminars and symposiums to discover the essential ingredient of good governance which is essentially the evenhanded implementation of law and government policy. Such implementation is possible only if it is done fairly with the same force over the privileged as over the poor. And the onus of this onerous task lies with the rulers who are customarily the privileged ones. The standard application of law for all would involve some sacrifice on their part by subordinating themselves to the "due process of law" even though they are in a position to evade it. In a country like Bangladesh this sacrifice is perhaps the price of a good governance.
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