Government that does not work

--Ziauddin Choudhury Unaccountable and unresponsive, wasteful, inefficient and coercive government institutions, rent-seeking officialsthese were some of the choice epithets that were used some 17 years ago in a report titled Government That Works while describing the government that time. Prepared under the leadership of the World Bank, a unique aspect of the report was that many of its lead contributors worked for the Government and were Bangladeshis. The irony is that the intended beneficiary of the 1996 report and its recommendations was the same political government today, which that time was about to be installed in power after a momentous victory. The government that time came with a lot of promise, and a lot of hope was pinned on it to take the country out of the morass of inefficiency, wastefulness of resources, and rampant corruption that ruled the country then. Alas, no visible attempt was made by the new government in 1996 to stem the downward spiral in our public sector and governance, our woes only grew. We again got a hope that the second time when the same government would return with a greater and more massive mandate from people, things would turn around. We would be disappointed. We hoped for a Government That Works, but no, it does not. And this is why. Among many things the report of 1996 suggested to the government that time, highest priorities were given to establishing accountability and responsiveness of public officials and public institutions, bringing transparency in governance and government transactions, improving efficiency and integrity of regulatory bodies and government institutions, and combating corruption. The report lamented how the chain of accountability had fallen from the Parliament to the lowest level of government employees, and how control of any kind was absent to regulate or guide aberrant public bodies. Absence of financial discipline, lack of prudent management and oversight of public institutions, and rampant theft in public service were the state of the day that time. And this continues to be the state of affairs now. To remedy the dilapidated state of our public sector and loose and almost absent governance structure, the authors of the report had suggested many measures. Principal among these were, parliamentary accountability of government agencies, better parliamentary oversight, making government transaction more transparent in public eye, proper enforcement of laws and regulations, taking preventive and proactive measures in combating corruption (including exemplary actions against officials charged with corruption), and bringing qualitative improvement in public service and public sector employees. Seventeen years and three governments later we still continue to fight the demons that were identified by that report. In last two political governments we had seen an exponential growth in lack of accountability and responsiveness from top to bottom. Instead of reining in this growth our governments have created an environment where public servants compete with our legislators to show impunity to law, defiance to financial discipline, and indulge in larcenies of public funds and assets. Instead of bringing about a much needed transparent accountability for our public officials and public agencies we have tried to shield important public figures from criticism of their dealings. Our irresponsiveness had gone to the extent that some of our development partners declined to fund a major project because they had great skepticism in openness and transparency in our contracting procedures and financial operations.

Our institutions are no better than they were two decades ago, starting from parliament to civil services to education and other formally organized entities. We have built new institutions instead of improving the old ones, and holding them accountable for better performance and better results. Our Parliament has been functioning in a unilateral status for long four years with a near-permanent boycott by the opposition. Our parliamentarians have been more active in politics of agitation than in peoples welfare and national development. This has been exacerbated by the reality of our parliamentarians distance from policy making, which most often stems from a single individual supported by bureaucratic advice. Instead of bringing improvement and qualitative changes in the civil bureaucracy, the institution has been more and more politicized. Instead of basing civil services on performance based rewards, this institution has been more and more subjected to scrutiny on individuals political leaning and rewards on that basis. The government run educational institutions have fallen apart because of bad management, partisan politics, and low quality. Our educational institutions are operated by faculties who are openly political, supporting one political party or the other. The training facilities for public servants are drained of qualified trainers, and are run by people who consider assignments to these institutions as a stamp of disapproval of their performance. Corruption has a pervasive role in our society now, from public to private sector. Each has competed with the other to show new dimensions of corruption. Despite entreaties and sometimes threat from our development partners to disassociate themselves from our development projects, we have turned a deaf ear to this evil. We all know how corruption rules every aspect of our life, doing business in the country, and even the government itself. Yet, instead of fighting it, our leaders would like to treat any accusation of corruption either from donors or from the civil society organizations as insults. The most egregious conduct was how our leaders tried to deflect perception of corruption about us revealed through surveys of our own citizens as biased propaganda. The hidden cost of doing business in the country (speed money) continues to rise. Previously one paid this speed money to one individual, now this has to be paid to a consortium of public officials and political workers. The report Government That Works had a lofty aim, to help an incoming government that time to develop a plan to combat ills that pervaded our public sector and civil services that period, and implement a plan to improve the countrys governance through much needed reforms. Sadly, we are still beset with the same ills in our governance and public services that we had nearly two decades ago. There has been no tangible effort in last 18 years to lift the country from the mire of inefficiencies, non-governance, and rampant corruption. One hoped that the massive mandate with which the current government came back to power after an eight year hiatus would give it a chance to learn from previous mistakes and bring about some basic changes that the country needed to improve public service and the institutions that have evolved. Unfortunately that did not happen. The missing link between findings and recommendations in any report is the forceful emphasis on political vision that every government needs to have to implement any reform. Without this vision we will have many surveys, many findings, and many ideas for reform, but no real break from the past. We will continue to have a Government That Does Not Work. Ziauddin Choudhury is a former World Bank staff member.