Overcoming frailties of civil administration

That the professionalism of the public servants was seriously compromised under political pressure to serve the development narrative of the immediate past Awami League (AL) regime is hardly a shocking revelation to the general public. On the contrary, in many cases, senior government servants were rather found to be eager partners of the fallen government in propagating the narrative leading to gross irregularities in the selection, formulation, management, evaluation and implementation of the development projects. Needless to say, larger projects were the worst victims of politicisation and hence of rampant irregularities and corruption in every phase of the project. The aim was to make windfall gains for highly placed project officials at the expense of the public exchequer. Although unsuitable for development work, project locations would still be approved to serve selfish interests of those in high office.

Sadly though, the past government under scrutiny went on the rampage and looted resources allocated for development projects, funds of financial institutions including banks and state-owned corporations, destroyed all state institutions and judiciary, during the last one decade and a half unchallenged. Though the public servants acted as the handmaidens of their political masters in such crimes, they are now offering their helplessness as an excuse! But weakness is no excuse for becoming partners in crime. The argument of weakness, too, ring hollow when one recalls the bloody events during July-August's students-led mass upsurge. Many in the police administration had gone out of their way to do the then-government's bidding and committed mindless massacres of protesting men, women and even children in the streets.

Even so, it is good to know that some of those public servants in the government bureaucracy did come forward to admit their guilt that the head of the National White Paper Committee (NWPC), Debapriya Bhattacharya, disclosed to the public during a recent press briefing. However, there were also rare instances as reported in NWPC findings where some public servants could demonstrate the courage to resist the political pressure and not compromise their principles. As expected, those honest officials had to suffer immensely in their professional as well as personal life.

Politicisation of the civil administration was all-embracing so much so that it was not only individuals in the civil administrations who were affected. Even the platforms like associations and other professional bodies supposed to protect the individual public servants from any undue pressure from above whether political or otherwise, failed to rise up to the occasions, the white paper composition committee's findings further divulged. The consensus of crime was so complete that a tripartite nexus of the officials in the development administration, the politicians and the business people was created to this end. Instances of major projects, government schemes and state institutions that fell prey to the shenanigans of the nexus included, as also disclosed at media briefing, were the hi-tech parks, Karnaphuli tunnel, the energy sector, social safety net programme, revenue collection by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) and work of the Bangladesh Bank, to name but a few. Such a grim picture of the civil administrations' frailties and failures under the past AL-regime is indeed disheartening. But it is reassuring that the bureaucrats want to change and work independently with professionalism now and in the future. In that case, the task of the interim government will be to create an enabling environment for them to deliver accordingly.