Instruction to deliver
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
As the wife of a retired government official, I have developed, due to association, an interest in governance issues. I read Professor Vernon Bogdanor's splendid review of Michael Barber's book of the above caption in the FE. I was fascinated to know about the writer's complaint about stubborn persistence and attention to details being vastly underestimated in the literature on government and political history.
I saw my husband persistently paying minute attention to details in discharging his job as a public servant. No one ever said that he was imperfect. But many told me in private that he was too demanding. Some of them occasionally cobbled up conspiracies to keep him busy for easing his instruction on them to deliver. As a result, our children and I suffered.
More often, public service in this country is handsomely rewarding for those who can be indifferent to their duties, like soldiers in a battlefield intermittently sleeping comfortably inside bunkers.
Anonymous
Dhaka
I saw my husband persistently paying minute attention to details in discharging his job as a public servant. No one ever said that he was imperfect. But many told me in private that he was too demanding. Some of them occasionally cobbled up conspiracies to keep him busy for easing his instruction on them to deliver. As a result, our children and I suffered.
More often, public service in this country is handsomely rewarding for those who can be indifferent to their duties, like soldiers in a battlefield intermittently sleeping comfortably inside bunkers.
Anonymous
Dhaka