Rescuing the bureaucracy from failing?

Bureaucracy is a major tool of modern civilisation. However, now-a-days, it is often said that we depend on it for our survival, but it is failing. It is also said that we are rapidly approaching a point where we can not live with it either.
Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, warned that it only takes about twenty minutes for a bureaucracy to take hold. Drucker also said, "bureaucracies are about rules, not results." According to him, bureaucracy has many positive aspects. It provides guidelines and standardised procedures, and when appropriately used, it can lead to fair governance. However, when small minded people adhere strictly to the bureaucratic code, without thinking about the broader implications and neglecting the overriding mission and goals of their organisations, they kill the organisations.
The rules and regulations of bureaucracy is meant to enable a country to achieve its goals. This ideal concept of bureaucracy focuses on 4 cardinal virtues- (a) fortitude, (b) prudence, (c) temperance and (d) justice. It takes fortitude to make bureaucracy pro-active. Prudence is acting wisely. Temperance is needed to keep from getting angry and lashing out. And justice or fairness is the ultimate goal where all other virtues are directed.
Now, how far we in this country are able to see bureaucracy focusing on the aforementioned virtues is crucial not just to assess its merit but more importantly to determine whether it serves any worthwhile purpose. This is important because the stark realities that we confront on a daily basis do not lend a relieving picture. Be it enforcement, tax collection or social services, our bureaucracy today is allegedly lackluster and time-consuming. And being so, it is considered one of the biggest impediments in the way of a national development. The public sector is often viewed as a playground where corruption, absenteeism and red tapeism predominate. Most of the procedures and rules of business are archaic, records are still manual and great emphasis is placed on procedures and methods rather than on delivery with limited or no accountability.
These structural problems have rendered the bureaucracy ineffective -- unable to respond to present and future challenges. Rules and regulations are important but what is the use of red tape, if it renders the whole game unproductive? For bureaucrats, there is little effective accountability or differentiation on the basis of performance. Everyone gets a more or less similar performance evaluation, and in nearly every budget, all public sector officials get a raise, and after specific periods of service, a whole batch gets promoted. Officials who manage to get out of turn promotions or obtain good postings, are those who dance to the tune of the rulers.
Canadian educationist Laurence J. peter commented, "Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status." Unfortunately, our public sector is still defending the status quo left by the British Raj, embodied not only in our public edifices, but in our laws and in our mindsets. Unless we change that, nothing can truly change towards a better future.
In Bangladesh today, there are many quarters who believe that politicising the bureaucracy is largely responsible for the inertia and eventual lack of dynamism that defines it. This has been on from sometime now. It is alleged that the successive tenures of the present party in power has encouraged the politicising process.
Over the years, it is clear enough that our bureaucracy is in a dilemma about its relationship with political leadership. The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is neither normatively dichotomous with political neutrality nor abundantly cohesive or responsive to the political leaderships according to the perceptions of bureaucracy. Moreover, bureaucracy in Bangladesh is suffering from a moral puzzle between political neutrality and political responsiveness even though the bureaucrats are still in a dominant position in some cases.
Populism is also believed to have played a role in rendering our bureaucracy malfunctional. Promotions irrespective of the vacant posts at various tires have all but helped the incumbents only. It is difficult to fathom what the government expects to gain by promoting official disregarding the procedures. At present in Bangladesh Secretariat, there are 1491 Deputy Secretaries against 850 posts, 827 Joint Secretaries against 480 posts, 492 Additional Secretaries against 120 posts. In most Ministries, against the post of one Additional Secretary, there are currently 6 or more with no clear job assigned to them. The obvious question thus - why were they promoted in the first place?
On the flip side, there are numerous other officials who are being kept idle year after year without any job allocation. These officials believed to be not in the good book of the government are Officers on Special Duty (OSD). Their number currently exceeds thousand, and it is mounting. They sit idle at home and draw salary and enjoy all perks. At present, there are reportedly 641 deputy Secretaries, 347 Joint Secretaries and 372 Additional Secretaries as OSDs.
The overall scenario is far too distant from what it is meant to be. While there is the critical need for structural reforms, accountability must be the guiding principle in allowing bureaucracy both freedom and responsibility to discharge its functions. Now that the government is pursuing the vision of digital Bangladesh, it is not difficult to put in place electronic means for delivery of services in a host of areas. This is one way whereby accountability can be ensured while at the same time bringing vitality in public functions. There are plenty of things to be done, and reforms must be a priority in redesigning the entire set-up of public duties.   
The writer is a freelance journalist.