Strengthening local government institutions

The Election Commission (EC) has announced the schedule for second and final phase of elections to 3,800 union parishads (UPs), to be held between May 31 and July 5. Earlier, UP polls in the first phase were held and after completing the second phase, such elections will be completed in all the UPs. The completing of the UP polls since their last holding in 2003, would apparently suggest an impressive achievement on the part of the EC and the government. But sceptics have other things to say and rightly. They would be asking what good would be such an election exercise without the local level bodies for governance and development getting appropriately decentralized, empowered to run their own affairs with their elected representatives and being funded adequately to undertake the growing number of developmental and welfare-related tasks. The case of the upazilla nirbahi councils (UNCs) is a case in point. The upazillas are sub-districts and the UNCs are the second tiers in the hierarchy of local government bodies after the UPs. Elections to the UNCs were held more than two years ago. People voted with great enthusiasm in these elections, hoping that their elected representatives with greater powers and resources availability would usher in much developmental activities in their respective areas. But they must have been greatly disappointed as much as their elected representatives. For the government has not taken yet any worthwhile move to change the old way of running things at the local level. The elected upazilla chairmen have been wasting their days without offices, responsibilities and other set-ups to be able to do their expected developmental works with any effectiveness. The Upazilla nirbahi officers (UNOs) and other higher officials in the bureaucracy are in charge of running things at the local level. Furthermore, the members of parliament (MPs) have been sought to be made the bosses of the upazilla chairmen and upazilla council members for all practical purposes; the former, as the elected representatives at Upazilla-level local government body have been stating, are breathing down the necks of the latter. The status quo at the local level remains and the local government bodies are still largely ineffective as far as delivery of public good is concerned. So, the question cannot help but arise : why were the upazilla elections held at such costs when elected persons are now prevented from discharging their due responsibilities ? Why was this great waste of resources and finances ? These questions certainly acquire greater relevance when the EC is about to complete elections at the lowest tier of local government, the UPs. It should be obvious that the UP councils will meet the same fate of the UNCs, unless, of course, the government changes its present policies towards the local bodies. It has crystallized over time that devolution of the powers of the government is very necessary in the context of Bangladesh. The devolution must not be understood also as a way of only loosening central controls in administrative matters to more empowered local authorities. The devolution, to get any benefits from the same, must be also of a developmental nature. The same should lead to more resource mobilsation at the local level, much greater channeling of resources to enable and empower local government institutions to utilize well the flow of resources, the greater use of local awareness and expertise in planning exercises for local developmental projects, etc. But all such issues are yet to receive any serious attention from the government. A development-oriented decentralization process is thus still to be set into motion. In this context, the think-tank bodies and all others concerned do need to continue hard efforts to sensitize the key policy-makers of the government about the imperative for reprioritizing actions aiming at pushing up developmental decentralization higher up in their agenda. This could lead to formulation of concrete plans at the earliest so that the same can be implemented within the tenure of the present government.