With the parliamentary elections only a few days away, a legitimate question is whether the political parties participating have a clear vision about the future of local government in Bangladesh. The country’s two-tier government structure, comprising central and local governments at district, upazila, union, municipality, and city corporation levels, requires strong democratic institutions. While the central government is supposed to frame policies, the local government bodies are tasked with implementing development programmes and delivering services to the people under their respective jurisdictions.
During the last one and a half years, we have noticed a significant shift of emphasis in popular discourses, towards strengthening local government in Bangladesh through radical restructuring to decentralise power, remove political parties’ influence in local affairs, and limit the role of members of parliament (MPs) in local governance. A fresh thinking is noticeable among the political leaders towards strong local and urban governance, especially to make Dhaka and Chattogram cities more efficient and dynamic. So far, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jamaat-e-Islami, National Citizen Party (NCP), Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) and some others have clearly mentioned their commitments through election manifestos and public meetings to build a strong local government and limit the role of the central government in local affairs, if they are voted to power in the next elections.
The BNP, in its “31-Point Outline for Structural Reforms” and “Vision-2030” initiatives, wants to remove the use of party symbols in local government polls to reduce electoral violence and reduce political parties’ influence. It also wants to ensure the freedom of operation of local government bodies by removing direct interference of central administration MPs. Local government will have an additional role in local development, education and health service delivery, BNP promised.
Jamaat-e-Islami pledged that the country will not be administered from all 64 districts, cities and upazilas, indicating the need to decentralise the governance structure and ensure good governance in the country. The party strongly stressed a corruption-free society by ensuring accountability at all levels of government.
The NCP has made a strong commitment to strengthen local government in its 36-point manifesto. It emphasised decentralising power by shifting authority from the centre, introducing “village parliaments” to strengthen grassroots governance and facilitate effective local participation. The party also wants to make local government the nucleus of development. The new party wants to reduce corruption by transparent local governance, such as making budgets and project funding public.
The CPB and other left-leaning parties also support a decentralised, autonomous, and participatory local government. These parties draw their commitments for a strong local government system from an ideological point of view, especially strengthening grassroots democracy, reducing central power at the local level, stronger financial autonomy of local bodies, local participatory planning, more transparency, women’s participation, and empowering marginalised groups to ensure their participation in local government decision-making processes.
Jatiya Party (JP), since its establishment, has strongly emphasised the strengthening of local government. The JP established the upazila as a new tier of local government in Bangladesh. It also continues emphasising the re-establishment of upazila-level courts to make the legal system more accessible, the introduction of local-level planning, and participatory development.
Whatever the results of the elections are, there needs to be consensus among the political parties about making the local government system more effective, results-oriented and functioning. The age-old centralised government system inherited from the British and Pakistan rules cannot efficiently deliver development and services for the entire population, especially in a populous country like Bangladesh. The poor implementation capacity of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) and abysmal performance of the education and health sectors are examples of poor capacity of a centralised development system. With around 75,000 elected representatives and several lakh employees, the local government of Bangladesh is a reservoir of human resources waiting to shoulder the development and service delivery responsibilities across the country.
Effective people’s participation is one of the cornerstones of a functioning local government system, and the Constitution of Bangladesh ensures local-level participation, such as in Articles 11, 19, 23, 37, and others. To ensure that local-level planning, decision-making, service delivery and development are effective, meaningful participation of women, men and youth is necessary. The role of the state is important in creating an environment for people’s effective participation in local governance.
About 40 percent of the people in the country are already living in urban areas, raising the demand for infrastructure and services there quickly. It is predicted that in the next two decades, the urban population will reach around 60 percent of the total population. Therefore, we need to plan our urban areas now and develop necessary roads, drains, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure and services. The city corporations and municipalities must take up these responsibilities. Unplanned development in both cities and towns must be arrested at any cost. The functional capacity of urban local governments should be built with priority.
The local government expenditure in Bangladesh is only one percent of GDP, which is extremely low. The percentage is significantly high in emerging economies like China (11 percent), Brazil (seven percent), South Korea (23 percent), South Africa (10 percent), and Indonesia (six percent). Therefore, Bangladesh needs to seriously decide to empower local governments to catch up with other countries with strong local government systems.
If the country decides to devolve several functions to the local level and strengthen the system, the commitments made by the political parties before the upcoming parliamentary elections must be carried forward, and a serious effort should be made in that regard over the next five years.
Dr Nawshad Ahmed, a retired UN official, is an economist and urban planner. He is currently working as the team leader in a primary school infrastructure need assessment project for the Department of Primary Education, Dhaka.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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