A foreword

When the idea of blogs describing personal experiences with the bureaucracy was announced, I was almost sure that none of the experiences would be pleasant. Reading the blogs written by others didn’t surprise me, I have heard these complaints reiterated over and over a million times by people around me. However, my initial reaction to hearing the announcement and reading the blogs was the same — I was perplexed as to how to reconcile my own experiences and inferences of the bureaucracy with the experiences described by others.

While I do not want to discredit the negative experiences others have faced and in no way deny the existence of discrepancies in the bureaucracy, I would like to bring forward my own experiences with the bureaucracy and show that perhaps it’s not a gloom and doom show after all.

However, I also realize that people have only experienced what they have and it does not concern them whether others have successfully received services from the bureaucracy.

Perhaps my inclination towards wanting to explore the positive sides of the bureaucracy stems from having personal experiences of seeing the bureaucrats work every day to perform their jobs. I have always wondered how despite working, at the end of the day, the bureaucrats are still considered to have done nothing of significant stature for the country. Why is it that if not all, most bureaucrats work, yet, the citizens are not satisfied with the services they receive?

I am not sure if I will find the answer to this question I have had for a long time but perhaps, what I can do is provide examples of where I have actually seen the bureaucracy working and leave it to people to decide whether they will give the bureaucracy their due credit.

I have had the opportunity to see and experience all things bureaucracy for as long as I have lived (courtesy of a personal bureaucratic link which I choose not to disclose) and actually getting to deconstruct some of the bureaucratic activities I have observed is an exciting opportunity for me. I think I will share some of the stories of the bureaucracy I have heard all my life in this blog and discuss some of my experiences I have had of the bureaucracy outside of Dhaka here. (That is probably not going to happen any time soon because I have finals to pass, but hopefully someday.)

I added this foreword as a guideline of what my blogs would look like and the reason behind highlighting certain sides of the bureaucracy. I may or may not use this blog to answer questions that came into my mind given that I have had the opportunity to view the bureaucracy from a different perspective.