Confusion in Bureaucracy: General People's Helplessness

Bureaucracy is an important organization in a country, the characteristics and management of bureaucracy are very complicated to understand for general people and even for the bureaucrats themselves. In Bangladesh, bureaucrats are considered as a seperated group of people who try to avoid general people without any work based interaction. The are well educated, intelligent. They are government workers and privileged by the government. Generally, I noticed that people consider any interaction or work with bureaucracy as trouble. But I didn’t understand the reason before I experienced it by myself. A few months ago, I experienced it while I was interacting with some officers in a bank. I found it faulty comparing with the “Notes on the Theory of Organization”, written by Luther Gulick, in which Gulick discussed the nature and ideal characteristics of an organization like bureaucracy. I could not find these characteristics perfectly in the bureaucracy of Bangladesh. I just identified confusions.

About two months ago, I saw a notice of HSC scholarship. According to the notice, students had to go to their hall and bank to make a bank account to get the scholarship money. So, I went to the hall and bank, went through a lengthy procedure as it was included in the rules of the scholarship giving process. After finishing the formalities of hall, the hall authority told me to go to the bank after 7days. Accordingly, I went there in time with a necessary papers. First, I went to the specific desk for scholarship money. The officer of the desk checked my papers and told me to go to another desk where many other students were also waiting for the scholarship money. There were some specific books for each board and each sessions. I am from Dhaka board and my session is 2017–18. So, I started waiting for my book to come to my hand standing in the long line of students. 1.30 hours had passed. During that time, I shouted many times asking for my book and others also did the same. The time for lunch break came. So I waited for one more hour. After the break, I saw many students behind me in the line getting their book and going back with their scholarship money. I was not able to keep my patience anymore and asked the officer where my sessions’ book is. He just said that the scholarship money for 2017–18 session wouldn’t be given then and told us to go again after the vacation of Eid-ul-Azha. It was really surprising for me and other students of my session were also surprised hearing that. I asked, “Why didn’t you inform us earlier?Why did you make us wait so long if you are not going to provide the scholarship now?” He answered, “ This is not my responsibility, the officer of the first desk should have inform you that.” So, I went to the first desk again and asked the officer of that desk why he didn’t inform us about that. He answered, “I don’t know anything about this, it is the responsibility of the officer of the second desk to where I referred you to go”. I felt really very tired after waiting so long and I was angry too. Others who were waiting with me, were also very disappointed. At last, I decided to go back home and not to argue with the officers anymore because it would be useless. At that time I just felt disappointed. But after gathering some knowledge about bureaucracy, I think I can analyze and find out the cause and problems of this situation.

Here, the problem is about coordination in work. There is a division of work, every officer has specific duties and desk. According to Gulick, division of work is necessary but there should be proper coordination among the workers of different divisions. But as we can see, there is not proper coordination in this bank. They are making confusions about their responsibilities and jurisdiction. General people like me can’t understand this and it is obvious that they can not solve this problem. They are just being harassed by the confusion and the lack of coordination in bureaucracy. Among those officers, someone should have taken the responsibility of providing information to the students. If no one can take the responsibility, what would the general people do?Where would they go to solve their problems? In my opinion, the officer of the first desk, who checked the paper, should have taken the responsibility of providing the information because he was the one to whom all the students went first. He could inform the students after the students go to him first and they wouldn’t go through that pain of waiting uselessly and the harassment. And also, the officer of the second desk who actually had the latest information about the right time of giving scholarship money, should have informed it to the officer of the first desk so that he could inform the students. Or, the bank authority could just inform it to the hall authority to inform the students about the delay and then the hall authority wouldn’t send us to the bank before the end of the vacation unknowingly. We wouldn’t go to the bank in a wrong time and suffer.

Here, students are suffering because of the lack of coordination among the workers of the organization. Luther Gulick has pointed the coordination as one of the key to make a successful organization. This is appropriate for bureaucracy. Lack of coordination causes confusion and it makes general people suffer so much. As I experienced and heard from others, bureaucracy is not a perfectly successful organization in Bangladesh. It is failing to serve people properly and to achieve people’s satisfaction. There are many internal problems and lackings in bureaucracy in Bangladesh. This is unfortunate for the general people.