New Public Management & Bangladesh
Bangladesh inherited its civil service from Pakistan which was the descendent of Indian civil service. Indian civil service was formed and shaped by the British during their rule in the subcontinent. Bangladesh from the beginning of independence realized the inefficiency, inappropriateness of the system of administration which was designed specifically for colonial era. The motive of this civil service was to rule, to have control over the native people. It was not designed to give proper services to the citizens. Bangladesh bureaucracy since independence tried to change the situation by forming several reform commission. But each time Bangladesh civil service failed to implement the ideas of these reform commissions. There can be many reasons for this failure. It can be bureaucratic rigidness to change or it can be politicization of bureaucracy. This inflexibility of bureaucracy make it hard to introduce new ideas in the administration let alone a full structural reform. That’s why Bangladesh failed to introduce New public management (NPM) where Singapore did it successfully.
NPM is the approach to limit down the government role and shift the services toward privatisation. Osborne and Gaebler called it “reinventing” government on the basis of market economy. NPM became an instrument for change in the developing countries. Public administration reform commission(PARC) after their research gave some recommendations on NPM oriented reform. The recommendations were based on improving service sector, combating corruption, reforming civil service, reducing the wastage of funds and establish a system which is efficient, transparent, flexible, and technology oriented. These recommendations seemed very promising to improve the situation for civil service. But again these recommendations remained unimplemented because of numerous factors. The countries where NPM model was invented, was already developed. They had well-developed administrative infrastructure, socio-economic, political, technological and cultural background. These are necessary preconditions for the successful implementation of NPM model. Bangladesh civil service has failed to establish solid
institutional frameworks, rule of law, proper control structures, checks and balances
and accountability. It has faced many institutional failures. The government even showed inability to implement laws and making the officials accountable in terms of the law. So it was difficult to implement the market oriented NPM system.
Bangladesh civil service has always been the victim of politicization. It has a major impact on decision making within the bureaucracy. Political benefits always outweigh the long run benefits of reform. The political leaders want to have control over the resources and give benefits to party loyalists . To maintain the personal benefits of bureaucrats and politicians has become quite common in traditional bureaucracy. So the bureaucrats and the politicians are reluctant to change it. The donor agencies always had great impact on reform agendas. Even the donor agencies have failed to make the political leadership and the public
bureaucracy understand that their prescriptions can bring positive results. The developing countries that implemented NPM model successfully were very cautious to select the items of NPM. Bangladesh civil service has failed to do that.
Bangladesh civil service has been facing problems from the beginning. There is accountability problem, the bureaucracy is not working efficiently, there is corruption in every stage of bureaucracy. Red tapism has become a culture. So NPM based model was was proposed to reform the bureaucracy. A market based reform system appeared very promising to eradicate the problems in bureaucracy of Bangladesh and make it efficient. Even though recommendations were proposed by PARC after years of research , civil service failed to implement the ideas. Not only that, the bureaucracy of Bangladesh has never been successful to pull a structural reform to make the bureaucracy efficient.
