POLITICS vs ADMINISTRATION
Before starting my blogs I want to say that I don’t have much experience with bureaucracy. I’m going to share an experience which I heard from one of my family members. This not a first-hand experience, so there might be something that’s not 100% correct.
One of my family members works in LGED. As we all know Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) is one of the largest public sector organizations in Bangladesh entrusted for planning and implementation of local level rural urban and small scale water resources infrastructure development programs. LGED works closely with the local stakeholders to ensure people’s participation and bottom–up planning in all stages of project implementation cycle. The broad objectives of LGED’s development activities are to improve the socio-economic condition of the country through supply of infrastructures at local level and capacity building of the stakeholders. LGED promotes labour-based technology to create employment opportunity at local level and uses local materials in construction and maintenance to optimize the project implementation cost with preserving the desired quality. LGED works in a wide range of diversified programs like construction of roads, bridges/ culverts and markets to social mobilization, empowerment and environmental protection.
Now, I’ll share the experience. My uncle is an Engineer at LGED. He was appointed to supervise one particular project of LGED. And, how this projects works is under supervision of an engineer, contractors work on the project. Contractor is a person that undertakes a contract to provide materials or labour to perform a service or to do a job. And to work on a project of LGED contractors have to apply to get that project. And if someone’s application gets approved, he/she can do that job.
The project my uncle was supposed to supervise, had a huge budget. One day, a contractor came straight to my uncle and said he wants that project. My uncle he doesn’t have the power to give him that project. He should apply legally and hope to get that project. But that man was stubborn. He started going to my uncle’s office everyday. Finally one day he came with a local political leader. That leader offered my uncle huge amount Of money and asked him to give that project to that contractor. My uncle said it’s not in his hand. The political leader then forced him and told him to force whoever has the power to give the project and to make
Sure that contractor gets the project. At this point that leader started shouting and everyone in that office gathered outside his room. At one point my uncle came out of the room saying he is going to complain to the police. Then the political leader came and slapped him in front everyone and verbally abused him. Then he left saying he will makes sure my uncle is dead. After he left the chief engineer came and asked everyone to leave except my uncle. Then he told my uncle to wait till the next day and he will talk to the Administrative officer at the head office. Next morning he called my uncle early and told him that that leader is really powerful and he has threatened him. If they don’t give that project to that contractor, who is the brother of that political leader, the political leader will kill both of them. And he also said the leader is willing to pay huge amount of money. So it’s better for both of them to take the money and give that project to that contractor. So my uncle decided to take the money and eventually that contractor got the project.
Now,. I don’t know which theories of my syllabus can be related to this. I definitely need some suggestions. But I do have some thoughts and questions.
From whatever I’ve heard or seen, in this country;
1.why political leaders are more powerful than administration?
2.Why most of the time political leaders tend to do the wrong thing?
3.Why administration is so weak that they’re scared to raise their voices?
5. My uncle ended up taking the money even though he didn’t want to initially. So can we really call the bureaucrats corrupted?
And Also the fact that my uncle agreed to take that money and give that project to that contractor is not only morally wrong but also it’s against the whole idea of LGED. Because LGED is supposed to make sure local stakeholders participation and ensure socioeconomic status of the local people.
Why in the match of Politics versus Administration,
Politics always wins?
