Theories versus Reality in Bureaucracy

"Bureaucracy" is the most important thing for a nation and a country. As I have a course named Public Administration, I was able to know about bureaucrats, they are appointed by the government, they are inevitable to run a country's affairs properly. It's same for both democratic and autocratic countries. I have read some theories and articles about bureaucracy, like Max Weber's "Bureaucracy", W. Taylor's " Scientific Management", Luther Gulick's "Notes on the Theory of Organization", "The Study of Administration" by Woodrow Wilson and some others also. But when I think about the real scenario of bureaucracy in Bangladesh, I don't think the written theories are enough to handle these situations. I have so many questions in my mind about bureaucracy, but I couldn't find answers in any of these theories. Now, I will describe I have that kind of feelings.

Actually, I don't have much personal experience about bureaucracy. So, I asked my elder brother about that and heard a story from him. My brother is a lawyer. One of his clients shared this story with my brother. The client is a very rich businessman. He has to pay a big amount of tax each year. He had an tax manager to take care of the tax related things. But last year, his former manager resigned for some reasons and the businessman appointed a new manager. The new manager didn't know that the tax of last year wasn't paid. He found it out lately. Now, the businessman has to pay two years' tax this year. But the fact is, the tax office sent notice to him to pay 16000000 taka for two years. It was unbelievable for him. After checking everything, the manager found out the real amount of tax should be around 1500000 taka for two years. But how could this happen? How could the amount be more than 10000000? So, the manager went to the income tax office and asked about it. The clerk said the officers often make this kind of situation on purpose, they make false case and put more and more tax on a simple thing to get money illegally if they have chance. The clerk also said that he could help the manager to make a deal with the higher officials about reducing the tax from 16000000 to 1500000 if he agreed to give extra money as bribe. The extra amount of money he said was 1000000!! The manager said it's too much. But the clerk said the money would be divided into all the staffs of the office according to their position, no one would take it alone. Finding no other way, the manager agreed to give the money, the clerk took him to the Deputy Commissioner of the income tax office, he took money to sign the documents for reducing the amount of tax. The job of that businessman was done smoothly after giving the bribe.

But isn't it a shocking situation? The illegal work and corruption has become the rules in this organization. All of the staffs in an office are practicing corruption together. No one is out of it. Corruption has become so normal and regular. Isn't it a bureaucratic failure? I think it is. It is a failure of running a proper administration. But what could be the solution to get rid of this problem? Should we just cope up with it? Should we let the bureaucratic organizations be ruled by corruption like this? I know I didn't acquire enough knowledge about bureaucracy still now, but I read some important theories, I couldn't find any solution of the failure of bureaucracy in any of that theories. It made me disappointed. The articles I have read, were just about ideal bureaucracy, it's characteristics, activities, and sometimes it's problems. But there was nothing about the solution of the problems. In that income tax office, there is a hierarchy, specific jurisdiction, expert workers, rules, practice of documenting things as Max Weber said as necessary for an ideal bureaucratic system. But it is of no use here, it is really a bad organization. This office has the system of division of labour, span of control, coordination of work, unity of command as Luther Gulick said. But still there is a great failure to run the system in a proper way. I can say the proposal of W. Taylor's scientific management is also present in the income tax office. The Staffs are formally selected, well trained,they use technology and there is a supervisor to supervise all the activities. But still it's not working well. So, what is the application of the significant theories in this situation? None of the scholars told about the solution if their proposals fail. We are well aware of the situation of red tape and corruption in bureaucracy, but the theories can't solve these problems. So, I sometimes think, why should we read the theories if these can't work in reality? I admit that we are learning the basic things of bureaucracy, but these are not enough. We should learn and focus more on the solution of the existing and rising problems of bureaucracy along with the basic rules regulations of bureaucracy. I don't know that whether I am right or wrong. It's just my own realization and thoughts as a student of Public Administration.