Unbridled Horses : Is it unconsciousness or recklessness?
Is Jurisdiction a myth?
Scenario — 01 :
Two and half months back , I was in our campus bus , on the way to University at 6:45 AM . The route through which our bus runs, is narrow enough to cross two buses at a time. I just fallen asleep when someone threw a handful sand towards me through the window of the bus from a truck of a renowned Cement Company which was passing through us . I was literally shocked as there was a hue and cry inside the bus as most of the students near the windows were victimized . Some of our seniors wanted to get down but the driver stopped them saying , ‘’ They don’t want us to use this route. They’re reckless . Don’t go . “ This was not the first day for our bus to experience such so we talked about their mischievous activities with the administration of our University who are in charge of dealing with transports . They suggested us to talk with our district level officers . I personally shared this event with one of my familiar who runs ‘ Mobile Court ‘ under Upazila . He told me about one of his experience which was like , “ They (Cement Company) did not let us enter into their area for operating a mobile court even if we were from administration . We just got orders via telephone and had to come back .You can not imagine how powerful these groups are . I don’t think there is any jurisdiction to make them accountable . They are floundered by political actors “.
He just suggested me as a University going student that we should change our route if possible . Hearing him , I felt like this was due to the politicization of bureaucracy and the losing of discretionary power within the bureaucracy which threw them at a position of survival where a particular organisation is being powerful over bureaucrats due to political legacy.
Scenario — 02 :
Last week , there was a walkout of 48 hours called by Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation where they postulated Eight Points . Three of whom were -
1.Road accidents have to be bailable.
2.They (the Federation) want to have driving
licences with educational qualifications of passing fifth standard.
3.They claimed for abolishing amercement systems for road accidents.
The Worker Federation not just stroke, they have harassed school going girls , applied lubricant to the drivers who were driving cars then and vandalised a lot of cars and others . I was literally shocked how a Worker Federation can dare to constipate the entire country through transportation discontinuance!
From a deeper insight , there is no doubt that drivers of buses , trucks and other vehicles in our country are severely reckless and impetuous . They even aren’t bothered about their own lives . Again , I have known and experienced that people need to face some shorts of constraints to hold a strike or gathering . But how the Workers Federation managed to do such things for 48 hours? Whereas during student movements like ‘Reformation of Quota ‘, ‘Safe Road Movement ‘ students had to bear a lot of consequences and students were stumbled and even faltered by Police and other security forces. I focused on newspapers to overlook whether any single driver was arrested or not whereas a child died in Ambulance owing to their redundancies.
Why? Is this because — they have strong political legacy? This is quite uneasier for me to understand like how can our Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan is running at a time two different institutions which contradicts one another in question of interest ! In one hand , he is the incumbent minister of Shipping Ministry whose goal is to satisfy citizens and supposed to strive for continuous improvement . On the other, he is the leader of Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation which is created with the intention to preserve the interest of these classes .
Our transportation sector has almost been privatized as more than 95 % buses running in Dhaka are privately owned ( source : 19 April, 2017, Prothom Alo) . Many of us including me before studying different theories in Public Administration course used to recriminated Privatization for such rampancies and recklessness . But after studying the term ‘ New Public Management ‘ I do find answers of unanswered questions which were answerable .
New Public Management argues for shifting services toward privatization , enhancing automation especially information and communication technologies , emphasises on treating service users as ‘ Customers ‘. Our administrations probably tried to implement New Public Management in transportation sector . But according to our studies , NPM has emphasised highly on government to play a significant role in the arena of guardianship , exhorting, adjudging , castigating and thereby ensuring efficient services by monitoring private organisations . This is where we failed — as government fall to the ground to play this role.
I am going to illustrate this inadequate failure of government through ‘ Iron Triangle ‘.
Which is I think relatable with both of the scenarios because in an Iron Triangle — there are three actors — Politicians , Big Business Corporations and Bureaucracy which mutually benefits one another . Again , as Bangladesh upholds the characteristics of a ‘ Feckless Pluralistic ‘ country , the big corporate companies and businessmen matters in case of helping political actors with resources and funding which let the political actors to broaden their loyalist groups . At the same time , the more the businessmen can do according to their will like making profits illegally , tyranny of powers and making citizen fool with worsened servitium without any jurisdictions , the more businessemen will be eager to keep partnership with the incumbent where none of these two care about citizens .
Furthermore ,we have studied that for being succeed in implementing New Public Management , we do need an Ideal Weberian Bureaucracy , which should have characteristics like impersonality , formal preserving of official records for future references , coordination of efforts by individual members in the organisation are needed . We couldn’t fulfil these recommendations of NPM as our accountability mechanism do not necessarily work .
I think , these are the reasons which made the experiment of implementing New Public Management to be failed in Bangladesh . But I am still in dilemma to conclude , whether the government has failed to succeed in implementing or the lack of institutional characteristics have paved the way to government failure in implementing New Public Management in Bangladesh.
