Outlook: Meeting Governance Challenges

First, we summarize some of the key observations. The Bangladesh experiences on governance performance reveal mixed results as outlined throughout the sections. The quality of political governance, institutional and ICT dimensions are found to remain at a low level. Per capita income is positively related to governance dimensions. Bangladesh has some success in political governance due to holding three successive national elections under caretaker government, presence of an active civil society and assertive position of Supreme Court. Alongside this many governance failures are observed, mainly due to imperfect competition and non-democratic intervention in political markets, as well as within political industry, which are not functioning in a reasonable degree of order. Governance failure contributes to high tax evasion and poor recovery of nonperforming loans, at present 25 per cent of total loans. Poor ADP utilization is partly due to implementation failure, which is related to some extent with governance failures, among other reasons. The institutional problems result in corruption and poor quality of public service delivery such as education, health, issuance of passport and infrastructure (port for example).

Outlook: Political Governance

The main barriers that have emerged to hinder development in political governance are to be removed to facilitate to increase in political accountability. Political governance may be developed through a process of debate and consultation.

a. Eliminate non-democratic intervention in the political markets to achieve good national governance:

Rules of the game must be allowed to operate in political institutions. Bureaucracy cannot be politicized. Due to hyper-partisanship, there are persistent conflicts and animosity between main parties AL and BNP. Politics of confrontation and nondemocratic interventions are to be reduced in a process of consultation. Radical Islamic Party which emerged with coordinated bomb blasts throughout the country in 2005 may be brought to justice and subsequently to normal political activity.

b. Political accountability may be increased through:

• Effective Parliamentary System: The parliament can not be paralyzed; and be made to play effective control over administration.
• Office of the Ombudsman: The Ombudsman Act is to be enforced to play an important role for ensuring political governance.
• Independent Anti-corruption Commission: Anti-corruption commission set up be the government over more than a year is to be allowed to function. This should not be just to show international organizations.
• Effective media to perform vigilance functions: Distribution of government advertisements to the media should not be used to control media.

c. To mitigate political corruption, it is suggested to introduce allocations in the national budget to reduce dependence on private financiers, and to support democratic politics (Sobhan 2004). Then it would not be necessary to correct financing irregularities in public procurement bidding (source of political corruption).

Outlook: Institutional Dimension

1. The main institutional weakness relates to poor quality of public service delivery, which generates bureaucratic corruption. Institutions lack resources to meet growing demand. Within the resource constraint, the institutions can be made more effective for efficient use of resources. In this context, a few sectors may be highlighted.
2. Independence of judiciary at all levels must be established: Law interpretation and enforcement should not be subject to government.
3. Privatization versus affordability for the poor of public service delivery: The bureaucratic corruption may be privatized through institutionalization of corruption. The poor are taking the service at a higher price. Private health care service has emerged in response to growing demand. There are problems of effective regulatory system on quality control, affordability and accountability in private health care service. In hospitals, some units may be given to the private sector on experimental basis.
4. Primary health care service may be kept under government control. Its service may be improved involving local representatives in the management. Partnership between government and NGO with encouragement from international organizations such as UNICEF and WHO have made possible reductions in infant mortality and success in child immunization program, but the pace of improvement has slowed down, and without improvement in institutional governance dimension, there would be problems in the provision of quality health service.
5. In ports, wider participation of the private sector for development and operation, along with institutional/organizational reforms in the ports, may improve efficiency.
6. Restructuring management of the primary schools to include the local people, may help to improve quality education in primary education, and to increase further enrollment by targeting poor students under stipend scheme. Primary education stipend scheme provides cash assistance to poor families if they send their children to primary school.
7. Increasing the number of issuing authorities (creating competition in the market) to issue passport may reduce open corruption.
8. It may be recalled that the impact of public institutions dimension has much greater effect on per capita income and consequently on social development indicators. Emphasis needs to be given to improvement of public institutions, which may lead to improvement in other governance dimensions as they are inter-related.

Outlook: Prioritization of Governance Dimensions

Governance issues provide a common link to all governance dimensions. Good political governance leads to better public institutions and improvements in technology dimensions. It is wise to take actions on all three fronts to realize the synergy. It is important to recognize that there are macro and micro level issues in each of the governance dimensions. There may be trade-offs of priorities among distinct governance actors. Politicians might give priority to those governance concerns as to increase satisfaction among their supporters; donors to efficient management and use of public resources; bureaucrats may favor technocratic solutions to those concerns which require greater social engagement; investors to those that eliminate troublesome government bureaucracies and improved security of their property; and poor people to the availability of public services and their personal security.

In our study, the effect of public institutions on the economy is greater. When the question of prioritization of governance dimensions comes, emphasis is to be given on improvement of public institutions. Judicial independence at all levels may be given first priority followed by effective parliamentary system, and cooperation and dialogue between two main political parties. Then it might be possible to resolve trade-offs to a great extent, among the different actors of governance.

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