Will a people-oriented bureaucracy and quality public service delivery remain elusive still?

Bangladesh is currently at a critical juncture, with a series of events sparked by the regime change in early August 2024 leading to a new general election scheduled for February 12, 2026. Most of the registered political parties, except the previous ruling party and the 14-party alliance, are now busy with electoral procedures in different phases. 

Gradually, before the elections, all of these parties, especially the major ones, will publish electoral manifestos pledging various issues, accommodating public demands and aspirations. One of these demands and aspirations is naturally the people-oriented civil service. Whenever political power changes hands, whether it is constitutional or unconstitutional, this expectation of a people-oriented civil service does not wither away. Rather, it becomes stronger.

In establishing a people-oriented bureaucracy, many perceive digitization as a solution to fight bureaucratic inefficiency, red-tape, corruption and abuses of power. In the past regime, digitization was considered part of a political vision, and the bureaucracy was under pressure to embrace the idea of making the government activities digitized and ensuring online public service delivery, thereby reducing delays, discretion, and corruption in government offices and reducing the dependence on middlemen. Even then, the digitization process lacked coherence. Instead, the offline mode, accommodating the middlemen, was in action actively, bypassing the online one. 

Illustration: TBS

Interestingly, both civil servants and policymakers were aware of this issue, yet they have not taken significant steps to address it. For instance, the payment of land development tax was made online, which forced citizens to create online accounts using their personal cell phone numbers. However, a significant number of citizens, especially in rural areas, registered their accounts through the middlemen using their cell phone numbers and paying an extra fee for all registration and payment-related tasks.

To identify the way out to accommodate public demands and aspirations, the interim government, formed on August 8, 2024, established eleven reform commissions, including the Public Administration Reform (PAR) Commission, in late 2024. The PAR Commission submitted its report, containing more than 200 recommendations under fourteen categories, on February 5, 2025. Now, another February is approaching, and according to a report of a national daily (The Business Standard, December 24, 2025), the progress is still minimal. 

The report also highlights that the government actions on some occasions are directly contradictory to the key recommendations of the commission. Putting aside all key structural reforms, including recommendations against Officer on Special Duty (OSD) status without specific reasons and the elimination of the provision for compulsory retirement after 25 years of service, the government, so far, has implemented the recommendation to stop police verification for issuing passports.

As of December 2025, approximately 300 officials, including 14 secretaries, have been put on OSD, and around 150 officials have been sent on compulsory retirement, including a single instance involving nine secretaries. Furthermore, a record number of contractual appointments to senior and regular secretarial positions have been awarded, and currently, 20 out of 73 secretaries are on contract (TBS, December 24, 2025). 

Thus, it seems that the interim government, which is also party-neutral, could not make any significant headway toward materializing the recommendations of the commission in spite of public expectations.

However, the past history of reform initiatives could provide a clue to such a gloomy scenario. Like the CSP Association in the erstwhile Pakistan era, members of the civil service, especially the members of the administration cadre, put up severe challenges to all the reform initiatives from time to time.

Furthermore, in different regimes, the political scenario gave them the necessary leverage to diffuse political initiatives, as the ruling party relied on the support of the civil service, particularly the administration cadre, to manage the state machinery. Such leverage established the civil service, especially the administration cadre, as the dominant actor in running the state along with the ruling party.

This dominance reached a new height during the Covid-19 pandemic when the administration cadre was used to manage relief operations at subnational and national levels. 

They also utilized it to guarantee the administration cadre's exclusive rights to promotions and postings within the civil service. Over the past decade, the police cadre has become just as dominant as the administration cadre. Given this, a reform initiative in public administration does not present a rosy, optimistic picture. Rather, without strong political commitment and consistent public support, it is very difficult to implement reform initiatives and more difficult to sustain those initiatives, if implemented.

Since August-September 2024, all the local government institutions have been operated by government-imposed administrators comprised of divisional commissioners, deputy commissioners, upazila nirbahi officers, assistant commissioners (land) and other district and upazila-level officials. These officers are carrying out their duties on top of their existing responsibilities. 

As the public service delivery in Bangladesh rests substantially on local government institutions, the absence of elected representatives on one hand and the burden of additional charges on the government officials on the other hand have stalled the public service delivery momentously. Thus, the expectation of the delegation form of decentralization, if not devolution, is a far cry currently as a reform strategy.

In this context, it is quite appropriate to inquire whether a political government can fulfill these expectations when a party-neutral government encounters significant difficulties. Regrettably, the response is not at all straightforward. The forthcoming February election and the assumption of power by an elected government in no way guarantee the development of a people-centered bureaucracy or the formalization of democratic norms and values. These goals cannot be achieved overnight.

For establishing a people-oriented bureaucracy, the development of an unbiased mechanism, which ensures accountability and transparency in government functioning and civil service management, can be a starter. At the same time, the practice of democratic values and norms by the political parties within their respective parties at all levels can only guarantee the practice of democracy in a country.

As the election is less than a month away, it is highly unlikely to avail these before the election. Rather, we can pray and hope that the elected political leadership will take these public demands and aspirations into strong consideration and create an atmosphere for achieving them within their term.

Dr Sadik Hasan, Professor of Public Administration, University of Dhaka. Sketch: TBS