Governance failure main obstacle to recovery
The CPD's "Bangladesh Business Environment 2021, Findings from Entrepreneurs' Perception Survey" study on the challenges of post-pandemic business recovery has identified three barriers as key challenges. I agree with the report.
However, one issue that did not come up in their research was "governance failure". Governance failure is the main obstacle to a post-pandemic recovery. What I think is that the failure of our electoral system means that we, the citizens, cannot play a role in electing the people's representatives because there is no electoral system.
Therefore, those who are coming to Parliament as people's representatives have no responsibility towards the people. If there was accountability, then corruption would not be like that.
Not only in the case for members of parliament, but the people also are not able to play a role in the election of the people's representatives of local governments. Corruption is rampant due to lack of accountability.
Our state is made up of different organs. The bureaucrats are not living on an isolated island. You look at universities, you see more different organs and incompetence is everywhere. I will not say that it is not present in the bureaucracy.
Mainly responsible for the incompetent bureaucracy is the massive deficiency in our education system. Educational institutions do not provide quality education. Their value is constantly going down. So I do not disagree with the identification of bureaucracy in the CPD research.
A few days ago, I saw in a study that every year 5 to 6 million US dollars are spent for bringing skilled manpower from India and Sri Lanka to Bangladesh. That means incompetence is everywhere.
When a culture of impunity prevails, corruption cannot be stopped.
TBS Senior Reporter Rezaul Karim spoke to Ali Imam Majumder over the phone.
