Democratisation of Upazila parishad and its impact on responsiveness and accountability: Myths versus realities

The study explores whether a democratic Upazila Parishad 3 enhances its responsiveness and accountability to the people. In an ideal condition, the Parishad is likely to act in safeguarding and enhancing these two good governance principles. Since a representative local government enjoys significant devolutionary authority, it tends to have the capacity to reduce bureaucratic hierarchy in decision making and implementation of programs and projects. It also emphasises on bureaucratic accountability to elected representatives and, in turn, ensures the accountability of elected representatives to their constituents. The study has found that Parishads in Bangladesh with democratically elected representatives have somewhat failed to enhance their responsiveness and accountability to the people. A number of factors seem to have contributed to this failure which include the presence of a large number of rules and regulations imposed by the central government, inadequate local resources available to the Parishad, loyalty of the civil servants to the central authority rather than to the elected Parishad, hidden agenda of the government to consolidate regime, lack of skills and knowledge of elected representatives, corruption, domination of local elites in decision making process, and provision of ex-officio membership of the Union Parishad 4 Chairmen. On the other hand, weak bureaucratic accountability because of dual control of the civil servants and lack of active mechanism for political accountability for elected representative due to the absence of democracy or democratic practices at the national level contributed to the poor accountability of the Parishad. The control from the Ministry of Local Government and the recently implemented provision of mandatory advisory role of the members of the parliament (MPs) have complicated the scenario even further.