The Constitution of Bangladesh provides most of the essential elements of good governance and their implement can ensure the functions properly. Yet it is not practiced fully in developing right policies, environment, institutions, capacity and practice of good governance. Nowadays it constitutes a major challenge for Bangladesh. Its underperformance is evident in many areas of national life. Governance and development have close proximity in the context of Bangladesh as the country has attained a tremendous growth rate over the last few years while the country’s governance is still featured by corruption, malpractice and lack of rule of law. Bangladesh is now in the list of least developed countries of the world and has huge success on economic as well as social development. The GDP growth rate has remained over 6 percent in the last consecutive years despite of political turmoil and other prevailing problems. Bangladesh has also achieved the title of ‘the land of impossible attainments’ globally as the country has attained the objectives set under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) because of poverty alleviation. Other than this, government is working on the production of more megawatt power supply to ensure uninterrupted supply of power both to the industry and household levels. Bangladesh has also attained success in social sectors like economic sectors. For example, the country is playing significant roles in general and female education, child health and fertility etc.
Therefore, it is clear that Bangladesh is doing quite well in development sector. But it is a matter of query that to what extent good governance is facilitating in the process of development in the country. International organizations like the World Bank, UNDP etc. has set some characteristics to identify the state of good governance in a country. The condition of good governance in Bangladesh according to the criteria of the World Bank are discussed in the following:
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Voice and Accountability
Voice and accountability are the perception of the extent to which a country’s citizen are able to participate in selecting their government as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association and a free media. Bangladesh is a democratic country and people select their representatives by direct election and participate in the formation of government. According to the Constitution of Bangladesh, article 39(1) guarantees the freedom of thought and conscience, article 39(2) (a) protects the freedom of speech and expression of every citizen, while freedom of the press is assured under article 39(2) (b). But the percentile rank of Bangladesh according to worldwide governance indicator is decreasing every year. Here in percentile rank among other countries, 0 corresponds to the lowest rank and 100 corresponds to the highest rank among the other countries. In this, Bangladesh ranked 38.39 in the year 2009 which demotivated to 27.09 in 2019 which is a matter of concern for ensuring good governance.
Political Stability and Absence of Violence
Terrorism indicates the threat of state soup, political instability or the violence happen because of politics, political turmoil etc. It may include terror attacks, hartal, political unrest situation etc. The amount of political stability and absence of violence terrorism is increasing day by day according to the report of worldwide governance indicators. In the year 2009 Bangladesh’s percentile rank was 9 which increased to 15.24 in the span of 10 years.
Government and Effectiveness
This includes the idea of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies. Bangladesh’s government has done quite well in ensuring the transparency and accountability of the decision-making process. Particularly, the introduction of Right to Information (RTI) has created scope for the general public to hold government accountable for their actions. The government and its effectiveness are seeming to remain almost constant from the year 2009 to 2019 which was ranked 24.00 in the year 2009 and it became 23.56 in 2019 with up and down in between years.
Regulatory Quality
Regulatory qualities indicate the perceptions of the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development. The percentile rank of Bangladesh in 2009 was 21.53 which was decreased to 15.38 by the year 2019 which indicates that the government is losing the ability to formulate and implement sound polices and regulations.
Rule of Law
“Rule of law captures perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence” (The World Bank). Rule of law in Bangladesh includes independence of judiciary, separation of power, the good willingness of government, separation of power etc. Article 22 of the Constitution of Bangladesh provides that “the State shall ensure the separation of the judiciary from the executive organs of the State”, whereas article 94(4) of the Constitution states that “the chief justice and the other judges of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh shall be independent in the exercise of their judicial functions”. According to the worldwide governance indicators, the percentile rank in the year 2019 was 27.88 which as 24.17 in 2009 which means this criterion has improved with the increasing year.
Control of Corruption
Control of corruption is counted as to what extent public power is used for personal gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as 'capture' of the state by elites and private interests. The pervasive corruption at levels of governance hinders the establishment of good governance in Bangladesh. The percentile rank of the country in the year 2019 is 16.35 according to the worldwide governance indicators.
Conclusion
The above six criteria indicate the condition of good governance prevailing in Bangladesh. It is understood from the above discussion that good governance is yet to take a formal shape in the country in spite of some features existing in Bangladesh. Good governance is an umbrella and elusive concept and includes a variety of factors which are inter-related to each other. The current state of governance of Bangladesh is poor as almost all the aspects of good governance are severely absent in the country. And the country is facing different challenges in the path of democracy or good governance like institutionalized political parties, lack of accountability and transparency, lack of rule of law, inefficient leadership, ineffective political institutions, rampant corruption and so on.
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