In every society, be it primitive or most modern, there are required some sort of regulations and implementation of to keep the society under order. Regulations are formulated and implemented by some sort of mechanisms called government. Till today, government is an indispensable mechanism; in spite of having widespread criticisms, mankind cannot do away with it. The functioning of government is called governance. In every society there is government and governance in any form.

Government functions with the help of an all-pervasive mechanism called bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is often perceived to be corrupt and inefficient. In Bangladesh, it is more so. For the fifth consecutive year, Bangladesh has topped the list of corrupt countries of the world. Corruption has become endemic and synonymous to bureaucracy. In many countries of the world bureaucracy has undergone drastic changes. It has been made service-oriented and people-friendly. But in our country, bureaucracy has not yet been able to shed off a part of its vices. There must be a way out. Newly developed ideas in the field need to be adopted or new ideas need to be formed, adopted and implemented for bringing reforms and changes in bureaucracy that can ensure good governance leading to much-sought-after social progress.

Behind every consequence there lie causes. There is an argument that public servants in Bangladesh are poorly paid. Government of Bangladesh does not have financial ability to provide the public servants reasonable pay. So, many of them become compelled to resort to corruption to meet their needs. Public servants cannot run decent life with poor pay. Such state of affairs is the root cause of corruption and inefficiency in our bureaucracy. Providing the civil servants reasonable pay with significant raise in domestic resource mobilisation is a near impossibility; resources from donors have become scarce and costly. But without providing reasonable pay to the public servants, good services cannot be expected from them. Only good pay, motivation and difficult environment for corruption can ensure good governance in Bangladesh. Good pay stands in the fore. The best alternative to pay the public servants reasonable remuneration appears to be partial formalisation of informal income.

Measures so far to stop the practice of underhand financial transactions have not been effective. It is better needs to root out the cause rather than going for a symptomatic treatment. With prevailing practice of corruption, a portion of service-takers are getting it at high cost but majority of them remain unserveda stark manifestation of bad governance. That informal financial transactions are being conductedit is in everybody's knowledgeit cannot be stopped but the resultant consequence is that overwhelming majority of the clients are deprived of the services they deserve from the public servants. Under these circumstances, if a portion of the informal income is formalised and consequently if all the clients get proper services, it stands in the benefit of all. Then, why not going for the option of partial formalisation of informal income when we do not have any feasible alternative around?

If informal income is partially formalised, people will require paying less than they would have otherwise paid but they will receive more services. The public servants will be glad to provide more services because they will receive much more income in fair way than they would have received previously, as salary. This receipt may not be equal to the previous total receipt in fair and unfair way, yet they will be pleased because the receipt is fair, involving no hassle and nuisance and above all risk. Without making an end to the harsh reality of poor payment, any measure to curb corruption and bring good governance in Bangladesh is destined to be ineffective, if not total failure, causing more problems other than solving them, as evident from the persistence of corruption in spite of undertaking repeated administrative reform programmes. If a portion of the underhand financial transactions is legalised and adoption of unfair means by the public servants is made difficult, tremendous positive results shall be reflected in governance. Good governance is the key to ensure a happy and prosperous society.

With good payment to the civil servants adoption of unfair means by them need to be made difficult. There are several categories of civil servants. Some civil servants think that they will work hard and if they get reasonable pay in return they will not resort to any unfair means, thus they will have a trouble-free life. There are some civil servants who want to make money desperately to spend in social activities or in running elections to build political career. The working environment needs to be reshaped in the manner where such eccentric intentions cannot thrive. Politics is for the politicians and social activities are for the philanthropists. A civil servant trying to become a politician or a philanthropist should not be there. Because in his workplace rather abusing his authority he would be doing favour to someone who does not deserve a favour and disfavour to someone who deserves a favour or at least justice. If payment is good a large number of civil servants who resort to corruption out of sheer need will give up corruption and opt for a trouble-free life. They will be required to be motivated to provide best of services to the clients. Thus, a good corporate culture can be developed. The small portion of the civil servants desirous of even doing corruption for accumulating lots of money will find it difficult to do it in new working environment and therefore, they will either give up their ambition or give up the service both stand positive for bringing good governance in the country.

The option of partial formalisation of informal income in bureaucracy needs to be given serious thought to bring changes in governance finding no other feasible alternative around to significantly raise the pay of the public servants. It is better that in an office a chief starts this practice motivating his subordinates. He will require finding out the points in his office where there are informal transactions. He will require devising strategies to partially legalize it. It would be difficult in our culture that the highest policy makers are convinced and rules and regulations are framed to start the process. Moreover, this practice will require different strategies in different offices because the sources and flow of informal income varies from one office to another. Therefore, it would rather require task-based, instant managerial techniques rather than pre-formulated rules and regulations. Changes need to be initiated from somewhere to rebuild the society, as we want.

Md Abdur Rouf is pursuing his PhD at Department of Government and Politics, Jahangirnagar University.