Provenance of administrative reforms

Dr. Saadat Husain

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Shafiq Alam

THE area now comprising Bangladesh was a province of Pakistan. Its administration was run by the provincial government of East Pakistan. With the creation of Bangladesh as a sovereign nation state in 1971 the provincial government had perforce to be replaced by the national government. Administrative reforms were inescapable. Structures of the state organs also needed to be promptly re-crafted in the kaleidoscopically changing circumstances. Members elected to national assembly and the provincial assembly were merged together to form the constituent assembly of Bangladesh. The Supreme Court of the country was established anew. Changes in the legislative area and judiciary will not be discussed in this screed, which will be confined to administrative reforms only.

Four categories of reforms were discernible in the nascent government: philosophical direction, organisational structure, personnel management and work method. Reforms permeated other areas of administration; their impact was limited. The discussion therefore focuses on the four areas as identified above.

Philosophical direction: Bangladesh was created through a bloody war of liberation, actively and materially supported by neighbouring India. Socialist Russia played a crucial role in the international arena. Thousands of Bangladeshis participated in the war at the call of Bangabandhu. About three million people were killed, hundreds of women, children and innocent civilians were brutally tortured. The liberation movement generated by Bangabandhu had a strong socialistic overtone, apart from other basic principles such as democracy, secularism and nationalism. Government of India was also tilted towards socialism. The impact of socialistic stance was intensely felt in the public sector when the highest salary of the public sector employees was drastically brought down first to Tk.500/- per month and then to Tk.1,000/-per month in order to narrow the salary differentiation between the highest and the lowest grade employees. The salary has been revised upwards many times, the highest grade employees now draw a monthly salary of Tk.40,000/-per month. The ratio between the highest and the lowest salary is meticulously maintained below ten. A scintilla of socialism is still observed in the salary determination of public servants of the country. Trade unions and employee organisations cropped up in hundreds; they were very active and assertive, at times undermining the office discipline perniciously. The trend persists till today.

The other area where the wave of socialism struck hard was the industrial sector where large industries mostly abandoned by the Pakistani citizens were nationalised. Private entrepreneurs got discouraged. Attempts were made to generate surplus values through nationalised industries, without success. A strong Planning Commission was set up to guide the development programmes of the country. Resources were allocated through fiats rather than market signals. Organisations were developed and structured in keeping with the basic philosophical direction of the government. Agriculture and small business remained outside the purview of socialism.

Raj Anikat/Drik news

Organisational structure: Bangladesh opted for a unitary government with West Minster type of parliamentary democracy. This meant that the executive government was headed by the prime minister unlike the immediate past Pakistani system where the president was the executive head. Activities of the government were distributed among ministries headed by ministers 80-90 percent of whom were members of the parliament. Ministries were defined through allocation of business to the ministers. Central governments of Pakistan and India were taken as models in delineating the ministries and divisions.

Besides, a strong secretariat was created in the prime minister's office. New organograms were approved for all ministries and divisions to render them operationally viable. Some of the ministries and divisions were identified by their eponym, but most of them were completely new entities brought into being in the new environment. Some establishments of the central government were located in East Pakistan. They were merged with those of the provincial government with an appropriate moniker. The sub-divisional, district and the divisional set up by and large remained the same.

Marked changes were engendered in the management structure of the industrial sector. As mentioned earlier, most of the large industrial units were nationalised. New administrators, the nomenklatura, were appointed to run these units. About a dozen of sector corporations were created to act as the management agents of the government for the nationalised industries in corresponding sectors. High profile chairmen were appointed to head these sector corporations. A separate division styled the nationalised industries division (NID)was created to carry out ministerial responsibilities with respect to these industries. Most of these corporations still have a big presence in the governmental structure of the country. Resource allocation, price determination and distribution of products in these sectors were not functions of market forces; they were subject to command of the government including planning commission.

A sweeping reform with far reaching implications embraced the primary education sector of the country. All primary schools were nationalised. Primary school teachers became government servants and cost of running the schools would be met from government exchequer. Size of the government increased enormously. Government's commitment to basic education was clearly manifest through this measure. This was a popular move; there was no scope for reversal of the demarche by any government later on. There was, however, no change in the structure of the education ministry or directorate of education. The change came after about two decades.

But for the primary teachers size of the government was not big at this stage. Government was, however, concerned about the size, the structure and the compensation regime of the government. Soon after the first election under the new constitution government set up a pay and services commission with Prof. Muzaffar Ahmad chowdhury as its chairman. Stage was set to introduce reforms through formal outfit of the government.

Shawkat jamil

Personnel management: Swinging changes in personnel management followed liberation of the country. Manning the new ministries and organisations was a formidable task. Experienced public servants had to be collected for appointment as secretaries to government, chief executives of the directorates and autonomous bodies. Experienced and qualified persons were also necessary to fill in other senior positions of these organisations including ministries. Only four East Pakistanis worked as the secretaries to central government of Pakistan. They were either superannuated or stranded in Pakistan. Secretaries of the provincial government were mostly CSP (civil service of Pakistan) officers; they had the rank of deputy secretaries to the central government. Six deputy commissioners or former deputy commissioners were working with the Mujib Nagar government as secretaries and zonal officers. Four of them, all CSPs, assumed the position of secretaries in the Dhaka secretariat of the new government. The provincial secretaries also assumed the charge of secretaries, as if by default. A few senior CSP officers were serving as the heads of autonomous bodies located in East Pakistan.

Some of them were also made secretaries to the government. Some senior officers lost their jobs (known as three nought three) during Yahiya's martial law regime. They were reinstated in service and many of them were posted as secretaries. All the cadres were abolished. Civilian titles were extinct. Some of the central cadres were merged with the provincial cadres. Postings, promotion or mergers were done on an ad-hoc basis, as was reflected in the appointment orders of the government. Interestingly one new cadre styled industrial management service (IMS) was created to run the nationalized industries. Dozens of salary scales were prevalent during Pakistan time. They were squeezed into 20 national grades, with highest salary ultimately fixed at Tk.3,000/-per month. While the highest salary has substantially increased in the recent past the grades are continuing till today.

There was a paradigm shift in the recruitment system. Two public service commissions were established: one for recruitment of class gazetted officers, the other for nongazetted staffs. During pre-liberation time there was one public service commission for recruitment of gazetted officers only; clerical staffs were recruited by respective departments and directorates. Since cadres were abolished no nation wide competitive examination was held for recruitment young officers to civil service of the country. A special , abridged and semi formal examination was conducted by the PSC to recruit a few hundred class I officers from among young freedom fighters. The selected candidates were distributed among different ministries for appointment. The procedure of selection was substantively different from that followed in Pakistan or India, which had similar type of public service commissions. The selected officers were directly sent to duty stations without any formal training. Later on some of them were sent for short training to a few selected training institutions, that also not on a very systematic basis. Personnel management was not put on a robust foundation to begin with.

Work method: The government did not frame the rules of business immediately after the liberation. It is not clear if it could collect a copy of rules of business used by the central government of Pakistan. Customary traditions and the best known practices were supposedly applied by officials and ministers in the transaction of government business. It took more than three years for framing the rules of business of the government. Personal stature of the functionary, access to the chief executive and salesmanship determined the mode of transacting government business.

With the liberation of the country Dhaka became headquarter of the unitary government. Work environment drastically changed in the central secretariat and the directorates. Dhaka, particularly the secretariat, was the destination for urban and rural elites of the country who would flock there to get the final decision on the cases they were following. The decisions which were previously taken at Islamabad or Karachi were now taken in Dhaka and access to decision makers was now infinitely easier. Personal representation bolstered by lobbying through members of the constituent assembly (MCA), political heavy weights and prominent freedom fighters was the order of the day. Not only the secretariat but Dhaka itself too started being congested with the flow of people from all over the country. The unitary government in a developing country usually does not prefer to decentralise substantive power to the local authority. Bangladesh was not an exception. Centralisation discernible at this stage did not abate later on as well.

Decision-making in the government continued through movement of files. Communications were done through official memos, letters, circulars notifications etc. Political ministers were content with this system. Novelty was the language of the note. Though English was not barred, most of the functionaries wrote their notes in Bengali and it was encouraged. A new culture was being established in the process. Bengali language was taking firm roots in the governmental system. Decision-making through file movement ensured that political masters shared power with the subordinate functionary.

Concluding remarks: Bangladesh experienced almost all conceivable types of governments and also periods marked by absence of government. Many reforms engendered in the early days of Bangladesh were reversed or modified later on when power changed hands. Some of the reforms proved to be abiding; they did not abate over time. Compelling reforms or changes will follow technological, social and political development. So long as changes are for the better and the main focus is on the welfare of the people as a whole they are welcome. Such changes are not easy to come by. Only a change in the culture of change can usher in the desired changes.

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The author is Chairman, Bangladesh Public Service Commission.

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