Weak regulatory system

The judiciary is a visible victim of the law's delay. Law-making is a slow process in the developing countries, where the politicians want instant, visible demonstrations for immediate public consumption. The foreground becomes more important than the background, with the result that groundwork, foundations, and base activities get neglected. Looking at the multistoried buildings coming up in the metropolis and other major cities, the prospect of the coming collapse of the inadequate infrastructure is ominous.

The political rulers are too busy with political rehabilitation work (maintenance and oiling of rusty mechanisms), and can hardly spare sufficient time to the posts they hold in the government and other local bodies. A minister talks more about politics than about the bustling activities in his ministry. This negligence indirectly strengthens the indolent civil service, and the politicians become too much dependent upon them; resulting in poor disciplinary actions, and low efficiency of the civil service (political service is rendered first, and the routine activities can wait). The vicious cycle continues with successive regimes.

There are bottomless-basket areas also in governance and administration. The political culture, it appears, never had any bottom at all! Due to poor leadership, politics is now also topless. The question arises what to do with inert bodies. One is reminded of the polythene shopping bags, which are clogging up almost everything. A political poser: Pay attention to the message or the medium?

The situation in Dhaka is typical, if not worse, with the added mentality that the opposition is supposed to have no status or business, either in the society, or inside the parliament. This feudal mentality has its background in the emerging nations. Those who have not seen or used power at different levels, are very sensitive towards it, and tend to look at it subjectively. Newcomers to seats of power (however humble) are extra sensitive, as during the honeymoon period. What is the difference between a novice driver and an expert automobile driver? the passenger is not aware of the braking and the change of gears. How long it will take our politics to reach that stage?

The LDCs lose a lot of the nation's time adjusting to changing situations in the society. Thus the priorities get distorted, and systems losses increase in all sectors. Ad hoc administrative decisions become the rule of the day, relegating the status of foresight, judgement, and critical reviews. After some time, the routines get upset, and the politicians hassle the bureaucracy with a lot of file work. Do your own work, and there will be no complaints.

It is taxing to run routine systems and development projects, as the chaos level is high all around in the official and political circles, even for routine processing. Corruption and under the table and back-door activities accentuate the already uncontrollable situation. The problem is not the capital sector, but operations and maintenance. The last two responsibilities cannot be based on common sense and general knowledge. Where is the time and resources to plan the training and orientation programmes?

The gagged media is rather helpless, specially the print media, due to illiteracy and inaccessibility of the rural readers. The latter depend on audio-visual data, easily provided by the electronic media of radio and television (and now satellite television channels via the flourishing local cable networks). Therefore broadcasting continues to be gagged by the successive regimes, as an exclusive medium of government propaganda.

Elections provide a new management within the above scenario. How to change the scenario?