Ambiguity in Role Definition plus Conflicting Interests between Bureaucrats and Elected Officials Render the Local Government Dysfunctional - A Study on Upazila Parishad

This study scrutinises the nature of relationship between the bureaucrats and politicians in Bangladesh and incongruence in their interests and attitudes at the Upazila Parishad (UZP)¹ level. For this purpose, four UZPs under four scattered districts have been selected, representing the country. The present UZP law is not fully fool-proof to demarcate the role and causal relationship between the two; if the overlap is intentional, then conflict is inevitable. Alternatively, the overlap can be systemic and both the factors may be independent variables, contributing to the end result to the extent of the weighted average of the factors. In either case, conflict, instead of cooperation, resulting in dysfunctionality is the inevitable result. The present study assumes a liner relationship like Y = αA+γB, where Y is the end result (dysfunctionality); A stands for extent of fuzziness in role demarcation, intentional or otherwise; B is that of conflict in interest; and α and γ stand for the correlation coefficient between the two parameters which can only be found out from empirical observations and verification of the strength of association from statistical methods like chi square and other tests indicative of the degree of association. The present study, however, is limited to consideration of the two parameters and not of the co-efficient to discern points of commonality, if any, between the two domains so that, hopefully, a working relationship at UZP can be arrived at.