Local governance at the grassroots in Bangladesh: Transforming the rhetoric into reality

Bangladesh has been known to be one of the most centralized countries in the world. Earlier pieces of literature have highlighted how grassroots-level governance of the country, i.e. Union Parishads (UPs)grossly suffer from limited manpower and resources, ineffective monitoring, lack of accountability and transparency, political manipulation, and non-cooperation from Upazila based bureaucracy. Interestingly though, recently UPs are gradually transforming from traditional and largely unresponsive local government institutions to increasingly participatory and proactive local government institutions. What has led to this miraculous change? This study using qualitative tools of social research drawing information from secondary sources found that strong policy commitments of government for strengthening local governance and translation of those into reality through continuous support from the development partners (both bilateral and multilateral ones) have helped to gradually transform UPs into vibrant, responsive, pro-people, inclusive and participative local government body. The process was further facilitated by the supplementary efforts of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Nevertheless, collaborative initiatives would further be needed to consolidate the gains which have been achieved so far for strengthening grassroots level governance in Bangladesh.