Administrative Decentralization and People’s Participation

Bangladesh is known for its political unrest, corruption, poverty, malnutrition, low per capita income, high population growth rate, unemployment and underdevelopment still after four decades of self rule and experimentations with a variety of development policies and a series of five year plans. Bangladesh has a long history of decentralization and people’s participation. Since, the independence of Bangladesh all of the governments took reformatory initiatives for administrative decentralization and ensuring people’s participation but an effective participation system has not been institutionalized till today. It is widely argued that decentralization ensures people’s participation, promotes political education and training, equal and efficient distribution of resources, trustworthy relationship among various actors of central and local governance and enhances responsiveness of the central government for citizen’s demands and priorities. It has been widely accepted that poor decentralization system and week people’s participation have constituted significant constraints on administrative, economic and political development since the independence of Bangladesh.