We feel sometimes that we have lack of good governance in various sectors, such as bureaucracy or local government. The key points of good governance are transparency and accountability. But have we ever thought about the internal dynamism and good governance in the development sectors?

We have had little chance to think about them, because we assumed they were supposed to be harbingers of producing good governance practices. We are always talking about or writing about the poor governance of various governmental departments, such as police, customs, taxation, etc.

But on the other hand, if we look at the development arena, there is a serious lack of transparency and accountability. Ironically, development organisations and agencies are advocating for restoring good governance practices, otherwise corruption will not be eliminated. Interesting to say, they are even not at all transparent when it comes to recruiting employees within their own organisations.

Some international renowned development organisation has ever look back for their lack of transparency within the organization mechanism. Example, one of the senior official of an organization sometimes does not know what is happening presently on his top brass. The top brass even not interested or share the dissemination process at all. If we really look at the internal mechanism of such organization the situation is really horrible there. The working environment is so dirty and official language sometimes has crossed the limit. But due to unemployment we are sublime on the system and we ever think to raise our voices against the ill motives. Moreover, we are used to it due to maintain our so-called social status. Some of us are really busy for fettering the outsiders. This is a very grimming picture in our development sectors. The situation of national and local NGOs is alarming. The senior officials are very used to castigating the subordinate.

In this degrading situation in the development official's practices, we should think of alternatives. Otherwise we will never remove our colonial practices. We ever could be thinking of our independent identity. We must remove our fettering attitudes towards development partners. We never indulge ourselves within the dirty practices at all. Charity begins at home. We always have to think about the proverb. When development organisations and agencies advocate for good governance, but we do not maintain such within ourselves, that is very self-contra-dictory. The same problems exist in the government sectors as well. People seek the help of NGOs to relieve their miseries when they are refused justice from the government mechanism. We should at least maintain these areas for restoring people's rights. If we fail to do this, the nation will not forgive us in the long run. People will then also treat the development establishment as a hypocritical one.

Finally, we should at least maintain our own identity for using our best practices within our own periphery. To maintain transparency and accountability is obviously an urgent matter for all of us.

Md. Azmal Hossain is a development activist.