Many complex factors -- such as rampant corruption and the undemocratic behaviour of politicians -- are responsible for the events leading to that fateful day on January 11 and they ought to be thoroughly analysed and clearly understood. However, another factor behind the collapse of the system appears to be that it lacked the necessary support structure for the democratic edifice created at the national level.

In the physical universe, for any structure to remain standing, a support system -- a set of pillars -- is required. Without such pillars it cannot just hang in the air. Similarly, a democratic edifice put in place through national elections cannot dangle in a vacuum -- it needs a support structure. It needs a foundation from the bottom up. That is what appears to have been missing in Bangladesh's experiment with democracy, making it unsustainable.

The democratic structure that was ushered in Bangladesh in 1990 consisted primarily of a parliament elected through a fairly free and fair elections and a cabinet -- the executive branch -- formed by the majority party.

Underneath was an elected Union Parishad, around a hundred Paurashavas and one city corporation. In between the elected local bodies and the elected national government existed a big vacuum due to the absence of elected Zila and Upazila Parishads.

Experience worldwide shows that democracy only at the top is not sustainable. You cannot hang a democracy between layers of autocracy. It must have a solid foundation. If the culture, values and practices of democracy are to be established, democracy must start with the people -- at the people's doorstep -- and go all the way to the top. Elected structures must be created from the grassroots all the way to the national level.

In the vacuum caused by the absence of any democratic structure, bureaucrats operated at the District and Upazila levels with no democratic accountability -- accountability to elected representatives. This caused representative democracy to loose its representative character and much of its true meaning. In fact, with no elected bodies at the Zila and Upazila levels, the representative democracy became largely a sham.

Without elected bodies at the Zilas and Upazilas the governance at those two levels lost much of their vitality and vibrancy. This is reflected through the District Administration's gradually becoming less and less important and the Upazila Administration growing largely dysfunctional.

The breakdown of the Upazila administration is evidenced by the fact that most of the government functionaries, except the UNOs, now do not even reside at their place of posting. This is primarily because of the collapse of the accountability structure.

As in nature, no vacuum remains unfilled. The vacuum caused by the absence of elected representatives at the Zila and Upazila levels were filled by power brokers linking the people at the grassroots with the Ministries and Directorates in Dhaka.

The elected Members of Parliament (MPs) from the ruling party became the most prominent of these power brokers, creating a sort of "MP sarkar" or "MP raj." In those Zilas and Upazilas, where the MPs were from the opposition camp, the ruling party bosses played this ever-powerful role of power brokers.

These power brokers were obviously not accountable to anyone. There was also no countervailing power. The unfortunate consequence of this arrangement, with no accountability and countervailing forces, was that power brokers used their influence to enrich themselves as well as dispense patronage to their cronies.

More seriously, these powerful power brokers and their cronies, with the blessings of their party brasses, not only indulged in rampant corruption, they also undermined the unelected, bureaucratic Administration at Zila and Upazila levels and were largely responsible for making these two layers of administration gradually less important. The emergence of the "MP raj" thus clearly resulted in a serious breakdown in the age-old administrative structure.

The absence of elected Zila and Upazila Parishad also weakened other local government bodies, especially the Union Parishads. In fact, the power brokers, particularly the ruling party MPs took over the UPs, making them largely ineffective. This further impaired the system of local governance, preventing institutionalisation of democracy in our country.

A serious consequence of the lack of elected structures in the middle was further centralisation to power and authority. Instead of bringing governmental services closer to the doorsteps of the people under the leadership of elected local bodies, the decision points for the simplest of services concentrated more in the hands of bureaucrats located in the distant capital city. The decisions that were once taken close to where people lived were transferred to nameless, faceless functionaries located far away.

Many horror stores about the mindless centralisation and its consequences abounded. For example, you even need permission from the Director General's office for the simple task of placing advertisements for hiring secondary school teachers for which you already have sanctioned positions.

This is a clear breakdown of the system, leading to unnecessary harassment of citizens and rampant rent seeking activities by functionaries. Again, this unreasonable and unnecessary centralisation happened in absence of elected local bodies in the middle layers to guard against it. In fact, had there been democratic structure in those layers, there would be democratic decentralisation rather than centralisation.

There would also be devolution of resources, making more resources directly available to the people through self-governing local bodies. Studies show that the closer power and resources are to the people, the more benefits people derive from them.

Increasing centralisation clearly caused a disconnection between the citizens at the grassroots and the government at the distant centre. Consequently, citizens became alienated and increasingly lost faith in the government. Many now feel that government is not for them and they have no ownership right in the state.

To many ordinary citizens, the government has become "of the power brokers, by the power brokers and for the power brokers" and it cares little for them. Such loss of public confidence clearly made the existing democratic system unsustainable. The collapse of the democratic edifice is the end result of such un-sustainability.

Given this, if we are now to put our derailed democracy back on track, we must, among others things, urgently initiate the important task of democratic decentralisation using local government as the instrument.

With that end in mind, we must immediately overhaul the existing statues of local government to make them reflect the words and spirit of self-government as laid out in our Constitution. We must then embark on holding all local body elections. This only will help provide the necessary foundation for a democratic polity in the country.

It may be noted that the Appellate Division of the Bangladesh Supreme Court, in its unanimous judgment, in the famous Kudrat-E-Elahi Panir vs Bangladesh directed the government in 1992 to hold elections of all local body elections in six months, which was defied by successive political governments for the last 15 years.

Dr. Badiul Alam Majumdar is Secretary of SHUJAN (Citizens for Good Governance).