Social services

All is not well with the delivery of social services in Bangladesh. There have been reports of poor performance, corruption and inefficiency in the education, health, housing and population sectors. Red tape is said to be a factor in the failure of government sectors to utilise funds allocated to them. The poor state of sanitation and water supply and the weak social safety net testify to the state's inability to provide people basic facilities and services.
Unfortunately, over the years people have increasingly been left to fend for themselves to meet their needs for education, healthcare and so on.
We are sympathetic to the constraints of the state: it does not have adequate resources, it does not have the most qualified manpower, political instability is a constant factor that makes long-term policy-making and implementation problematic. But the very point of a government is to try and improve things. Presently, the government has achieved some success in stabilising the finances of the state, but the policy side elsewhere looks very weak. The problems associated with delivering basic services to the people are not all about lack of financial resources. For years, bottlenecks at the institutional level have meant that funds have not been utilised even where made available. Pouring more funds into a broken system with little direction and sense of purpose means that as nation we will continue to stumble along indefinitely unless our elected officials show some resolve outside isolated pockets.