Making Upazila Parishads redundant

A Roundtable conference held in the city earlier in the week brought together diverse interest groups ranging from lawmakers to Upazila Parishad (UP) chairmen, who discussed impediments to the proper functioning of the UP system. The current impasse between elected members of UP on the one hand and members of parliament (MP) on the other has, in effect, thrown the whole question of strengthening local governance at the grassroots level in disarray. What is ironic is that the party in power whilst it was in the opposition was a champion for making UP an effective body that would facilitate participatory decision making.
This is reflected by the passage of the Upazila Bill legislation in November, 2011 that reduced the body's powers on the one hand and empowered respective local MPs and UNOs on the other.
It is discomfiting to note that thanks to alleged interference by government functionaries, the UP system has gone from a body that was born of the idea of decentralising government into a rubber stamp to do the bidding of local MPs and the administration at large. Equally alarming is the fact that the woman Vice Chairman has little or no say in policy matters. This manner of interference is debilitating rather than strengthening the body and merely goes to reinforce the idea that notions such as participatory democracy exist only on paper, not in reality. Until and unless the State annuls provisions made in recent changes to the UP Act 1998, there can hardly be any effective functioning of the UP system.