Staff Correspondent

Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Convenor of Citizen’s Platform and Distinguished Fellow at CPD, on Monday said bureaucrats now appears before people in various identities, which has become a problem.

“A person who is a bureaucrat today turns a politician tomorrow and then a businessman the next day. It has become a problem that they come before us in many forms,” he said at the consolidation session of the Citizen's Conference 2024 titled “People-centric Reform for Good Governance: Aspirations of Disadvantaged Communities” in the city.

Citizen's Platform for SDGs Bangladesh, with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Bangladesh and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation arranged the two-day conference on December 8 and 9 at BICC.

“In many cases, these three things (identities) have become the same (with the same person),” he said.

The noted public policy analyst earlier threw a question to the participants to know who is the most powerful — bureaucrats, politicians or businessmen. They replied bureaucrats.

Then he said the ‘bureaucrats' were described as the most powerful also in the discussions they held in different parts of Bangladesh.

Turning to the local government issue, Dr Debapriya suggested the formation of an independent commission to strengthen the local government.

If there is an independent local government commission, the culture of sacking an elected public representatives on a simple excuse can be prevented and it can allocate budget for the local government bodies, he said.

The CPD distinguished fellow also recommended that the provision for using the electoral symbols of the political parties should be withdrawn.

Political scientist Prof Rounaq Jahan, a distinguished fellow at CPD, presided over the session, while Prof Mustafizur Rahman, another distinguished fellow at CPD and Sonali Dayaratne, Deputy Resident Representative, UNDP, Bangladesh were, among others, present.