Culture of taking responsibility

Instances of accepting responsibility for any major lapse including big corruption scandal, even accident, let alone any relatively minor case of lack of service delivery by any ministry during the past governments were few. Rather denial of responsibility at best and blaming those at the receiving end at worst was the dominant government culture. Against such a not-so-inspiring background, the Energy Advisor, who is also in charge of the Road Transport and Railway ministry took the officials of the ministries concerned to task for their lapses regarding service delivery. In particular, he instructed government officials to seek public apology in case of any failure to deliver the required service, adding that the public should be informed of, say, any disruption in power supply or metro rail service, through news scrolls on television. In this connection, he also reminded the government officials of the fact that by providing, for instance, the metro rail service or supplying utilities like electricity to the general consumer, they were just doing  what was expected of them and  not doing the consumers   any favour.

Notably, on Sunday, April 27, the metro rail service in Dhaka remained out of order for about two hours between 5pm and 7pm. The day before, a national power grid failure caused widespread blackout in 21 southern districts. But in neither case, the public were informed about the service disruptions through any media, nor were they notified about possible resumption time of the metro service or power supply. Even the advisor himself was not informed of Saturday's power supply disruptions. Undeniably, those were instances of serious lapses on the part of the government officials concerned. But what makes it different from the public's past experience is that the advisor in this case has tried to make the public servants, or the government for that matter, answerable to the public for any failure. Commendably, the advisor concerned has also previous record of taking responsibility. In January this year, he took responsibility for the increased number of deaths and injuries from road accidents during the entire period of 2024 compared to 2023.

Remarkably, the interim government of which he is a functionary assumed power on 8th August 2024. In that case, the interim government was responsible, if any, for the death toll from road accidents from the cut-off point of (August 2024) and not for what happened before. But the departments concerned including the police, the road transport authority and roads and highways department were made answerable for the casualties during the entire year and arrangements were made to compensate for the treatment of the injured. Such acts constitute the duties and responsiibilites of a pro-people government.

Now, it is up to the unbiased social and political thinkers as well as historians to go into the depths of the the why and whence of this anti-people mindset that got the better of our political class. But there are examples of how some politicians in power in the neighbouring country set example (Lal Bahadur Shastri in the late 1950s) by resigning as railway minister following deaths in a railway accident  though he had not direct responsibility for the accident. Those in authority would do well to learn the lessons about taking responsibility from people of character and emulate and practice those in their own spheres of activity.  The Energy Advisor's example  could set an optimistic tone in this regard.