Good Governance and Colonial Entanglement in Bangladesh

Good governance remains at quagmire in Bangladesh. Bad governance or mal-governance, is often surfacing with heavy tolls on people’s expectations. There lie multiple causes beneath such discouraging state. In this article, employing post- colonial standpoint, we argue that the machinery of public administration or governance in Bangladesh culturally and psychologically is not ready to adopt the essence of good governance. The colonial mind set of the government officials and shadow colonial administrative culture are anti- thesis to the fundamental elements of good governance such as participatory and consensus oriented governing system. Therefore, the article ventures to suggest that to ensure the responsible, pro- citizen governance, the internalization of colonial cultural has to be elucidated or in Ngugi wa Thiong’s language, the mind has to be decolonized.

Keywords:
Good governance, decolonization, administrative culture.