Decentralization

Upazila Parishad (Sub-district Council) has been reintroduced as a rural local government body by the government of Bangladesh again in the year 2009. According to the enabling acts it i) has some mechanisms to increase efficiency, transparency and accountability of the service providers; ii) has its scope of a series of regular programs and projects aimed at poverty reduction; and iii) has its legal provisions to provide scope for peoples' participation in the government funded development programs and projects. Popular theories of decentralization have positive assumptions regarding these and most of the current studies show almost similar type of positive results. This is a firsthand assessment of the performance of the Sub-district Council in Bangladesh. Although the fieldwork of the study was carried out in a specific sub-district in Bangladesh, it is representative for generalization over the country. Based on the solid findings the author claimed that the Sub-district Council in Bangladesh though holding legal status as a decentralized local government body disproved the general positive assumptions prevailing in the most of the literatures and theories of decentralization.