After the engineering students protested for months about being ridiculed, they finally got a response – brutal crackdown by the police. The crackdown was shocking, but the real question is why engineering students were forced to march in the streets at all? Why, even after giving a memorandum, did the administration never give any response, be it negative or positive?
I spoke with BUET students and other protesters who said they did everything by the book. They wrote formal memorandums, laid out their demands, asked for meetings, and even waited all night outside Jamuna, the chief adviser’s residence. The administration kept saying, “We’re working on it; just wait.” But weeks turned into months, and nothing happened. Finally, with no other option left, students took to the streets, only to be beaten back by the state police.
The whole situation escalated to this only because of our bureaucrats’ laziness and no incentive to take any action. The problem is structural: a bureaucracy that is slow, insulated, and shielded from consequences. Two factors drive this. First, policymakers at the top often have limited electoral accountability; when your survival does not depend on votes, the pressure to respond to citizens weakens. Second, many officials lack what scholars call public service motivation—the inner drive to serve society rather than merely protect position and perks. Even though an elected government will boost the bureaucrats’ productivity—guided by pro-people politicians—we shouldn’t rely on this mechanism altogether. Elections can improve incentives, but they do not, by themselves, fix a culture of avoidance.
So, what would be the most effective solution? Start with accountability. A workable option is to link career progression to performance that citizens can observe. Create an accessible channel where service recipients can file structured, anonymous evaluations of their experience. An independent committee reviews these inputs quarterly, investigates consistent patterns of failure, and ties findings to tangible outcomes—promotion, training, or, when necessary, disciplinary action. Yes, such a system is administratively demanding. But it signals that unanswered memos and unexplained delays are not harmless; they have consequences for careers, not just for citizens.
Motivation matters alongside accountability. Research shows that contact with beneficiaries makes the effects of decisions concrete, which can increase officials’ willingness to act. In one line of work (e.g., Belle, 2013), civil servants were regularly exposed to firsthand accounts from people affected by their decisions. The mechanism is simple: it breaks the cycle of abstraction. Files and forms become faces and names.
Consider what that looks like here. A flood victim explains how a two-week delay in relief left children half-fed. A small business owner describes how a tax ruling determines whether a shop survives. An engineering student details how the absence of fair entry tests let less-qualified recruits take the same jobs they trained years to earn. In each case, the consequence of inaction is no longer just numbers; it is a person. This kind of beneficiary panel does more than generate sympathy. It creates a feedback loop that is hard to ignore, and over time, it nurtures a professional norm: decisions, and indecision, carry real public costs.
The timing matters, too. We know, even from before the July revolution, that many officials exhibit low public service motivation. There was a window afterward to take a radical step—remove politically installed bureaucrats and recruit anew on competence and integrity. That process stalled. Since the interim government did not pursue de-awamification thoroughly, we are left to work with the system we have. That is not an argument for resignation; it is an argument for practical reforms that can be enacted now.
Those reforms fall into two complementary tracks. Accountability reforms make non-responsiveness risky. Motivation reforms make responsiveness meaningful. None of these require new ideology; they require administrative will.
The engineers’ protests are a warning about what happens when public institutions ignore people for months. Students should never have to face tear gas to get a reply. If we do not reform a lazy, insulated bureaucracy through credible performance reviews and regular contact with the people it serves, the cycle will repeat: silence, frustration, street protests, and then crackdowns. The fix is not abstract. Make officials answerable to the public they are paid to serve, and make the human consequences of delay visible inside the system.
Bureaucrats do not just process files; they shape lives. When they refuse to act – or refuse to explain why they cannot – the costs are paid in trust, fairness, and stability. Accountability tells them that inaction has a price. Beneficiary contact reminds them why action matters. Put both in place, and we reduce the chance that the next memorandum ends, again, in the street.
Citation
Belle, N. (2013). Experimental evidence on the impact of beneficiary contact on public service motivation. Public Administration Review, 73(4), 624–634. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12059
Iftekhar Tamim, Independent writer
