When state policy is drafted behind closed doors in capital cities, the resulting blueprints rarely reflect the sweat, tears, and lived realities of the people they are intended to serve. Across developing democracies – and conspicuously within Bangladesh – a persistent, top-down governance model prevails. It is an administrative tradition where decisions are handed down as bureaucratic directives rather than forged through genuine public consultation.
As delegations prepare to represent national interests at global summits like the 81st United Nations General Assembly or the COP31 climate negotiations, a profound deficit remains visible at home. Before stepping onto international stages, state actors routinely fail to engage in multi-tiered, meaningful dialogues with coastal communities battling rising tides, youth activists asserting their future, or local researchers who understand the micro-realities of environmental devastation.
Even when governments act with good intentions, well-meaning initiatives repeatedly falter because they exclude the people affected from the design process. Consider recent policy friction in Bangladesh: the lingering confusion and resistance around primary and secondary curriculum reforms. In both cases, state agencies acted in isolation, without consulting teachers, parents, and workers beforehand.
This pattern is equally visible in macroeconomic planning. National budget formulation remains largely confined to closed-door negotiations among bureaucrats, tax authorities, and elite experts with business associations. Meanwhile, smallholder farmers, micro-entrepreneurs, and lower-middle-class consumers – those who bear the heaviest burden of indirect taxation such as Value Added Tax (VAT) – are excluded from pre-budget deliberations.
The same disconnect hobbles essential public service initiatives, including digital health cards and agricultural incentive cards. While visionary on paper, these programmes may stumble at the execution stage. Unaddressed local power dynamics, distribution syndicates, corruption, and digital illiteracy routinely derail implementation. If government agencies consult rural healthcare seekers and small farmers before rolling out these mechanisms, they could identify and address these structural vulnerabilities early.
Similarly, sweeping national policy frameworks – such as five-year development frameworks – are regularly finalised within the quiet halls of planning commissions. They bypass meaningful exchanges with upazila-level civil society, regional academia, and elected grassroots representatives. Yet a plan that ignores the starkly distinct ecological and economic realities of coastal belts, wetland haors, and riverine chars cannot deliver sustainable development.
This preference for secrecy runs counter to the democratic principles embedded in national founding documents and international legal standards. The Constitution of Bangladesh, in its Preamble and Article 7, explicitly affirms that all power in the Republic belongs to the people. At the same time, Article 21 imposes a solemn duty upon public servants to always serve the citizenry. Higher courts have repeatedly emphasised that mandatory public consultation is essential to public interest governance. Without open, transparent, and accountable dialogue, legal protections and executive orders lose their moral authority.
Globally, mature and evolving democracies have long recognised that public consultation is a legal prerequisite for sound governance, not an optional courtesy. Article 59(1) of the South African Constitution mandates public involvement in legislative processes. The Constitutional Court has repeatedly struck down laws passed without adequate public hearings, establishing that citizen participation is a prerequisite for legal validity. The landmark Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of the United States requires federal agencies to publish proposed regulations in the Federal Register and provide a mandatory ‘Notice-and-Comment’ period. Crucially, agencies must review public submissions and formally justify why they accepted or rejected suggestions.
Estonia’s e-governance infrastructure lets citizens review, track, and comment on draft laws in real time. At the same time, New Zealand’s public consultation guidelines require state departments to issue formal, published responses to public feedback. Advanced Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) frameworks in the United Kingdom & Canada compel government bodies to evaluate the economic, social, and environmental consequences of proposed policies before they reach parliament.
In contrast, South Asian policymaking remains bogged down by an ingrained culture of bureaucratic secrecy. The primary legal culprit in Bangladesh is the Rules of Business 1996, which contains no statutory requirement for ministries to consult the public or relevant stakeholders before drafting laws or policies.
Consequently, legislative drafting remains an opaque exercise conducted behind closed doors. Furthermore, while the Right to Information Act 2009 was designed to foster openness, its broad Section 7 exemptions – which shield 20 distinct categories of information – are frequently exploited by decision-makers to keep crucial policy drafts hidden from public scrutiny.
Underlying these legal loopholes is an elitist assumption: the patronising belief among technocrats that ordinary citizens and marginalised communities lack the intellectual sophistication to comprehend technical policy matters. This is a profound error. Academic expertise and administrative training can never replace the lived expertise of a farmer adjusting to changing rainfall, a coastal family building embankments with their own hands, or a small business owner navigating market distortion.
Crucially, this failing is not limited to government ministries. Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and non-governmental leaders often fall into the same trap. All too frequently, CSOs conduct tokenistic, hotel/resort-based ‘workshops’ featuring the same familiar urban elites, misrepresenting these gatherings as genuine community consultation. CSOs must hold themselves to the same standard they demand of the state. Meaningful engagement requires stepping out of capital cities and establishing authentic, long-term feedback loops with rural communities, grassroots workers, and vulnerable populations.
To dismantle this culture of isolation, state agencies and civil society organisations must commit to structural reform. The government must amend the Rules of Business to make pre-legislative public consultation legally mandatory. All draft laws, strategies, and major policies should be published on a centralised digital platform for a mandatory public comment period of at least 30 to 60 days. A central regulatory and social impact unit should be created under the Cabinet Division or Planning Commission. Modelled on international Regulatory Impact Analysis frameworks, this body should evaluate every proposed policy’s social, environmental, and economic consequences before enactment.
Transparency requires that government bodies publish a comprehensive ‘Response Matrix’ alongside every final policy document. This matrix must summarise all public submissions and explicitly explain why suggestions were incorporated or declined, showing citizens that their input was carefully considered rather than ignored. The Information Commission must exercise robust oversight to ensure that Section 7 of the Right to Information Act is not misused as a blanket shield for administrative opacity. Draft policies affecting public welfare must be categorised as proactively disclosable public information.
The time for cosmetic consultation and paternalistic governance has passed. Leaders of government agencies and civil society organisations must recognise that stakeholder engagement is not an administrative burden or a funding prerequisite; it is the cornerstone of effective, sustainable, and democratic governance.
Real progress begins when institutional arrogance gives way to active listening – when the cold walls of bureaucracy open themselves to the lived experiences of the people. When every ministry, agency, and civil society group adopts meaningful stakeholder engagement as a non-negotiable practice, national policy will finally reflect the nation’s collective wisdom, dignity, and aspirations.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author
The writer is an Advocate and Development Professional
