Inside the climate-controlled ballrooms of Dhaka’s premier luxury hotels, high-level delegates regularly gather around polished promotional banners and catered buffets. On stage, local experts, international consultants, senior government dignitaries, and representatives of bilateral donor agencies speak in well-rehearsed unison, endlessly repeating a single, omnipresent buzzword: ‘system strengthening’. Over the past decade, this alluring phrase has become the obligatory ornament in virtually every annual report, funding proposal, concept note, and high-profile symposium across non-governmental organisations, United Nations agencies, multilateral development banks, and bilateral donor groups.
Yet, the moment one steps outside these carpeted, air-conditioned venues and travels to the riverine chars, the vulnerable coastal belts, the vast haor wetlands, or the overcrowded peri-urban primary healthcare centres, a stark and unsettling contradiction reveals itself. In these peripheral administrative offices and frontline service hubs, the reality on the ground remains drastically unchanged. A two-day training workshop, the supply of three desktop computers, a handful of street drama performances, or the temporary distribution of emergency relief packages to a thousand destitute families are routinely and triumphantly declared in shiny donor reports as evidence of sweeping, fundamental system change. One is forced to ask whether we truly comprehend what strengthening a system entails, or whether a profound structural imperative has been reduced to nothing more than a fashionable slogan to secure the next tranche of international grant funding.
The system traps itself in a perpetual cycle of capability failure. As long as foreign funding flows, the machinery appears dynamic and operational; yet, the moment the project life cycle reaches its formal conclusion, the entire apparatus collapses back into its baseline state of fragility and ineffectiveness. Three decades of project history across Bangladesh’s agriculture, disaster risk management, public health, and local governance sectors offer tragic validation of Harvard’s findings. Public sector officials attend repetitive training sessions, project performance indicators are dutifully checked off, and glowing end-of-project evaluation reports are presented to partners.
To break free from this destructive cycle, stakeholders across primary, secondary, and tertiary tiers must critically revisit the core philosophy underpinning development work. Real development demands the expansion of fundamental human capabilities and the creation of an institutional environment wherein citizens can live with dignity, agency, and freedom. Transitory acts of benevolence can never build a durable, self-sustaining architecture of civic rights and state accountability.
Over the past two decades, hundreds of millions of taka have been spent on short-term climate adaptation and poverty-reduction projects designed to distribute climate-resilient livestock and microenterprise assets to impoverished families. However, empirical research revealed that within two to three years after these projects exited, more than half of the recipient households slipped back into chronic poverty and were forced to sell the livestock they had received.
Overcoming this institutional crisis requires a deep understanding of the philosophical divergence between time-bound projects and enduring, rights-based programmes. A short-term project resembles an arrangement of cut flowers inside a decorative glass vase. Throughout the project’s life, it appears strikingly vibrant and colourful, attracting widespread admiration. Yet, because it possesses no roots or intrinsic vitality of its own, the moment the financial nourishment stops, it inevitably wilts and decays.
Conversely, a rights-based, long-term programme is akin to planting the seed of a deep-rooted banyan tree. In its early stages, its growth may appear slow and understated, requiring immense institutional patience, rigorous care, and long-term intellectual investment. But as its roots anchor themselves deeply into the soil of society and the underlying structure of the state, it gains the strength to withstand severe storms, standing tall to provide shade, shelter, and sustenance for successive generations.
True system strengthening is neither a mystery nor a vague abstraction; it rests upon six interconnected foundational pillars that must be meticulously built and maintained within the state and society. First, it requires transparent policy and legal accountability, which legally binds the state and its public institutions to deliver essential services to citizens. Second, it demands sustainable domestic financing, which secures funding from national and local revenues rather than remaining perpetually reliant on foreign aid.
Third, it relies on permanent professional human resources, focusing on building the capacity of regular public administrative roles instead of deploying temporary, short-term project personnel. Fourth, it depends on evidence-based data and information systems, enabling policy decisions to be grounded in solid empirical facts rather than subjective guesswork. Fifth, it thrives on active citizen participation and social accountability, treating members of the public not as passive objects of charity, but as empowered rights-holders who demand performance. Sixth, it requires institutional service infrastructure, ensuring that frontline services are delivered directly through permanent national and local public bodies rather than temporary external operators.
Establishing these six pillars is not an overnight task nor a collection of sporadic events; it demands a disciplined, sequential four-stage methodology. The journey begins with a deep, objective, problem-driven diagnostic, applying the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation methodology developed at Harvard Kennedy School to identify the root causes of systemic failure alongside local actors rather than treating superficial symptoms. The second stage centres on participatory planning and local leadership, placing government officials, local elected representatives, and community leaders firmly in the driver’s seat while non-governmental and international agencies step back into advisory, supportive, and catalytic roles. The third stage involves adaptive, contextual learning, allowing policy models to be tested, refined, and customised through real-world local experimentation rather than imposing rigid, prefabricated foreign blueprints. The final stage culminates in the seamless integration of these refined models into national annual development budgets, statutory policy frameworks, and permanent administrative operations, ensuring that public institutions continue running the system independently long after foreign project intervention has ceased.
Achieving this vital transformation demands an uncompromising, simultaneous paradigm shift across three primary dimensions from all development stakeholders. Stakeholders must abandon the deeply ingrained saviour complex. Development organisations must realise that they are not heroic deliverers of progress, as the ultimate responsibility for upholding citizen rights rests with the state. Development strategies must abandon short-term project horizons in favor of long-term, rights-based programming. From the very first day of project design, planners must answer a fundamental question: how, and through which permanent public budget, will this service continue to function five years from now, when foreign grants reach zero? Without a clear, permanent institutional answer, the intervention is not system strengthening, but a trap of perpetual dependency. Monitoring and evaluation frameworks must be radically overhauled. Superficially attractive indicators must be swept aside in favour of transformational metrics, such as statutory policy revisions, permanent budget allocations, structural accountability mechanisms, and the actual realisation of citizen rights.
The era of short-termism, event-driven activities, and superficial project culture must end today. By embracing enduring, rights-based institutional programming, Bangladesh can plant the seeds of a resilient, deep-rooted institutional tree that will stand firm through future storms and ensure a dignified, sustainable, and self-sufficient future for every citizen.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author
The writer is a development professional
