December 9, 2012 | MORE NEWS

An International Conference titled as ‘Governance and Public Service Transformation in South Asia’ held on Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel, Dhaka started from 7th December – 9th December 2012. Organizer of this conference was The Affiliated Network for Social Accountability (ANSA). Ms. Rokeya Kabir, the Executive Director of BNPS, presented a power point presentation in this Conference titled in “Multiple Aspects of Citizenship, Democracy and Governance”. Summary of her speech  has mentioned below:  

The deprivation of a huge number of poor and marginalized people of their citizen rights and entitlement to basic services, the reduction of democracy to a mere electoral game, the crisis of the state manifested in governance failures and a propensity for bureaucratic centralization in the developing countries have entailed a need to constantly re-evaluate the concept of citizenship, democracy and governance. It is now urgent to find ways to restore the whole range of rights and entitlements associated with citizenship reinvigorate democracy and restructure governance in the light of felt needs and experience. This need is paramount in the South Asia region where the structural roots of poverty, inequity, gender discrimination and bureaucratic centralization run deep and the colonial legacy still persists strongly. The multidimensional aspects of these concepts need to be explored in their complex inter-relationship and translated in to reality.