Vol. 16, Issue 1, Jul-Dec 2023

Page: 85-106

DECENTRALIZATION STRATEGIES FOR ENSURING PEOPLES PARTICIPATION AT LOCAL LEVEL DEVELOPMENT IN BANGLADESH: THEORY AND PRACTICE

Esmat Ara, Md. Assraf Seddiky

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Accepted Date:

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Administrative decentralization is an important term for strengthening the local administration. It is the transfer of planning, decision making and authority from the higher level of central government to the lower level of local government administration. This study attempts to explore theimportance of administrative decentralization strategies for strengthening the Upazila administration as a local government body, and ensuring peoples participation as a development approach. The UpazilaParishad is the second tier of the local government system in Bangladesh. The main objective of thestudy is to find out how much decentralizationstrategies are indispensible toensure peoples participation in the development process as well as to explore the discrepancy between the form and reality of the existing decentralization strategies in Bangladesh. It is an exploratory-descriptive research where survey method has been used for collecting data and information from SylhetSadarUpazila. The elected representatives and the members of civil society of this region have been interviewed face to face on the basis of a semi- structured questionnaire. Data have been collected from eighty respondents and purposive sampling method has been employed for selecting the sample. It is an important study for the development of UpazilaParishad as peoples participation is closely related with local level development. The study findings reveal that decentralization is the key to promote peoples participation and involve them in local development process

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