Widespread Procedural Knowledge Shifts Power Dramatically

By a recent video, Hasnat Abdullah (MP) did something strikingly simple, explaining how a public service actually runs. He described the procedure and clarified the intended outcome. The explanation felt refreshingly transparent. Hasnat was not merely sharing information; he was demonstrating the ‘procedure’ behind public action. He showed citizens the step-by-step movement of resources, i.e. who receives them, who distributes them and how the system is supposed to function. He inadvertently highlighted one of the most fundamental weaknesses in Bangladesh’s governance discourse: our national conversation is obsessed with process, while largely ignoring procedure. 
In policy discussions, governance reforms and public advocacy campaigns, the term “process” dominates. Processes are the high-level narratives that describe how budgets are approved, how development projects are sanctioned, or how services are supposed to be delivered. These descriptions are often framed in institutional language, policy diagrams and regulatory frameworks. They are useful for designing systems and ensuring administrative order. But they remain distant from the everyday experience of ordinary citizens.
Procedures, on the other hand, are the lived reality of governance. It is step-by-step action that required to deliver a service. In other words, procedures are the operational language of governance. They determine whether a citizen receives electricity in a new home, obtains a gas connection, registers land, installs a water line, or receives approval for a small business license.
The difference may appear semantic, but in reality, it is deeply political. A process can be monitored primarily by experts like policy analysts, bureaucrats, auditors and specialised oversight bodies. It requires technical knowledge, access to internal documentation, and familiarity with administrative language. Procedures, however, can be understood by anyone. When procedures are clearly described in plain language, citizens can monitor the state.
When Hasnat Abdullah explains the steps of a procedure in his video, he lays out how something functions and removes some of the informational advantage that bureaucratic systems often possess.
Public officials rarely communicate in such practical terms. Explaining procedures should not remain an occasional demonstration. It should become a systematic and institutionalised practice. After the initial demonstration, such procedural explanations should ideally be maintained, expanded and regularly updated by a dedicated team of associates, administrators, or public information officers. This would allow elected representatives to move on to larger policy challenges while ensuring accessible procedural guidance.
This distinction also explains why so many governance systems in Bangladesh remain opaque despite decades of reform efforts. Transparency initiatives often publish institutional structures, regulations, and organisational charts. Yet these materials rarely tell citizens what they actually need to know (what exactly should happen when I apply for a service; who is responsible at each step; and what recourse do I have if the procedure is violated).
Without clearly documented procedures and identifiable responsibility, citizens cannot effectively challenge misconduct. A person seeking an electricity connection, a water supply line, a gas meter or a land record often encounters a maze of informal instructions, shifting requirements and discretionary decisions. In such an environment, corruption thrives not only because some officials are dishonest, but because the system itself obscures the path to lawful service delivery.
This is where a new governance paradigm becomes necessary. Every government function, administrative activity, and bureaucratic task should be translated into clear, accessible procedures written in language that any citizen can understand. These procedural guides should be publicly available, easily searchable and widely disseminated. This is why Abdullah’s seemingly simple act of publicly explaining allocations and naming those responsible matters.
Imagine if every government service in Bangladesh were accompanied by a clear procedural guide written in plain language. Each guide would explain, step by step, how the service is delivered. More importantly, it would identify the officer responsible at each stage. Citizens would know exactly where their application goes, who handles it, and how long the step should take.
Such a system would also require something even more transformative: publicly accessible records of postings and responsibilities. If an officer or contractor leaves a position after overseeing a particular stage of a project, their record would remain attached to that step in the procedure. Should corruption, negligence, or abuse later emerge, responsibility would not disappear simply because the individual has moved to another post. In other words, accountability would follow the person, not merely the office.
Of course, transparency alone is not enough. Procedures must also be actively disseminated and normalised within society. The government often publishes information on websites, assuming that access equals awareness. In reality, most citizens never encounter these materials.
Corruption in Bangladesh is not driven solely by dishonest individuals. It is also sustained by procedural opacity. When citizens lack clear knowledge of procedures, they become vulnerable to harassment, delays and informal payments. People often pay extra to avoid hassle or to ensure a service is delivered.
When procedural knowledge becomes widespread, the balance of power shifts dramatically. Officials can no longer intimidate citizens by exaggerating the complexity of a service. Nor can they exploit uncertainty to demand informal payments.
However, making procedures publicly available is only the first step. They must also be actively promoted and widely understood. Civil society organisations, public representatives, government agencies and even digital influencers can help disseminate this information. Short explanatory videos, online guides and social media content can transform bureaucratic knowledge into accessible public knowledge.
Even more importantly, procedural literacy should become part of formal education. Basic knowledge about how public services function should be integrated into school, college and university curricula. Students should graduate not only with academic knowledge but also with a practical understanding of how to navigate the institutions that shape their lives. When an entire generation grows up knowing how public systems operate, the informational imbalance between citizens and officials begins to disappear.
Perhaps that is the most important lesson hidden within Abdullah’s experiment with transparency. Governance does not become accountable simply because institutions promise it. Accountability emerges when citizens understand how power actually operates. And that understanding begins not with grand process narratives but with something far simpler and far more powerful: the procedure.

The writer is a political and international affairs analyst