Why Do Common People Still Live in Servitude?

Md Kawsar Uddin

It has been 55 years since we gained independence. We proudly say Bangladesh was born through a bloody war in 1971, with millions sacrificing their lives for freedom, dignity and the dream of a just and equal nation. But after all these years, the brutal truth is we still live like servants in our own country.

Try stepping into any government office for a service. Passport, national ID, land registration, driving license, court paperwork and police documents and union council certificates, you name it. Go without any political connection, personal link, or hired broker. Then, you will see your real worth as a citizen of Bangladesh. You will understand how valueless your independence actually is in the face of institutional cruelty.

The system is not designed for ordinary citizens. It is designed to make you feel powerless unless you ‘manage’ it. And what does managing mean here? It means calling your school or university friends who work there, finding someone from your hometown posted in the office, requesting help from someone who can get a political leader or influential person to make a phone call on your behalf, or simply hiring a broker who will handle the “hassle”, for a price, of course.

It has become so normal that people openly boast, “I have a contact in that office, I will get it done for you.” As if government service is some underground black market deal.

Otherwise, be prepared to spend your entire day or several days standing in endless lines. You will meet a rude, underpaid, over-empowered fourth-grade employee who barely looks at your papers, mutters a few words, and if you dare to ask for clarification, he will simply redirect you to another counter. Lunch break, tea break, prayer break — time flies for them, not for you. Behind the counter, that same employee will be busy managing the brokers’ files because that is where the real “service” business happens.

Here is the irony: if your papers are completely fine, the staff will still find some “problems”. They will ask for extra documents or claim there is a technical issue. It is open secret that the entire system is designed to frustrate you, force you to surrender, and eventually rely on agents, who is part of the system. Meanwhile, the privileged few never face these obstacles. VIPs walk into these offices and everything is ready for them. 

Who suffers? The middle-class, the lower middle-class, the poor. Go to any office and see the never-ending line is full of tired, frustrated people who are just trying to get something as basic as a birth certificate or land record. Talk to them. You will hear how they have already visited the office five or six times, wasting entire days standing helplessly, waiting for the mercy of someone who treats them like dirt.

Nobody talks about this humiliation. Yes, sometimes the government conducts flashy operations to “remove brokers” from service points. But do they ever ask why people depend on agents in the first place? No. The popular narrative is that services are broken because of vendors. Nobody dares to officially say that it is actually the people inside the offices, who are responsible for the pathetic state of public service. They intentionally create a nightmare for ordinary citizens. They benefit from the chaos.

Removing brokers would not fix anything. Improving service quality will. Treating citizens like human beings will. Acknowledging that we the taxpayers are not beggars is the solution. We are not subjects of a kingdom. This is a democracy. At least, it claims to be.

These days, many government services have gone “digital”. Sounds impressive, right? You fill out a complicated online form that often leads to minor mistakes, and then you are required to print it and submit it manually. Why? If the whole thing ends in a manual submission, what is the point of the digital process? Is it just to double the hassle or a trap to waste your time? I have seen people start looking for “links” and “contacts” weeks before they need to visit any government office.
I remember when the National ID was first introduced. People lined up with excitement, hope. But the rushed, careless approach by undertrained staff led to thousands of mistakes — wrong spelling of names, wrong dates of birth, misspelled addresses. Decades later, people are still suffering to correct those errors. But is that how it should be? Is it not the responsibility of the government to fix the mistakes made by its own employees? When the fault clearly lies with the system, why are ordinary citizens expected to carry the burden? Who should be more eager to fix these errors—the government or the citizens? It should be the government. Then why are citizens the ones who end up suffering?

The saddest part is, none of this is hidden. We all know it. We talk about it in tea stalls, on social media, in private conversations. Yet, there is no political will to fix it. Why would there be? The system benefits those in power. The ones who suffer are the average citizens who do not have a voice loud enough to matter.
Is this what we call independence? This is our country. Why do we have to live like this? Why should we feel like intruders in our own offices? Why should a small group of rude, unaccountable government staff behave like kings while we beg for our rights? We have waited for 55 years. How many more do we need before we can walk into a government office and be treated like a citizen not a nuisance?
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The writer is an Associate Professor, Department of English and Modern Languages, IUBAT