Good Governance by Mobile Phone in Bangladesh: Challenges and Way Forward

INTRODUCTION:Now citizens can leam and Improve English language skills without visiting any language school, without reading language learning books, for emergency medical services not need to visit doctor chamber or local hospital, without communicating through traditional methods i.e. farmers now can get fertilizer and market information just by calling from any mobile handsets. Mobile phone has been materialized as the new frontier of transforming services to citizen in even more accessible and citizen-centric way, by extending the benefits of remote delivery of government services and information to those who are unable or unwilling to access public services through the traditional way of communication. Simultaneously, rapid technological development encourages mobile ICT such as Computers, Notebooks, Tablets whereas the mobile phones offer many new possibilities of the mobilization of interaction through voice, data and internet services.Mobile phone brings revolutionary change in village people lives especially rural women who can manage their livelihood by the help of mobile communication. LIRNEasia, a Srilankan research firm had conducted a survey among more than 10,000 mobile users in six countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Srilanka and Thailand) and identified that low-income customer in Bangladesh lead the region in the mobile phone use for the business. Poor Bangladeshis make business call 72 percent of the time on any given day where as India is just 43 percent and in Pakistan 31 percent (Galpaya, 2009). Additionally entrepreneurship has been develop among the mass people where almost 5 lac people direct or indirectly depends on mobile communication for livelihood.Bangladesh has demonstrated remarkable success in avenues like health and family planning, non-formal education, micro credit, women empowerment, lowering the infant and under-five mortality rate, agriculture production, macro-economic stability and management. But all these successes will be washed out because of poor governance practice by political parties, administrative institutions and large vested groups. Still corruption and poor governance practices of government machineries is a frequent state of affairs in third world countries as a result of that, people are depriving to receive the desired supports and necessary services (World Bank'2015). GOOD GOVERNANCE CONCEPTS AND NECESSITIES:Good governance is considered as one of the key ingredients of poverty reduction and sustainable development of a nation by fulfilling the basic needs of the citizen. Moreover, good governance can be seen as an umbrella for a functioning democratic arrangement where freedom of expression and an effective judicial system is in place. United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in 1997 stated that good governance is characterized by participation, the rule of law, effectiveness and efficiency, transparency (built on the free flow of information), responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, accountability and strategic vision. Now the question is why good governance is imperative? Does poor governance lead to inefficient use of limited resources, practice corruption and failed to ensure basic needs of citizen? Therefore, in this regards William Easterly professor of Economics at New York University, states that "badly governed countries are poor countries" and that "good governance tend to come together in packages, so it is hard to tell which one is causing economic development" (Easterly, 2006). Communication, information dissemination and dialogue are identified as key components of governance and a positive correlation between communication and good governance is assumed (Coffey, 2007). To do so, citizens and their representatives need information to make informed choices, and open channels of communication operating in both directions - from Government to the Citizenry (G2C), and from the Citizenry to Government (C2G), (DFID, 2005). …