Digital Revolution for the Vulnerable tells a grounded, sometimes uncomfortable, and ultimately hopeful story about Bangladesh’s push to shift social protection from paper registers to mobile screens—from cash to code. Instead of getting lost in jargon and big promises, the book stays close to real lives: people receiving old age allowances, widows and destitute women relying on small but vital stipends, and the local officials trying to make a new system work. It traces how mobile money a...

This book offers a thorough investigation of how Citizen Charters may be effective vehicles for improving accountability, transparency, and citizen engagement in local governance, focusing particularly on Bangladesh's experience within the broader South Asian context, highlighting how Citizen Charters may empower people and change local government responsiveness in developing nations. Structured across eight thematically interconnected chapters, the book starts with a solid conceptual and ...

This book analyses the challenges and possibilities connected to resource mobilisation in local government systems within South Asia; the book focuses on Bangladesh while placing the nation's experiences within the larger regional context alongside India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.Local governments in South Asia operate within intricate political and administrative structures often marked by centralisation, limited financial autonomy, and socio-economic inequalities. Through case studie...

Local Governance Transformation and Citizen Engagement in Bangladesh offers a thorough investigation of grassroots democratic practices and citizen engagement in local governance in the country and situates Bangladesh's experience within the larger framework of developing countries.With an eye towards their effects on governance, transparency, and accountability, the book analyses the dynamics of citizen engagement in public forums such as Ward Shava (WS) and Open Budget M...

This book illuminates the importance of the citizen charter (CC) in local service delivery in Bangladesh. It describes how CC was implemented into the service delivery process and its impact. In the 1970s, the transition from traditional public administration to new public management was inspired by globalization, the emergence of an information and technological society, and many economic theories, such as public choice, principal-agent theory, and transaction cost. The purpose of the gov...

This book analyzes the practice of local-level participatory planning and budgeting and its impact on gender responsive budgeting (GRB) in Bangladesh.The book offers a conceptual framework that brings into focus the contribution of successful participatory budgeting practice to ensure GRB – the examination of whether men and women fall under existing income and expenditure patterns differently. It suggests that the ideas of participatory budgeting and GRB should be evolving togethe...

This book provides an analysis of the urban government system in Bangladesh, focusing on its upper tier, the City Corporation (CC), and the institutional and legal frameworks within which it operates. Along with a discussion of the scale and magnitude of urbanization, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of the reform agendas of CCs including their functional assignments, local political leadership, local control over administration and service delivery, local fiscal autonomy and loc...

The book presents academic research on urbanization, urban poverty and slum development initiatives in South Asia, in general, and Bangladesh, in particular, in the light of global slum upgrading initiatives. It combines the urban poverty and slum development initiatives globally and country-specific context in a single frame. The book identifies different dimensions of urban poverty, best practices of slum development initiatives, and challenges of the implementation of these programs so ...

This book analyses efforts of Bangladeshi government and NGOs to strengthen local governance, and identifies the challenges posed by collaboration with NGOs.Presenting a dominantly qualitative study, the analysis explores whether engagement between the Sharique project to strengthen local governance and the Union Parishads has translated into success. In doing so, it argues that evidence points to a positive impact on institutionalising good governance and fiscal autonomy through w...

This volume offers an understanding of institutional reforms, gender-related policy dynamics, the role of different actors in the policy process, and the impact of a particular policy on the state of women’s political participation in Bangladesh. The discussion is set against the background of the Fourth World Conference on Women, 1995, in Beijing, in which a Platform for Action signed by heads of governments expressed their countries’ commitment to achieve ‘gender equality and empowerment...

This book explores the impact of Bangladesh's Local Government Act of 2009 on the functioning of the local governments or Union Parishads (UP), with a particular emphasis on people’s participation and accountability. Throughout the chapters, the authors review the existing legal framework of UP and its relation to social accountability, examine how much of the social participation is spontaneous and how much is politically induced, question the success of the Citizen's Charter and Right to...

At a time when the United States Canada and their coalition partners are re-evaluating their roles and exit strategies in Afghanistan and other broken states this book provides a crucial understanding of the complexities of reforming and transforming the security and justice architecture of the state. Written by leading international practitioners in the field it offers valuable insight into what has worked what has not and lessons that can be drawn in development security and state buil...