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DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION: IS IT A NOVEL TECHNIQUE TO ENSURE VOICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN BANGLADESH?
Abstract
The quality of governance is recognized as one of the central factors affecting development prospects in developing countries like Bangladesh. Citizens’ voice and government accountability (‘CV&A’) are important dimensions of governance. Citizens’ capacity to express and exercise their views effectively has the potential to influence the government including a stronger demand for responsiveness, transparency and accountability. Many formal and informal attempts have already been tested by both GOs and NGOs over the last one and half decades to ensure people’s voice and government’s accountability. At the same time Bangladesh has witnessed an elevated rate of diverse development efforts both from public and private/Community Based/Non-Government Organizations (NGO) in last twenty years or so. That is why it is seen that organizations have been concentrating on ‘Development Communication’ to secure voice of the people and to hold the government accountable. The objective of the paper is to portray the current condition of voice and accountability in Bangladesh and how development communication is playing its part in facilitating good governance by raising voice of people and holding government accountable. Through such analysis this paper tries to answer the question as to what extent we can call Development Communication a novel technique of ensuring people’s voice and government accountability in Bangladesh.
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