Most concerned citizens have since liberation been cherishing such illusions as that the colonial administrative pattern inherited from the British days would be adapted to the needs of free Bangladesh for democracy and development; that law and order state or the night watchman state or the police state would give way to the welfare state; that administration or the civil service would be the instruments of democracy and the welfare state; and that the system of civil service inherited from the colonial rule would not be abolished although, recruitment and training of the civil servants would be oriented to the new context of democracy and development.
There has been almost a national consensus on all these 'illusive' propositions relating to the pattern of our administrative system. However, at the end of almost twenty-eight years of our existence as an independent nation, disenchantment has set in about the entire administrative system calling for its agonising reappraisal. As things they are, it is most likely for any concerned citizen to ask: What has gone wrong? How can we set right the wrong?
In fact, responding to the above two questions seems to be the main thematic concern of the author, Professor Mohammad Mohabbat Khan, whose book entitled Administrative Reforms in Bangladesh is under review in this volume of seminar papers.