The big common gripe at most political conversations is one: The Election Commission is not doing its job.

But then on money matters, Bangladesh bank is not doing its job. So isn't DESA, Municipality, Health services and on and on.

Basically, it seems we are not happy with public utility services. The reason we are not happy is because we have high expectations from a system which is grounded in low deliveries. There is no historical experience that they were ever into high performing deliveries. The chances of any escalation would be to take such expectations beyond normal levels of high expectations. And that's not fair towards anyone.

Political expectations

Since this is the political season, much of our thoughts are on report cards on governance. A perusal of various statements show that a few are common:

Development is everywhere

There is no development

There is no democracy

This is the best time for democracy

Thieves are everywhere

The last regime was full of thieves

Basically, we are dealing with an idea that things are supposed to be better. Or that things were better. Or, things will get better. None of the above may happen or happened. It all depends on who is looking and interpreting.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of getting locked in a debate with a political activist will know about the circularity of such debates. It may begin at a point but will end at the beginning so there can be no conclusion. In the end, political activism is not about the points in the discussion but the process of discussing itself. So political debates are not supposed to achieve anything except the debate itself. Just like the sanglap.

The most discussed office in the state is the Election Commission and everyone says that it's not doing what it supposed to do. When asked what its exactly supposed to do, the answers are rather vague and everyone points to the neighbour India. And the statement is, Indian Election Commission is great so we must have an EC which is like them. But few know how good are bad it is. One doesn't have to but we think we have a barely functional EC.

Is the EC really at fault?

But when did we actually have a functional EC? We forget that the task of the EC is not to do as we think they should but what they think they should do. And ever since ECs have been here since years even decades ago, they have been the same. Sometimes they are worse but never better and they have never been so. It's difficult to explain why we have such high expectations from a body which has never broken from its tradition. If anything we should praise it for its consistency. It has always been the same.

If asked one can't say what we expect from the EC. And this is where the problem is. We really don't know what to expect but we have high expectations. Poor EC, it can't explain to the Bangladeshis that they are doing a job under extreme public scrutiny and very little chance of changing the rhythm set since its birth.

A common argument is that it's a constitutional body whatever that is supposed to mean so they must act to uphold what is expected to be done. However, when the EC declared that no public meetings could be held after the schedules were announced, everyone protested saying this is unfair. So there lies the contradiction. We expect the EC to be free but that means we like the EC to do what we would like it to do.

What does constitutional body mean actually?

Now what is a constitutional body is also not clear. Does it mean other government officials are unconstitutional? No, it probably means that they are not under the direct control of the PM. This is fine but what does it mean? It means they can act on its own freely?

This is where the problem lies which is in understanding the system and even a free, constitutional and other epithet strung body also function within a system which we may not be able to detect as we are outside it.

The problem probably lies in the crisis of formality in a battle with informality. Essentially, in a society and state which is formal in concept but informal in function , we shall have these unsolvable situations. We expect these bodies to act as if formality reigns but we fail to get that the informal is also a system and that system runs the state.