The vicious circle of public sector recruitment

A young person spends years preparing for a government job. They pass the written examination and the viva. Their name appears on the final selection list. The family celebrates. Then comes police verification. Suddenly, everything can come to a halt. The candidate may have no criminal record and no problem with academic certificates. Yet the appointment letter does not arrive.

The recent recruitment of government primary school assistant teachers has brought this old problem back into public discussion. A total of 14,384 candidates were finally selected under the 2025 recruitment process. Police verification followed.

Some selected candidates have since alleged that they did not receive appointment letters because of adverse verification reports. However, after the controversy, via an announcement, the authority gave a declaration and promised to provide them the appointment letters. The exact number and individual reasons should be officially disclosed.

We should not assume that every withheld appointment was politically motivated. But the controversy raises an important question: after a candidate has proved their merit, what exactly is the state trying to verify?

The human cost is visible in the story of Amzad Hossen Fahim, a former student of Mass Communication and Journalism at Jagannath University. After being selected, his family prepared for his joining. His father even arranged a milad at the local mosque. Fahim planned to leave his tuition work in Dhaka and return home. But his appointment letter did not come. In a public statement, he said he had no criminal case, no political position and no problem with his documents. He did acknowledge supporting a particular political party and posting about it on Facebook. He was left wondering whether his political opinion had affected his verification.

This problem is not new. Consider another case. I will call the person “Israt Ara,” a pseudonym used to protect her identity. Years ago, she competed for a teaching position in the department of social sciences of a public university. She passed the written examination and viva, was selected, and her appointment was approved by the university syndicate. Then police verification blocked her appointment.

According to her account, a distant uncle's association with the then-opposition politics became an issue. She later sought legal remedy, including during the interim-government period, but has still not joined. Her case also involves internal university politics, so police verification alone cannot explain everything. Yet the basic question remains: why should the politics of a distant relative affect the career of a qualified candidate?

This question carries particular significance after the July 2024 uprising. One expectation of the political transition was that state institutions would move away from partisan practices. The Police Reform Commission subsequently recommended ending political background checks in job verification. In July 2025, the government also decided to scrap intelligence-agency vetting of political affiliation in public-service recruitment and promotion. These were important commitments. But reform matters only when citizens experience it in practice.

To understand why the problem survives political change, I find Arturo Escobar's idea of the “apparatus” useful. Drawing heavily on French philosopher Michel Foucault, Escobar uses the idea of an apparatus, or dispositif, not as a physical machine but as an interconnected network of institutions, knowledge, discourse, administrative practices and power. In his influential Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1994), Escobar used this approach to examine how the discourse and institutions of development constructed the Global South as an object to be known, governed and transformed.

I borrow Escobar's conceptual tool for a very different context. He did not write about police verification in Bangladesh, and I am not equating the two historical situations. I use the concept to understand how an apparently routine administrative procedure can operate through a wider network of power. I call it the “Verification Apparatus.”

Police verification, seen this way, is not simply a form moving between government offices. It can connect recruiting authorities, police, intelligence agencies, administrative records, local information networks and political knowledge about candidates and their families. Its power also comes from opacity. A candidate knows the questions in the written examination. They face the viva board directly. But they usually do not know who provides information during verification, what is written about them, or how that information is assessed.

Merit is tested visibly. The final filter can remain invisible. The problem becomes more serious when verification moves from a candidate's conduct to political identity. The candidate may then be judged by Facebook posts, political associations, or even the politics of parents and relatives. The individual gradually becomes a political file. Israt Ara's case illustrates this problem. A university considered her qualified and its syndicate approved her appointment, yet the political association of a distant relative allegedly entered the process.

There is also a historical dimension. The Police Reform Commission chief said in 2024 that the verification system had roots in British-era procedures and included inquiries into the political activities of candidates and their relatives. Such logic is understandable in a colonial state concerned with the loyalty of its subjects. But a democratic republic should recruit public servants, not servants of the ruling party.

This is where Bangladesh enters a vicious circle. The political actors in power may change, but an opaque administrative apparatus can survive. One government may use it in ways that disadvantage its opponents. Power eventually changes hands. But if the apparatus remains intact, it becomes available to the next political order. The beneficiaries may change. The victims may change. The machinery remains.

This is the meaning of “two parties, one apparatus.” It does not mean that Bangladesh''s political parties are identical or that every government has used verification in exactly the same way. The argument is institutional. A political actor can inherit a mechanism from its predecessor and use it for its own purposes. Reform therefore cannot mean changing who controls the political filter. The filter itself must be removed.

Local verification adds another danger. Local society is full of family disputes, land conflicts, political factions and personal rivalries. Even members of the same party may be local opponents. If informal local information enters a confidential verification report, a rumour can become information, information can become an official report, and that report can cost someone a career. The candidate may never know who supplied the information or have a meaningful chance to challenge it.

This is not only a political problem. It is a problem of due process. Political belief must also be separated from criminal conduct. A citizen may support the BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami, NCP, and any other lawful political organisation, or no party at all. Lawful political opinion should not itself determine eligibility for public employment. The same principle must apply to family members. A father's politics are not his daughter's crime. An uncle's politics are not his niece's crime.

None of this requires abandoning legitimate background checks. The state can verify identity and academic documents. It can check relevant criminal records. Clearly defined security concerns may require additional scrutiny for sensitive positions. But the boundary must be clear. Verification should establish legally relevant facts, not political acceptability.

There must also be procedural protection. If an appointment is withheld because of an adverse report, the candidate should ordinarily be told the substantive reason. False information should be challengeable. There should be a transparent review and appeal process. A person's career should not depend on an allegation they are never allowed to see.

The present primary teacher controversy gives the government an opportunity to put its reform commitments into practice. It should disclose how many finally selected candidates have been withheld and why. Where political belief, lawful political activity or family affiliation has entered the process, the government's commitment to ending political vetting should prevail.

Bangladesh does not need to replace one operator of a political filtering system with another. It needs to change the system itself. This is why Escobar's idea of the apparatus matters here: it directs our attention beyond individual rulers to the institutional network that allows the same form of power to survive political transitions.

A public job is not a gift from a political party. It should not be a reward for loyalty or a punishment for dissent. The principle should be simple: judge the candidate by the candidate.

Governments will change. Parties will rise and fall. But if Bangladesh wants a genuinely merit-based public sector, changing the operator will never be enough. The vicious circle of the Verification Apparatus itself must be broken.

* Saba Chowdhury is an educator and freelance researcher. She can be reached at chowdhurysabadu@gmail.com

* The views expressed here are the author's own.