Bureaucrats, technocrats and democrats

By Ujjwal Lamsal

Bureaucrat, aristocrat, autocrat - the list goes on and on. But let us focus more on simple and humble ‘crate’. Etymologically, bureaucrat seems to have been derived from ‘bureau’. This means writing desk with drawers. Similarly, a democrat is person who believes in the ideals of democracy and the word is derived from the Greek – ‘demos’ and ‘kratos’, meaning people’s rule and hence ‘advocate of the people’s rule’. The word ‘technocrat’ is dubious both in originality and meaning. Technically, ‘techno’ indicates applied sciences. However, technocracy seems to have been used after the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Practically, bureaucracy is a system of management by bureaus. In defining bureaucracy, the tool coconut theorists take preeminence over all other theorists. The tool theorists believe that bureaucracy is a tool in the hands of whoever knows how to run it. It is guided by rationality and authority but controlled by knowledge to achieve ends. While the coconut theorists believe that bureaucratization is to facilitate organizational harmony better and public administration the tool theorists have a world of their own. They believe that recruitment and remuneration should be strictly on the basis of impersonal relationship. They believe that bureaucracy is better managed by extensive division of labour, thereby affecting the authority and the structure affirmatively. The wide rift between the tool theorists and coconut theorist has left the ground open for other theorists. The paper theorists believe that bureaucracy is pen and papers. The indulgence in pen and paper, with stress on conservative action and rationality is bureaucracy proper.

After the 1930s’ Great Depression, the Continental Committee on Technocracy reformed industries in the public interest and controlled it. Management can be considered an important part of technocracy, while transformation of mechanical and often repetitive acts of science into an art for an industry would mean ‘technology’ and a person skilled in a particular technology would be an ‘expert’. So ‘technocracy’ would roughly be an even mix of an expert, technology and management. A ‘technocrat’ would be one with the knowledge of all three factors, while technocracy would be coordination, cooperation and harmony among the three. The major problem with technocracy is technocrat becomes an inseparable part of it making technocracy inexplicable phenomena and leading us to the conclusion that ‘what technocrat does is technocracy’.

The most vague and bizarre of all ‘cracy’, from ancient Athenian states to medieval Europe to present day banana republics is democracy and volumes have been written about democracy. It is a system that ensures the basic rights of every citizen -- speech, religion and political opinion -- and upholds the rule of law. So democrat would imply one who exercises these rights. Democracy and its function have been categorized into various groups. Direct democracy signifies majority rule. Representative democracy signifies again a majority rule through representatives where hereditary or arbitrary difference in rank and privilege is restrained through equality of rights. Economic democracy signifies minimization of social and economic difference. Another version of democracy says that it is the exercise of the power by the majority taking into account the minority and the constitution.

Public private partnership for municipal service

By G P Gorkhaly

Although urbanisation in the country is only about 16 percent, the growth is very rapid and causing infrastructure deficit in the urban areas. Municipalities are being unable to finance maintenance, extension and development of even the basic infrastructures. Town Development Fund agency meant for helping financing municipalities is not able to help all the projects needed. So, there is a backlog of many projects whereas there is a lot of under-utilised money with the private parties which is visible from the fact that the subscriptions of share applications are many-fold more than the invited amount in recent days. This means some ways must be worked out to mobilise these unutilised financial resources for the benefit of municipal infrastructure development. Some municipalities started utilising private business parties in different ways to overcome this financial problem, even if it is still small scale and on an ad-hoc basis. In many countries, government and private parties have been cooperating to address the problem infrastructure development very effectively. Therefore, to improve the poor infrastructures of urban Nepal, public and private sector cooperation should be promoted. Realising big backlog of infrastructure development and possibilities of private parties’ investment to alleviate it, HMG has been recently promoting private sector involvement in infrastructure development.

Such institutionalised cooperation between government (municipality) and private parties to get the synergetic effect of their resources and effort is Public Private Partnership (now popularly known as PPP). PPP utilises innovation, efficiency and financial power of private parties to promote the social welfare duty and governance power of the municipality for the welfare of the citizen and to allow private parties to make profit by serving the citizens.

PPP is a tool for municipal development as it can mobilise more funds from private parties to finance their projects. It also improves service efficiency and effectiveness attracting innovative and flexible technologies, management and increased accountability.

Municipalities as well as the private parties have started seeing PPP as a beneficial tool but they still doubt its successful implementation. The main problem is due to lack of recognition the legitimacy of different stakeholders’ objective as well as lack of clearly established procedures. Private parties feel that municipalities will interfere unduly in projects. Many think that private parties make undue profit without any regard for the social welfare.

PPP can be arranged in different ways: a) "Service Contracts" which could be of two forms - "Contracting Out" (municipality gives to private party a fee for repair, maintenance, fee collection etc) and "Management Contract" (municipality gives to private party a certain incentive for the service but municipality finances the operation and maintenance). b) "Leasing" (private party pays a certain amount of lease fee and takes all the management responsibility of a service but gets the right to raise fees at a pre-decided rate. c) "Concession" (private party pays some fee and takes care of all the management, finance, design, construction, operation, maintenance without ownership but get the right to raise pre-decided fee). d) "Build, operate and transfer" (private party build and operate charging the pre-decided users fees for pre-decided period of time after which the asset is transferred to municipality.

Among the PPP Projects that have been institutionally implemented at the municipal level, one worth mentioning is Gongabu Bus Terminal of Kathmandu Municipality. It was incurring loss before, but now, after PPP contract, it is raising about Rs 5 million per year as lease rent and has also attracted about Rs 300 million of investment from the private party for its improvement. Similarly, Dhulikhel people are enjoying the best water supply in the country run by self-standing User’s Committee since 1995. There are some PPP projects implemented based on sheer commitment rather than on the professionalism.

To adopt PPP, municipalities should strengthen their institution and tune themselves to PPP and improve mutual confidence among key stakeholders (public, and private party). Also they should create conducive environment with favourable law, policy and commitments for PPP in municipal infrastructure.

Mutual confidence, the biggest challenges in successful PPP, can be improved by minimising differences in perception and recognising legitimate objectives of municipality (government) and private parties. The government wrongly perceives private party’s profit motive as unjust, whereas the private parties perceive the municipality’s political motive as unfair and against the development. Users’ have been pampered to feel that they should be provided with basic essential services free of cost. Also we have to make municipalities and private parties (including CCI) aware of benefits of PPP to fund municipal infrastructure and then enable them to carry out the projects with the right modalities.

PPP will succeed if all possible risks are carefully assessed and allocations are made clearly and equitably among the parties involved while negotiating the contract. Many PPPs fail because many risks not foreseen at the negotiation time appear later and both sides want to impose it on the other party. The present municipal staff and elected officials are finding it difficult to understand PPP. They need to be sensitised and trained. Private parties and general citizens also need sensitisation.

These existing PPP management capacity constraints of the municipalities can be removed by building capacity on especially PPP operating system, planning, negotiation, financial management, monitoring and evaluation. Enhancement of leadership by making them understand conceptual framework creates favourable political environment for PPP. Dissemination of best PPP practices, continuous dialogues between municipalities, chambers of commerce and industry, government and civil societies help change the attitude of politicians and other stakeholders.

To speed up the PPP process, we can also learn from a) Private Sector Promotion Project (GTZ) which started in 1999 with the main objective to strengthen the private parties’ capacity in the business sector and the chamber of commerce and industry; b) Institutional Strengthening of Kathmandu Municipality (ADB-TA) undertaken during September 1999 to June 2001 with PPP as one of the main components, developed policy and basic standard operating system; c) Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (World Bank) recently conducted assessment to define the country strategy on PPP on water and sewerage sectors.

To conclude, I would like to emphasise that the PPP is one of the best means to address the problems of present deficit municipal infrastructure in Nepal. But, lack of commitment, crisis of confidence among stakeholders, institutional incompetency (knowledge and skills) are the hindrances. To build confidence is the first step for successful PPP. The attitude to see the profit-making motive of private sector as unjust should be changed and appreciated. Similarly, the attitude of seeing municipalities as corrupt with only politically motivated and without commitment to development needs to be changed. It creates better environment. Preparing PPP policy, guidelines on standard operating procedures and contract guidelines for municipalities as well as sensitising and training the staff and elected officials to implement PPP projects will benefit cities by speeding up their infrastructure development projects.