Stop illegal practice

The news report of massive irregularities in timber sales has demonstrated the flagrant violation of basic norms and values practised in responsible quarters. This is not the first time cases of this kind have been recorded, neither has the government taken any action against those who are involved in such shady deals. In a resource-strapped country like Nepal, the persistent misuse of resources and the ensuing economic evils can very well be perceived.

In the last three decades or so, great injury has been inflicted on our forests. More than anything else, timber trade smuggling is fast turning into a lucrative business. Years back, this illegal trade was conducted in a hush-hush manner. Now, it has become daylight robbery. Unscrupulous people in top jobs have openly resorted to this malpractice. Without a tinge of guilt or remorse, they are indulging in profiteering at the cost of the environment and public interest. Forest preservation, and moreover, of timber, the cynosure of all smugglers’ eyes, should figure high on the agenda of the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation. Now and then, some remarkable developments have been recorded in protecting our greenery. One swallow, however, does not make a summer. Take the recent case of Morang Charkoshe Forest in Biratnagar, which shows that positive development is an exception rather than the rule. The former State Minister for Forest and Soil Conservation, Mohammad Aftab Alam allegedly gave "high order" abusing his authority, and sold thousands of cubic feet of timber directly to merchants. This shady deal has resulted in revenue losses of 20 million rupees - a staggering amount for the poorest of the poor country.

If such incidents are regular, whatever norms and values prevalent in government offices, will be completely unheard of, and will ultimately ruin our efforts at good governance. In order to plug the loopholes in this sector, harsh and exemplary punishment has to be meted out. Merely setting up committees and more commissions for investigation will only serve to further disillusion the public. Probe committees have become a mere formality and an easy means of devouring the taxpayers’ money rather than exposing scams in black and white. This is precisely the reason why crooks are having a field day, and corruption is getting more cancerous day by day. It must be noted that hardly any cases of corruption have been tried in the court. This kind of negligence, deliberate or otherwise, may only help encourage immoral behaviour.

Now that the cabinet has been reshuffled, supposedly to quell the intra-party conflicts of the ruling party, it will hardly be surprising if the the newly-appointed minister Prakash Koirala follows in the footsteps of his predecessors. However, it will indeed be a pleasant surprise if he does something refreshingly positive towards sustained development of our environment and economy.

Taming public enterprises

By Narayan Manandhar

Let us compare two pieces of information on public enterprises. Far back in 1968, Jha Commission was established to offer suggestions on reforming public administration in the country. With regards to public enterprises, the commission had this thing to say: "The government should, for a whole, discourage the trend of establishing new public enterprises and liquidate these enterprises whose objectives contradict with the government policy. As there had been increase in the number of public enterprises and none of them have been able to earn profit and a situation has arisen to rethink on the objectives and operations of some enterprises." (Jha Administrative Reform Commission, 1968, p64)

Now, fast-forward your time clock by thirty-one years, here is what the Finance Minister had to say on public enterprises: "The majority of public corporations have failed to deliver expected services, their productivity is low and the quality of their products are short of standard. The returns are negligible... They are still plagued by government intervention in professional matters like recruitment of
personnel, investment, procurement etc...professionalism for good governance is still not a reality, the minimum cost of goods and services could not be recovered due to pricing policy....corporations are becoming more and more burdensome and unable to shoulder their own burden.... The burden of these incapable and inactive corporations has, at the end, been added on to the shoulder of the poor Nepali people." (The Budget Speech 1999/2000, p4).

Managing public enterprises is possibly a biggest headache of the present day government. The government has been neither able to operate or liquidate these enterprises. A way back in mid eighties, Mr Madhukar Rana used to comment: The government allows public enterprises neither to live nor to have natural death, what it does is to keep them in a permanent state of sickness. Please, don’t get carried away by the decision on Hetauda Textile Factory. Much more interesting things are to unfold in the days to come.

Broadly, there are two strands of views pertaining to the management of public enterprises in Nepal. The pundits of the market philosophy call for whole sale privatization. For them bringing in private capital, ownership, control and management skills will ultimately tame these "ailing and failing" enterprises. They recommend for a surgical treatment. Sounds logical. However, when the germs that eat away public enterprises also creep into the very process of privatization what else one can do? This is like remedy itself turning into a malady. The other strand of thought is the "reform pundits". They subscribe to the idea that public enterprises can be reformed gradually through proper diagnosis and prognosis. However, the problem with them is that they often fall into a trap called "analysis-paralysis syndrome". That is, the more you understand the problem the more you get complicated. A glaring example can be taken from the much awaited report of the Public Enterprise Reform Committee established in August last year in the wake of wide spread employee discontent triggered by the government’s decision to hike the salary scale of the public servants.

In trying to understand the problems of public enterprises, the Committee has classified forty-five public enterprises into three neat groups under the criterion of three year profit scenario: (a) Enterprises earning profits (b) Enterprise incurring profits and losses and (c) Enterprises incurring losses. After taking in-depth analysis of the problems in these public enterprises, the committee quizzically remarks that the profit situation in the enterprises cannot be ascribed with certainty to their resource utilization. If profit cannot be used as an indicator of efficiency, then the logical question would be: what is the point in having public enterprise classification under profit criterion? The committee is essentially having a circular reasoning. More important than this is what Prof Amartya Sen once remarked on the use of profitability criterion: Having established public enterprises and using profit yardstick to measure its performance is like going to cinema hall, not to watch movie but to fall sleep.

When you cannot dissect the causes from the effects, (the committee has in fact mentioned on this) you require a different kind of solution, a different type of treatment. You need what de Bono called "a design solution". One had to come out of the box and see and the problem in a different perspective. The problem with public enterprises is neither with their "public" orientation nor with their "enterprise" orientation. Public enterprises have been turned into political enterprises to accomplish some political goals and agenda. Unless the political orientation of public enterprises duly is taken into account, no other solution whatever professional may it be, is going to work. Had it not been for political objectives, the pricing policy would not have been suppressed for so long, enterprises would not have been overstaffed and overpaid, protegees would not been appointed in the top-notch positions, preferential procurement policies will not been allowed and finally, investment would not been made without economic justifications. Unless these issued are addressed in proper perspective we will continue to have the repetition of suggestions pasted at the beginning of this write-up.

(The author holds Ph D on performance of public enterprises)

TU : No more chaos please !

By Ritesh Shrestha

It was, indeed, an odd day, not that exciting. You couldn’t have seen the road that busy that runs parallel with Padma Kanya Campus. While the kanyas were calling "close down" our MBS exam centre in a high pitched note, we were puzzled: Will we be able to sit for the exam? So, we waited half disappointed half amused flooding the Bagbazzar road. To add to the chaotic state, a rally organised by RPP against the kerosene price hike made their way through this one-way route. And in the late afternoon, the protestors were ready for the masal julus hike to show their upcoming two days long Nepal bandha successful. It seemed that almost anything could happen, here.

What a victory day must have been for the kanya neta by pulling down our very exam. Oh yeah, another credit to add into her bio-data for she might have longed for a reputable politician in the near future.

You will be a perfect liar if you say exam wasn’t the stuff that you feared about the most before crossing the "Iron Gate", what else but SLC. If not the most, I agree that you still dreaded about it anyway. As for me, I used to have nightmares even after the SLC. And why wouldn’t you, as you were repeatedly counselled that "all you’re future career hinge on it"? And your frame of mind was such that you were always keyed up about studies. Eat study, laugh study, talk study, sleep study: well you had a dream to accomplish. Life was then as easy-going as any nursery rhyme goes by.All you needed to do was pick up a colour and start painting on your canvas knowing for sure that the final outlook would be as pleasing as your dream.

However, once you got metamorphosed from a mere student kid to the campus hero/heroine, you had a lot of mischievous deeds to follow up on the campus territory. Rules now seemed too feeble to browbeat you. Hark back to those days when getting scolded from a teacher was a matter of ego problem, bunking classes was almost a routine and exams? Now it wasn’t a big thing to actually brood over if you weren’t from the insignificant gang called "bookworm".

Moreover, if you had studied in a government-run institution, your reading style must have taken a different turn.

"Negligence" is a word, which I believe, is most related with our government colleges, be it from students’ side or TU itself. It’s not surprising that you just need to visit your campus courtyard thrice to complete your degree: for admission, to pay exam fee and finally to sit down for examinations.

If you happened to be close enough to your campus neta, you could have got the first two tasks done on the week before the exam. Mind you, you could be forever studying as couldn’t make away with the degree. It may be that the institution never conducted regular classes or the papers weren’t properly checked. Or it may be that you didn’t study at all. If not, you wouldn’t have studied in our government colleges! Am I right?

An urgent wake-up call

By M R Josse

American Ambassador Ralf Frank’s remarks at a recent function in Kathmandu has raised a storm of controversy.

MYTH: It has also created an enduring myth even while exposing an unflattering feature of the nature of public debate in this country. Before proceeding any further, let’s first tackle the myth-spinning exercise that Frank’s observations set off.

It concerns continuing accounts that his politically-loaded observations were made in the presence of the King and the Queen, which are simply not true. Indeed, Their Majesties graced the function only after some 10-15 minutes had elapsed following the conclusion of the three set speeches on the occasion.

Frank’s audience however included not only the then Finance Minister Mahesh Acharya but also Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala who, incidentally, was clearly heard impolitely chatting away with RPP’s Pashupati Shumshere JB Rana for most of the time that Frank was delivering his sermon from the podium!

What was the thrust of his praised/reviled observations relating to "a cloud hanging over current development efforts" and his expressed desire "to make an earnest and heartfelt plea for an improved national dialogue that will facilitate future efforts"?

Its focus was his "concern" that the "current atmosphere of distrust and negativism" seems "to be resulting in an increasing climate of violence in expressing political dissent."

Towards that end, he made the plea "for political leaders and government officials to renew their commitment for good governance, and for all Nepalese citizens to commit themselves to peaceful
participation in the democratic political process."

The envoy touched upon the high "economic costs of bandhs every year" as well as of "anti-government insurgency" — both of which are unhappy but indisputable facts of life in contemporary Nepal.

Finally, he chose to remind his audience that in the developing world "countries succeed best in the development process when they have chosen elected, representational democracy as the form of government; when they have developed strong democratic institutions, including an independent judiciary and a free press; and when they have a vibrant opposition that is free to engage in peaceful, constructive and non-violent protest."

DIPLOMATESE: Such elliptical, euphemistic language is potboiler diplomatese and hardly fire-and-brimstone or revolutionary stuff.

For all that, deliberate efforts were made to twist and exaggerate what Frank actually stated — very often even by responsible and highly educated persons.

For instance, in a conversation with yours truly at a recent national day reception, a leading Opposition politico and former minister who had not heard or read Frank’s speech expressed outrage that the envoy had openly criticised the government for engaging in corruption in the prime minister’s august presence.

When it was pointed out that "corruption" was conspicuous by its absence and that the envoy had blandly stressed the need for "political leaders and government officials to renew their commitment for good governance" he expressed his utter surprise.

Clearly, the worthy MP had drawn his conclusions on the basis of inaccurate hearsay and/or interpretative media accounts. He had, of course, not bothered to find out for himself what the American ambassador had — or had not — actually stated at the said function even when copies of the speech could presumably have been obtained from the USIS upon request.

Revealingly, too, the Left media went berserk over Frank’s remarks, although he had not anywhere castigated any specific political group, not even the Maoists, by name. They were possibly perturbed that the ambassador had reminded all of the high costs of repeated bandhs, a sentiment that is whole-heartedly by most Nepalese today, including yours faithfully. On the other hand, a noted figure in the world of Nepalese medicine, in a letter to this daily, was ecstatic that Frank had "the guts to speak the absolute truth in front of all the powers that matter today in Nepal."

He, too, however, seemed to be under the impression that Frank had spoken out without appropriate sanction from his superiors in Washington which is hardly suggested by the fact that copies of his written speech, printed on official stationery, were distributed to all and sundry after delivery.

The plenipotentiary’s address was most certainly drafted after a great deal of thought, possibly even after consultations with other members of the international donor community.

Is such an exercise out of bounds for official representatives of governments whose tax-dollars are involved in a multiplicity of development-related activities/projects in the country?

Is Frank’s suggestion that democratic institutions — such as an independent judiciary and a free press — should be strengthened any more outlandish than that made, say, by former US Ambassador Leon J Weil who had suggested to the Panchayat authorities to pay greater heed to the aspirations of the people?

Similarly, is it any more out-of-line than the threats/actions on development funds by several Western countries against the Panchayat regime prior to its fall in early 1990?

While ambassadors do not admittedly usually speak out the way Frank did, they are not — contrary to popular mythology — exclusively obsessed about protocol and alcohol. Neither are they appointed merely to keep mum — in whatever circumstances.

Let’s also not forget that Frank used quintessential diplomatic language to put his views across and that he is paid to promote and protect the interest of the United States in Nepal, not that of any incumbent host government.

It is gratifying that the US envoy has openly, if diplomatically, stated what many of us have been saying for years. Let’s now see how the Koirala government reacts to that urgent wake up call.