Governance With Development
A Pressing Need

NEPAL’S modern history of development begins with the ushering in of democracy in 1951. During the past 50 years there has been a great change in the country’s development sector. We now have a liberal democratic polity, though the past 50 years were not free from political upheaval.

Democratic

Before the modern democratic era began in 1951 there were a very few industries which absorbed less than one per cent of the total labour force. Economic infrstructure was almost non-existing.

The country then has a railway track measuring 100 kilometres, a ropeway of 50 kilometres and the roads measuring 400 kilometres with only five kilometres blacktopped. Postal service was not available for about 99 per cent people and telephone service was only for the Rana rulers. Almost same was the situation of the electricity and irrigation facilities. Literacy rate was below two per cent, school enrolment was below 2 per cent, infant mortality rate was 300 and life expectancy at birth was 35. And all the facilities were only for Kathmandu people. Indeed, Kathmandu then used be understood as Nepal.

Over the past 50 years, significant advances have been made in agriculture, health, education, transportation, communication sectors Improvement has been seen in the delivery of government services. However, Nepal remains one of the poorest countries of the world.

The principal factors that have been attributed to dismal performance include low agricultural productivity, under-utilisation of natural resources, environmental-degradation, inadequate physical infrastructure, weak administrative machinery and institutional structure that is unable to mobilise internal resources and insufficient human development interventions.

As we assess the situation it seems that there is progress, in some seetors as well as no progress in others. As overwhelming population are living under abject poverty, they have been categorised as hard core poor, ultra poor and poor.

In south Asia Nepal’s agricultural productivity was highest in 1960s. Now it is the lowest. Agricultural Perspectve Plan cites various reasons for such dismal performance. Among them lack of clear cut strategy and its failure to emphasise accelerated growth and increased farm income is regarded to be the main cause. There lacked a clear-cut integrity to implement the agreed strategy. There is an enormous gap in distribution of income. Top elites covering 10 per cent of the total population enjoy 52 per cent of total income whereas over 40 per cent people at bottom level possess only 11 per cent of total income.

It is a universal phenomenon that political system guides the course of development of a nation. In the present world, multi-party parliamentary democracy is considered as the best political system. In spite of this hard reality, we have not felt comfortable over the past decade of multi-party democracy we could establish democratic system but failed to make economic progress. Do we have really a representative democracy or it is merely a electoral democracy? It is indeed, a thought-provoking question for us

Generally, it seems, the elected people consider themselves as rulers rather than serving the public. The same psyche is with our bureaucrats as well. Nepali people have not felt the successive governments formed after restoration of democracy in 1990 as accountable to the public that respects rule of law.

NGOs have emerged as an important agent of development after 1990. Growth of NGOs in Nepal is not spontaneous. The influential people with hidden objective of getting foreign money to pursue their own interest have created most of the NGOs. Many cases of disputes between the NGOs and INGOs have been witnesses that this sector is not free from anarchy and chaos. There is a split between the civil society and the government. The need is that both have to move together. It is also alleged that donors are instrumental to bring out this situation.

There is frequent paradigm shift in the development approaches. Human development has gained popularity in development lexicon since 1990. It rejects course of development practised hitherto and put those as incongruous and dehumanising. Human development focuses on health and education in addition to conventional per capita income.

There has not been a marked improvement to ameliorate the condition of the oppressed and neglected class throughout the world. At present, more than 1 billion people are living in subhuman conditions.

Sustainable development and institutional strengthening are relatively new entrants in the galaxy of development jargons. What are we sspiring-sustainable development, human development or mere economic development? It needs to be clarified. These must be complementary to each other.

Brundtland commission’s Report, Our Common Future, 1987 first highlighted the concept of sustainable development. The Rio Summit of 1992 attempted to look at development with flavour of environment and adopted Agenda 21 for 21st century. Transparency and accountability in public affairs are prerequisties for good governance and development that lacks utterly in our governance system.

Though we established democratic structures, we did not create institutions and practices to address aspirations of the people for freedom from injustice and inequality.

We need to come out of inferiority complex of small country We need to think big, dream big and be big not in physical terms but in our spirit and thinking. As per atlas of 1996, only 41 countries have a population larger than Nepal.

Values

Human rights and good governance are being promoted as universal values these days. Nepal should adhere to these to beocme a respected member and beneficiary of the global community.

There is no reason to disagree with the elements of good governance as stated by ADB-accountability, transparency, predictability, efficiency and participation.

Alas, Sirisena Is No More!

HE NEVER said much, at least in my hearing, but seemed to float with that other-world smile. There was something of the Chinaman in him, as if he was trailing the inauspicious spirit behind his snow white sarong in the hope of having it extinguished by some passing car. For Sirisena would slink at an angle, his knees and feet before the rest of him, and his long, gangly arms dangling loosely behind in slower time, beside his spotless white shirt. And, perhaps because he mostly worked in the hot sun, he wore a pure white skull cap, after manner of a Muslim.

Casual

By then Sirisena had served for 15 years. Some time before, through the quirks of periodic cuts and savings, he had moved out of the ranks of the permanent, becoming a casual day labourer on a few rupees an hour. Even this failed to rouse him.

Last time I saw he was replacing a kerbstone in the front driveway of our bungalow in one of the older avenues of Cinnamon Gardens. The old kerb had presented too precipitous a bend, and I had often scuffed it in our four wheel drive. Sirisena worked meekly, barely lifting his head to acknowledge my coming or going. He lavished all his skill upon that task and completed it with a graceful curvature and smoothness which survives today.

There is another memento. His workmates, as often, never returned to remove the old kerbstones which Sirisena dug up and left lying on the grass verge in front of our house. They still lie there, toushled in weeds. Like the Chinese spirit which haunts him in the spray of the evening sea, Sirisena turned up and left that day unnoticed and unannounced. It was his nature.

He lived with his wife in a shanty settlement south of Colombo beyond the railway to Galle and beside the Indian Ocean. Between flaking iron and white sand, his small house was just a stone’s throw from the cosmopolitan elegance of Mount Lavinia where foreign tourists trooped.

His brood of sons and daughters were long grown and left, and there were grandchildren. In these autumn years Sirisena and his wife passed their evenings quietly. Sitting at dusk in their small home the Ocean roared and breezes from India swayed the palm trees as fishermen sat by the Wadiya unpicking their nets.

After breakfast that Saturday Sirisena left his home and his wife to cross the rusting railway to visit his youngest daughter in her new home, just a few hundred yards away. She was to marry the following week and there were arrangements to make. It was all anticipation. Like those quiet evenings, the wedding betokened a world passing. Sirisena, who had watched the child, knew the girl was nervous yet strangely excited.

He turned to the sound of the orange train from Galle and its carriages. On weekdays these would seethe with commuters from Kalutara, Bentota and beyond making their way, past palm beaches and rocky promontories, to their Colombo workplaces. At monsoon these new-age commuters squeezed in their carriages, reading newspapers beneath outspread umbrellas by leaky rooves and windows. At nighttime the Galle train would rumble and grate, jolting Sirisena and his wife from their shantytown slumber. Now, in the Saturday morning heat, Sirisena glimpsed four near empty carriages trailing towards Colombo Fort. They held a few enterprising shoppers braving April for the Pettah.

The carriages trundled and Sirisena was watchful. He always badgered his grandchildren to look both ways across those tracks, there had been so many accidents. But, stepping out after the last carriage, Sirisena failed to notice that behind it was a small guards’ van. The corner caught him. It threw the old mason back onto an iron track splitting his skull and killing him instantly.

The undertakers dressed him beautifully on his pall in the little shack, now decorated for mourning guests. Sirisena’s face was again that peaceful smile and thoughts for his unmarried daughter.

As he lay there, his spirit hovered, achknowledging mourners as they filed past. Perhaps Sirisena gave a thought to that sweeping kerbstone to my house, one of his last jobs. The neighbours and friends came in their droves, grieving for one so peaceful that he was more respected than any in his little village by the sea. Amid wailing, they closed the silken white pall and fastened the coffin. Sirisena was carried off, beneath flurries of white pennants. The sun shone on the afternoon sea.

His colleagues and friends and the family menfolk carried the coffin up the narrow lane which had led Sirisena after work every evening to his wife and his home by the Indian Ocean. Past Miami Hotel with its luxurious facilities for wedding receptions. On and on they bore him, past leafy suburbs and languid bungalows. Past, past they filed onto the teeming Galle Road Sirisena seemed to have known all his life. Eventually, they reached the cemetery beyond. It was to a poor man’s burial, not the funeral pyre with its costly firewood, to which they took Sirisena that afternoon, his ghost finally united with that shining white sarong.